What a Week!

I just woke up at 1:25am on Monday morning and was glad to see that we finally had power again. We had been without power since last Wednesday at 4pm.

Last Wednesday numerous tornadoes ravaged the southeast killing over 350 people. Over 250 of those were in my home state of Alabama. Our county lost about 10 people but Tuscaloosa, Alabama the home of the University of Alabama lost over 40.

Most of us who simply lost power and were becoming irritable were humbled when people that had had lost their homes and were now homeless scolded us and said we were the lucky ones.

We get our power from TVA (Tennessee Valley Authority) and even they were caught off guard. There were about 50 of those huge towers carrying 8 main power lines from the nuclear power plant 30 miles away to our county. A tornado(s) destroyed all of them leaving our whole county without power. At the peak over 500,000 people were without power for at least 3 days. TVA was joined by volunteers from utility companies from the whole southeast to work on restoring power. Over 4000 workers are working with TVA alone. Many thousand more are working with the local utility utility companies such as in our city to work with TVA to restore power to homes and businesses.

Last night only 4% of our city of almost 200,000 had power. This morning more have power including myself. Our land line phone was out Thursday through Saturday and our cell phone service was out until Sunday. The only communications we had outside our home was radio. I was glad I keep a battery powered radio. Listening to local AM and FM stations kept me informed of what was going on in the community the last 5 days.

Glad to hear you made it!

One of the downsides to these internet communities is that we don't generally talk to each other outside of our little forums and whatnot-- when we lose a member, no one knows whether they are just away for a while or if something truly tragic has occurred.