Sunday, August 28, 2011

PPPS TO LAST POST [IRENE UPDATE]

Just took a ride over to my youngest's mother's to check on the power. It's out, as I realized on the way over it is in a lot of this town (her water's out too as is everyone's in what looks like at least half the town). I feel very fortunate that my place missed all that (so far).

There's still yellow police tape cordoning off entire blocks where trees have either knocked down wires or are still leaning on them. Kind of an eerie feeling with few cars out and almost no people, and sirens still sounding now and then.

Some people think the state and local governments were too cautious given the lack of major wind damage to most buildings. But given all the flooding and wires down and trees down etc. I think the caution is the reason there have only been twenty-some deaths so far recorded.

One of the saddest was a man trying to rescue a boy playing in a flooded street where a wire was down. The boy's in critical condition but the man died from electrocution. And a young woman not too far from here was trapped in her car at two in the morning on a flooded roadway and called 911 but they arrived too late to save her.

There might be a lot more deaths to report had the various state and local workers not done such a great job (coming from a clan with lots of cops in our ranks over the decades, I know how great they are in these kinds of challenging situations).

My guess is there'd be even less damage if our infrastructure was in better shape, but that would take investing in things other than corporations and malls and etc. and hiring even more government workers, whether temporarily or long term. But that's another story.

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