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No Power Means No Shower
By Jonathan | September 17, 2008 at 1:28 pm
This past Sunday Hurricane Ike pummeled Cincinnati and the surrounding areas with wind. We’re not talking about some lame breeze you get in the springtime with bunnies hopping around and flowers blooming; this was the kind of wind that didn’t think about sucker punching you in the gut, knocking you down, and then kicking you in the groin. 70+ mile per hour winds were uprooting trees from the ground, ripping roof shingles off houses, and tearing fences apart. These winds also directly or indirectly caused power outages to over one million Duke Energy customers. Unfortunately for Abi and me, we were one of those customers.
We actually ended up losing power around 3:00pm Sunday afternoon. It flickered on and off a few times until finally settling on off. No big deal, right? It will come back on sooner or later…or not.
2.5 days later power was restored to our house. As of 1:30pm today there still are over 297,000 customers that aren’t nearly as lucky as we are. Regardless, I’d like to recap the past 2.5 days as a list of things that were good, bad, ugly, ridiculous, etc. Here we go:
The good
- After the wind was done blowing on Sunday, the temperatures dropped into the 50-60s at night, and 70s during the day. This meant that we weren’t going to freeze to death, nor would we sweat to death.
- Although Hurricane Ohio was tough, we never saw more than a sprinkle of rain.
- Our 40 gallon water heater managed to keep enough hot water stored up so we could take minimal showers.
- Team Lammi was supportive throughout this whole catastrophe, as they offered up their hot food and some electricity (hopefully we don’t get a bill).
The bad
- After 2.5 days we had to toss out a bunch of food. This was by far the thing that upset me most about the power outage.
- Busy intersections with broken stoplights. At least most people realized they were four-way stops.
The ridiculous
- A few people in our neighborhood were running generators to keep part of their houses powered. Which parts I have no idea. I do know that we saw one guy siphoning gas from his car so that he could run the generator a little longer. Hmmmm, necessary? I think not.
The ugly
- The number of people that thought the world was going to end because of a power outage.
Insult to injury
- Tuesday morning Abi and I were leaving for work when we found out that Abi’s car battery had died. D’oh! Good thing Autozone was open until 10pm.
Things I’m glad we had
- Bread
- Peanut butter
- Honey (goes great with the bread and peanut butter)
- Random snack food
- Flashlights with charged batteries
- Tons of candles
- Matches + lighter
- Cars with gasoline
- Grill with propane
- Friends with power
Things I wish we had
- Ice
- Generator (mostly for the fridge)
- Bottled water
- Ice
- Dry ice
- More ice
Problems for others
- Missing roof shingles
- Missing siding
- Exposed plywood on roof and/or side of house
At 12:49am this morning our power came back on. Things can get back to normal at Casa de Lepolt.
Topics: cincinnati, current events, story, weather | 4 Comments »
September 17th, 2008 at 1:32 pm
You forgot to mention the stellar role played by everyone’s favorite iPhone-a-Friend.
Also, meterologically speaking I don’t think you can say it was Hurricane Ike–it was only the remnants of said storm.
September 17th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
I’m glad your power is back on.
To Kevin–Elder still sucks
September 17th, 2008 at 8:25 pm
I’ve already dubbed the remnants of Hurricane Ike as “Hurricane Ohio.”
September 17th, 2008 at 8:31 pm
that sucks man, here in chi-town we had rain, minimal wind. well not minimal, it is the windy city.
to jon and abi – perrysburg still sucks