It is hard to know where to go when each person you manage to contact
who is in traveling distance is in the same situation. We know some
people who traveled to others out of state, one family down to Philly
and one to either Delaware or Maryland, but I forget which.

So, what people do then is they leave the shelter spots and the few
spots in hotels with generators to those who are most in need: the
elderly, the very sick, those with infants. I even know of one person
who had the choice to share her hotel room with people in need or to
leave so that those whose risk was so much greater could stay.

Our area has very shallow soils over shale. The large trees in these
townships wind up hopefully finding something to hold them (at best
a crack in the shale but at worst a water main) and most grow roots
outward rather than downward. That simply does not work in high winds.
This location really needs to think more serious about trimming out
the trees at the edge of woods that are too close to power lines and
allowing only short varieties of trees to be planted at the edges of
yards.

Even then there are limits to what can be done. Neither precaution
would have prevented the replacement need for the two large
transformers which were trucked from IL each on a large flatbed truck
about 12 hours before we got power back on here. Neither would have
prevent some major wires from being tossed so much by unrelenting winds
that they actually unravelled -- something a neighbor who was a power
company emergency response expert before retirement had ever seen in
his career.

Our town is now down to level that can be better managed by emergency
services: about 1,000 people without power which is about 4% of our
town. Trees remain on roofs in most places because there simply is
still more need to get to the more essential downed trees. The big ones
over the road have been cut with the rest left in place, or -- as I did
with one which had been only about a 12 or 15 foot tree -- the smaller
ones have been lifted at one side and then rolled out of the road.

We learned a lot in getting through this. Maybe people can take what we
learned and use it along with the advice others give both on staying at
home during such a situation and on evacuating in such a situation.

Sukie (not a vet) Ferrets make the world a game.

Recommended ferret health links:
http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ferrethealth/
http://ferrethealth.org/archive/
http://www.miamiferret.org/
http://www.ferrethealth.msu.edu/
http://www.ferretcongress.org/
http://www.trifl.org/index.shtml
http://homepage.mac.com/sukie/sukiesferretlinks.html
all ferret topics:
http://listserv.ferretmailinglist.org/archives/ferret-search.html

"All hail the procrastinators for they shall rule the world tomorrow."
(2010, Steve Crandall)

A nation is as free as the least within it.

[Posted in FML 7608]