i am in a black out

[ArtsieAng Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close ArtsieAng]

Emmy,

I know that you have wonderful weather, and I am jealous.....

We are getting hit with another round of storms as I am typing this post. My satellite has gone out again, and the thunder, lightening and rain are crashing all around my house.

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

I am getting battery low warning so this maybe my last post until I charge this pc phone ,pat I can use that generator right about now.power seems to be out just by me.

[camachinist Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close camachinist]

Frank,

Sounds like a local trip, like we often get. I can have power in the shop but not in the house, because the main area grid feeds the shop and the cross grid feeds the house (two seperate services and we have corner acreage). That's why I have the house and shop cross-connected. I use that interlock far more than the generator.

Not to be outdone in my ingenuity, I also have an inverter which I can attach to a car/truck 12V battery and operate my laptop (and other small 110V devices) that way. They're cheap and work pretty well, IME. We use one when camping, plugging it into the camper battery/solar panel.

If you were down in the neighborhood and in need, the generator would already be there. I'd just have to use the tractor instead of the crane, as the power would be off

Former survivalist here...

BTW, if those freezers are full and you leave the door closed, stuff will stay frozen in there for days...

Pat

[jackio Gold Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close jackio]

Our lights blinked but we still have everything - we have underground utilities so we rarely go out unless someone hits a utility pole on the main road. The storms were bad earlier, and now we are getting a second wave. My 17 yr old son, newly licensed, is out at work til 12:30. I hate thinking of him driving in this....

[Oracle Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Oracle]

You could go "off the grid":

Frostek Propane-Only Refrigerators OR Freezers &
Frostek Kerosene-Only Refrigerators OR Freezers

Frostek Giant Chest Freezer
- Cools to 10°F - LP gas or kerosene

Huge capacity -- The largest gas freezer available -- over eight cubic feet of reliable long-term food storage. You can put up quarts upon quarts of frozen fruit or gallons of ice cream!

Proven reliable in laboratory tests -- The powerful cooling unit cools down to 10°F.

Supreme convenience -- Exclusive exterior thermometer tells you the precise interior conditions without opening the door. Smooth, rust-proof steel cabinet with tough, gray leathergrain finish. Fiercely resists scratches and dents! Non-electric, thermostatic control ensures even temperatures and non-electric push-button ignition gives match-less starting. Free storage basket.

High quality craftsmanship -- No moving parts in cooling unit, so no mechanical wear-and-tear. Almost five years of careful research went into its design and production. AGA and CGA approved. LP gas only. Three-year warranty. Made in Canada (cooling unit made in Italy).

IMPORTANT: The Frostek is best suited for keeping frozen food frozen. (It may take several days to totally freeze food that is room temperature.) Once partially filled with frozen food, up to 12 lb of non-frozen food can be added per 24 hrs.

It is pricey ($2000) but it will last forever, no moving parts. If you have natural gas, power outages will never affect it.

--Sorry LP only but there are natural gas freezers out there too. (added later)

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

I am back up with power.
It was 7 hours of worrying mostly about the meat spoiling.
I could not even get into my garage to get the lanterns out because that is motorized and we could not find the key to bypass the motor.
Pat I have a 440 watt power inverter that I was going to use to charge up my PC phone. My regular cell phone has a dc power cord but I never bought one for the PC phone. What kills me was that people had power a block away but one strip which ended on the block behind me did not.

BTW all the meat was still frozen and the refrigerator part was still cold. I am not sure how long things will stay cold for if you do not open the doors. I had heard it can stay cold for 48 hours if you do not open the doors.

[Oracle Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Oracle]

I had heard it can stay cold for 48 hours if you do not open the doors.

For a stand up Frige or Freezer, yes, never open the door until you have to. Dry Ice is good if you can get it to keep things cold.

A small chest freezer is great because you don't lose all your cold air when you open it.

[taffy19 Gold Contributor Find all posts View Profile Close taffy19]

Reading all this, I wonder if we should start thinking of being better prepared just in case there is a disaster. Extra water and power off the grid would be a darn good idea to be self sufficient. I had to chuckle when I saw Pat's elaborate system.

Frank, I wouldn't worry about seven hours. We had no electricity once for over 12 hours and nothing was spoiled in the freezer yet.

[Oracle Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Oracle]

Extra water and power off the grid would be a darn good idea to be self sufficient.

In an emergency, drinking unsafe water is the fastest way to get sick or die. I have a gravity water filter that will make almost any water safe to drink:

British Berkefeld - Big Berkey Portable Water Filter
Produces safe drinking water from lakes, cisterns, streams, etc...


Removes parasites and pathogenic bacteria from uncertain water sources!

Long lasting filter elements will filter up to 60,000 gallons!

Reliable design uses gravity — no pumps to wear out

British Berkefeld water filters are compact, portable, and simple to operate. Requiring no external plumbing, each filter takes only minutes to assemble and can provide up to 24 gallons or more of safe drinking water each day.

What will the filter remove?

Absolute filtration efficiency to 0.5 microns (U.S.)
For particles 0.2 microns, efficiency is greater than 98%;from 0.3 to 0.5 microns, filtration efficiency is greater than 99% which effectively blocks waterborne pathogens and clarifies the water.

Independently tested to remove the following parasites and pathogenic bacteria:

• E. Coli 99.99%
• Klebsiella 99.999%
• Cholera 99.99%
• Shigella 99.99%
• Salmonella 99.999%
• Giardia Lambia 100%
• Live Cryptosporidium* 100%

While it won't remove water soluble contaminates or salt, it has an activated charcoal stage that will take care of most organics.

We had a boil water order for a week and that was how I processed our drinking water. The ceramic wick filters are tough an easy to clean.

There are several makers of these type of filters, British Berkefeld, Aqua Rain, Katadyn and Doulton. Some have an activated charcoal stage and some do not.

The British Berkefeld is the cadillac of these filters:"The ease of operation combined with a proven effectiveness at eliminating water-borne diseases such as cholera and typhoid has led to the British Berkefeld Filter being the preferred unit for field operations by many of the world's major aid and emergency relief organizations."

Doulton (no activated charcoal) is used by the following agencies:

• International Red Cross
• UNICEF
• Oxfam
• Medecins Sans Frontieres
• U.S. & British Embassies
• Save the Children Fund
• Thousands of Missionaries, etc...

I would like to see what these type of filters would have done on the toxic soup of the New Orleans flood waters. My only concern would be water soluble nasties, but if you can get to a lake or a flowing stream, you will have safe water with these filters.

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

I Am in a blakout once my pc phone battery dies you may not see me.

Looks like we have another blackout, We have been down two hours so far. Areas near me have been down for four days and power is expected to come back for them until Sunday.

[ArtsieAng Super Moderator Find all posts View Profile Close ArtsieAng]

Geeze....what a pain in the butt!!

I was just reading about the outages. So far, the only problems we have had, has been with our satellite, and phone.

I hope you get your power back soon.

As many as 100,000 without power in Queens By VERENA DOBNIK, Associated Press Writer
2 hours, 55 minutes ago


NEW YORK - Tens of thousands of New Yorkers were still without power

Friday, the fifth day of a mysterious electrical problem that has been blamed for subway delays, flight cancellations and dead air conditions during the hottest week of the year.

Power company Con Edison initially said fewer than 2,000 customers were affected, but it increased that number tenfold Friday morning to 25,000 customers.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg estimated that would translate to about 100,000 people considering that each "customer" could be more than one household in an area where homes are often sectioned into multiple units, and could even be an entire apartment building.

"The sad thing is, this shouldn't have happened," Bloomberg said. "We don't know why, but the most important thing — make sure nobody dies or gets hurt and then help Con Ed to get it back up."

Queens District Attorney Richard Brown issued a statement Friday saying his staff was conducting a review to determine if criminal charges are warranted.

The blackouts started Monday in a handful of neighborhoods in Queens. Two LaGuardia Airport terminals lost power Monday night and again on Tuesday.

Since then, hundreds of businesses have since been idle, and the city's jail complex on Rikers Island has had to operate on backup generators. Some building's elevators were not running, and traffic lights at some intersections were not working.

"This is outrageous," City Councilman Peter F. Vallone Jr. said. "When is this going to be fixed? If it's going to be days, they should tell people it is going to be days."

The blackouts were at their worst on Wednesday, when 10 of the 22 feeder cables that supply the area with power were down simultaneously. The temperature had hit 100 degrees in the neighborhood the day before.

Consolidated Edison spokesman Chris Olert said the revised number followed a block-by-block cable inspection in northwest Queens on Thursday night. It said previous estimates came from the number of customers who called to complain.

Olert said the power company was making every effort to get the situation fixed but couldn't estimate when that might happen. He said the company didn't know why things went wrong.

"Chances are fair, but not firm, that it was heat related, but right now that is just a hypothesis," he said.

Bloomberg said the utility's latest estimate was that most of the problems could be fixed by the end of the weekend.

Con Edison also said Friday that 35,000 customers in Westchester County, the suburbs just north of New York City, also lost power after Tuesday's storm. About 6,000 were still out Friday morning.

Bloomberg demanded that the utility investigate and deliver a report on the cause of the outages in Queens within two weeks.

That was little consolation for Gianni DellaPolla, 26, a baker at Gian & Piero Bakery.

"We probably lost $25,000 in business in three days," DellaPolla told the Daily News. "Everything like wedding cakes, eggs, creams, we had to throw all that out."

[Guest Close Quarterbore]

We got hit with some crazy storms here in my area earleier this week. We were without power for 20-hrs but some areas around us have been without power for 3-full days now and are still without power.

There are huge hardwood trees down everywhere... It reminds me of S. Carolina after Hurican Hugo... I wante dto get pics but I was working most of the time...

My wife hates my guts!

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

We got power back on. Not sure what time it came back but I would guess and say around 9pm. We were invited to a friends house for dinner but since we did not have power. We ended up eating out.

[Ann-Marie Senior Member Find all posts View Profile Close Ann-Marie]

bigfrank: It amazes me that Con Ed has screwed up so bad. Of course Mayor Bloomberg has not shown up. He's afraid of getting shot. Why doesn't Con Ed ask for help from LIPA? What about all the help we sent upstate? Are they still having a crisis up there, or can't they send some help down to us? We are very fortunate where we live. We almost never loose our power. I really feel for the folks involved. Hope the area hospitals are not bombarded with a baby boom 9 months from now!

[bigfrank Administrator Find all posts View Profile Close bigfrank]

So far parts of queens has been out for 5 days. I heard that they may get power back in a day or two. IMO The spoilage of food gone bad should be paid for by Con Ed with a mininum of a $300 check per account.