Day Two Post-Ike.

Prolonged power outage is BORING.

I've done some math. If I run the generator no more than four hours per day total, I run out of gas on Friday. The cat food runs out something similar. I haven't made an estimate on food, since that depends on too many variables.

Wasn't able to get the parts to repair the pipe- I got to Lowe's just in time for them to shut the door in my face. This morning I read at my local electric co-op's website that not only is there more damage than Rita overall*, but the people they buy electricity from- Entergy, who used to be Gulf States Utilities- have had major damage to their distribution network.

To make things better, three of Entergy's generation plants- including the coal plant at Lewis Creek, where most of the local co-op's power comes from- are down for various reasons. (One of the three is a nuclear plant, one is a coastal plant that got flooded to four feet, and the aforementioned coal plant was on the eastern edge of the eye wall.)

Long story short: even if all the lines here were up, intact, no problems, Entergy wouldn't have enough power to sell the co-op to power everything.

Finally, yesterday's run to Livingston was an eye-opener. Structural damage wasn't as bad overall as Rita, but electrical damage was far worse in Livingston (which was closer to the eye) than out here in the woods. Polk County Emergency Management says a minimum of three weeks before anything is powered up in Livingston. I take that with a grain of salt; the electric co-op predicted five weeks to recover from Rita, but we were about the last house up and running then- sixteen days after Rita landfall.

All of this information, by the way, I'm having to scrounge for myself. The local radio station was out before landfall. The local newspaper website hasn't updated since last week- and always runs a week behind on news anyway, the publishers being averse to putting anything online until the newspaper it was printed in is out of date. Houston radio and television are reporting absolutely nothing on Polk County. Lufkin... well, we can't get their television, and the Lufkin Daily News isn't covering Polk County either. Absolutely no news media at all is reporting on local conditions, for a county of close to fifty thousand people.

It's incredibly annoying- almost annoying enough for me to shut WLP down for good and go back into journalism and try to get some competing news outlet up and running...

Day Two Post-Ike.

Prolonged power outage is BORING.

I've done some math. If I run the generator no more than four hours per day total, I run out of gas on Friday. The cat food runs out something similar. I haven't made an estimate on food, since that depends on too many variables.

Wasn't able to get the parts to repair the pipe- I got to Lowe's just in time for them to shut the door in my face. This morning I read at my local electric co-op's website that not only is there more damage than Rita overall*, but the people they buy electricity from- Entergy, who used to be Gulf States Utilities- have had major damage to their distribution network.

To make things better, three of Entergy's generation plants- including the coal plant at Lewis Creek, where most of the local co-op's power comes from- are down for various reasons. (One of the three is a nuclear plant, one is a coastal plant that got flooded to four feet, and the aforementioned coal plant was on the eastern edge of the eye wall.)

Long story short: even if all the lines here were up, intact, no problems, Entergy wouldn't have enough power to sell the co-op to power everything.

Finally, yesterday's run to Livingston was an eye-opener. Structural damage wasn't as bad overall as Rita, but electrical damage was far worse in Livingston (which was closer to the eye) than out here in the woods. Polk County Emergency Management says a minimum of three weeks before anything is powered up in Livingston. I take that with a grain of salt; the electric co-op predicted five weeks to recover from Rita, but we were about the last house up and running then- sixteen days after Rita landfall.

All of this information, by the way, I'm having to scrounge for myself. The local radio station was out before landfall. The local newspaper website hasn't updated since last week- and always runs a week behind on news anyway, the publishers being averse to putting anything online until the newspaper it was printed in is out of date. Houston radio and television are reporting absolutely nothing on Polk County. Lufkin... well, we can't get their television, and the Lufkin Daily News isn't covering Polk County either. Absolutely no news media at all is reporting on local conditions, for a county of close to fifty thousand people.

It's incredibly annoying- almost annoying enough for me to shut WLP down for good and go back into journalism and try to get some competing news outlet up and running...