Category: Current Events

I’m doing my best to avoid labor today, engaging in activities such as napping, reading, and trying not to think too hard. Dave Kopel commemorates Labor Day with a more serious post:

One part of that debt is the essential role that labor leaders such as Walter Reuther and Lane Kirkland played in providing bipartisan support for resistance to the evil Soviet empire, an empire whose ultimate objective was to reduce all the workers of the world to slavery.

I once had a European born coworker comment to me that one oddity of the American labor movement is that remained, for the most part, pretty thoroughly anti-communist when compared to their European counterparts, who’s labor movement was pretty inexorably woven with Marxist and communist ideas, many having ties to the Soviet Union. That’s reflected in the fact that we celebrate Labor Day today, instead of May 1st, as its celebrated in much of the rest of the world.

As long as you can suck air in, and blow exhaust out, you can run a diesel engine completely submerged in most cases. The New Jersey National Guard apparently tried to take advantage of this capability, without quite enough common sense on driving through flood water:

If you follow the video through to the end, you’ll see where Chris Christie gets it from. Not too smart, I have to say. But I’ll give them credit for trying.

Hat Tip to WizardPC, who notes that there’s no “S” in HMMWV. Though, I would note those don’t look like hum-vees to me. Still, it’s good that the equipment will still allow our troops to do something that could be necessary at some point, but probably not wise in most conditions.

Looks like Irene really hit Vermont hard with the flooding:

Now if that were a river, it would just be kind of bad. Except apparently that roaring rapids is normally a street. Governor Christie is being asked by reporters whether he regrets the evacuation, because the New Jersey shore apparently fared pretty well, and it wasn’t bad at all. The real story of Irene is the inland flooding. The Delaware River has yet to crest (it crested earlier this afternoon, but when I wrote this this morning, it hadn’t yet). They are still evacuating people up in New Hope. Pennsylvania had the second highest number of fatalities of any state (now no longer the case, NY, NC, NJ at 6, PA at 5. 4th deadliest storm since 1980.), pretty much exclusively related to falling trees and water.

Wind wise, I’ve seen Nor’easters that blew a lot harder than Irene, but they tend to come in Winter when the ground is frozen. The problem with this area getting any kind of tropical cyclone is are houses aren’t designed to handle it (basements and a lot of water are not a great combination), and we don’t have the natural selection for well rooted trees that people on the southern coastal regions do.

I will say one thing, this is the last house I ever buy with a finished basement. Growing up as a kid, we had a wet basement, and when it got wet, it was no big deal. When you have carpet, bookcases, washer and dryer, and computers and furniture in your basement, that’s a different story.

UPDATE: Mike W. knows someone personally, who is among the dead in Delaware. In retrospect we were very lucky, compared to some of the flood victims, even in my immediate neighborhood. I can walk to houses that were inundated.

Cigar maker Edgar M. Cullman, dead at age 93. Remember kids, smoking is a sure path to an early grave.

I kid, I kid. The data is pretty incontrovertible that smoking is bad for you. But genetics, I think, is a greater determining factor. There are plenty of people who live the clean life that die young, and plenty to do everything wrong, and live to a ripe old age. In fact, studies on centenarians have shown that genetics probably plays more of a factor than lifestyle choices.

A few things on my “to purchase” list as soon as I find employment:

• ETQ TG32P12 4,000 Watt 7 HP 207cc 4-Cycle OHV Gas Powered Portable Generator. This is the third time I’ve find myself thinking “I really wish I had a generator right about now.” Time to get one.
• BWSP The Basement Watchdog Battery Backup Pump This has close to the pumping capacity of my main pump. This should be able to keep the basement dry, even if we lose power for a while.
• EarthAid Multipurpose Sandbags with Tie, 26-inch x 14-inch, 50 Pound Capacity (Yellow, Pack of 10). Found myself really wanting these during the night in order to channel water from the house. The grade of the neighborhood runs down to a small creek next door, so I take the neighbor’s water, and then pass it on. I had to use bricks last night to channel the water coming from his property to my back yard. It worked, but not as well as sandbags would have.
• Etón FR160B Microlink Self-Powered AM/FM/NOAA Weather Radio with Flashlight, Solar Power and Cell Phone Charger (Black). We’re Internet people, but we were using Bitter’s phone to listen to local radio. I realized we do not have a functioning radio in the house, except in the car. Need to change that. The radio was oddly comforting.
• Remington RM1415A 14-Inch 8 amp Electric Chain Saw. Several limbs were brought down off my trees. The ones in my yard are small. The ones that fell in the neighbors yard are pretty big. The neighborly thing to do would be to help them clean it up, but I have nothing with which to help.

Wyatt got it worse than we did with his basement, and to top it all off had to go to work today. I hope all you New Jersey folks are doing well. They are the ones who got the hurricane force winds. Gusts are dying down around here, as the storm heads off. I am greatly relieved at that, since I am close to losing another large tree limb.

Irene is moving on to bigger and better things, but we’re getting pretty severe wind gusts on the back side of the storm. Power could still go out, but since the rain has moved on,  any power outage now the backup pump will handle just fine. But if we do lose power, the blog will be offline for some time, as they have so many customers out, they say it’ll be days before we get power restored. On the bright side, I could use my big old marine deep cycle battery to buy some extra time for the blog and Internets.

All I have to say is that people who live in Florida must be nuts. This was the first hurricane to strike the Jersey Shore in my lifetime, it was a category one, and I’m 50 miles inland. One of those for one lifetime is quite enough. I have never seen that much water in my life, and the records they are reporting for flooding back up that assertion. I literally had water shooting out of my basement walls. The local creek apparently is cresting 17 19 feet over flood stage.

We came out of this very very lucky, as we did not lose the power necessary to keep the basement dry. I hope I never again have to rush to clear out my basement while I watch the neighborhood excrement rise higher and higher in my utility sink, watch the water level in my sump pit rise as the intake overwhelms pump capacity, all the while worrying about a power outage forcing us to the backup pump, which would have no prayer of keeping up.

Now we have to put everything back in a dry basement, which will probably take 3x longer to accomplish than moving everything out did. But I’m grateful for that. We were quite close to a massive catastrophe insurance wouldn’t have covered, but were were spared. Thoughts and prayers go out to those who did not weather the storm as well as we have so far.

UPDATE from Bitter: Apparently, they are evacuating about a 3/4 of a mile from us due to the creek today. Fortunately, that distance is uphill so it’s no threat to us. The crest should happen in about an hour and then start to recede.

UPDATE from Bitter: About 2 hours later, and the local creek crested at 19.5 feet above flood stage and is now receding. There’s an apartment complex nearby that was evacuated in the last couple of hours due to sewage leaks & possible gas leaks. I admit, most of our neighbors appeared to have gone to bed last night based on how few had lights turned on when we looked out windows. I wonder how many are cleaning up sewage in their homes if they weren’t on top of the flooding.

It’s not just the gusty winds we have to deal with as they risk taking down more branches or finally doing in some trees in saturated soil. No, my mom sent us a link as we woke up today with a different kind of after storm risk. Some ass with a gun running around shooting people.

Fortunately, it’s not in our town even though it’s our county. But the guy has been up and down the county, so it’s not exactly a comfort. However, we’re not venturing out due to the previously mentioned gusts that still make the trees a risk and because the basement had to be emptied in advance of near flooding last night, our living room is stocked with guns.

Took a nap for a bit, then went outside to check on the waterworks. Still doing fine. Except the wind is howling now, and we’re now at the point where I wouldn’t need a forecast to know what’s coming. We’re still predicted to get tropical storm force winds, and they are starting now, but Irene is still battering Norfolk. It doesn’t get better from here, which is the scary part.

Obviously power is still on. When the blog disappears, then you’ll know that isn’t the case, as we only have an hour of battery for the blog, and we have nothing if the fiber gets taken out. I’ll keep updating this post as long as there’s power to let everyone know how the “Storm of the Century!” is proceeding. In the mean time, apparently New Yorkers have been taking all the lessons we’ve learned about safe sex, and thinking they apply to hurricanes. Sadly, I’ve seen other sources of this behavior as well. Just remember, these are the folks who think they are fit to rule the country. My other sources in NYC inform me that the yippies there are busy madly stocking up on organic perishable goods, and I wish I wasn’t kidding about that.

UPDATE: 10:45PM Saturday. Tornado warning issued. Specifically for the few towns around us. Warning typically means there’s one on the ground. Fun. Power has been hiccuping a bit.

UPDATE: Moving everything out of the basement. The water coming in is now over the backup pump’s capacity, and nearly over the primary pump’s capacity. The blog server is in the basement along with all the internet stuff. We’re essentially power loss away form having to shut down, UPS or no.

UPDATE: Sewer is now backing up into the house. Still in the sink, but rising. We’re in a lot of trouble here.

UPDATE: Sewer level going down, but there’s more to come. I have been moving everything out of the basement that I can. We were out for a bit because I was moving things around. We have not lost power, and the basement is not yet flooding. We’re in a lull right now, but I am quite scared about losing the home appliances that are down there, and I can’t easily move right now. If the basement starts flooding, I will need to switch off the breakers down there. It should not reach as high as the breaker box, but I’m not taking a lot of chances.

UPDATE: I feel like a fool for making fun of the storm of the century stuff. This is a big deal. When I have to move everything out of by basement because the neighborhood sewer system is overwhelmed by storm intrusion into the system, it’s friggin bad.

UPDATE from Bitter: I have discovered that an adage is not true – you really can have too many guns. At least it seems that way when you have to empty the gun safe very, very quickly when you think your finished basement is about to fill with sewage backup.

UPDATE from Bitter: Sebastian is busy with improvised sandbags & building walls to keep diverting water away from the house. I’m listening to the news and keeping up with the radar. We’re entering a new phase of tornado warnings, but not in our neighborhood yet (again).

A building in North Philly collapsed about an hour and a half ago with people trapped inside. We don’t have anything that severe in our area, but apparently there’s a massive branch in our neighbor’s yard that will take a chainsaw to cut up.

Also, the tv anchors we are listening to on the radio are dumb. I’m listening to them discuss how it doesn’t make any sense that Canada could be facing a tropical storm. It’s a good thing I don’t have a baseball bat to take to my phone which is currently acting as our radio. There’s no excuse for that kind of stupid banter when there are serious issues like flooding.

UPDATE 3:01AM: – Irene is soon going to pass closest to us. Knock on wood, we still have power, but the wind is getting more serious. The gusts sound like a freight train, so I can’t imagine what it’s like for the people near the Jersey shore. I have added some new features to my water works to divert more water around the house. Ultimately, I have a grading problem I need to fix. To top it off the roof is leaking, but that’s actually the least of my concern right now.

UPDATE: The Weather Channel iPad app has been indispensable in letting us know about tornado warnings. I highly recommend.

UPDATE 5:55AM: Water has been manageable since the initial rain bands almost overwhelmed my pump capacity. I literally had water coming out of my basement walls. We have a drain system, but it’s still disconcerting. I have been watching the barometer like a hawk. She’s still not passed yet, and is still coming on. But now with more wind than rain. I hope this continues. I can sustain a power outage as long as the rain isn’t more than my DC backup pump can handle. I haven’t tapped the marine battery yet, and it’s been a miracle we have not lost power. There are a quarter million people without power right now. So far, we are actually very lucky.

UPDATE 6:48AM: Pumps have been able to hold pretty well for the past several hours. The basement is still dry. The neighborhood shit seems to be flowing downhill once again, and not into my basement. Thinking about getting some sleep. I could really use some. Overall, I think we have been very lucky so far. I pray for the poor souls who are not so lucky.

UPDATE 12:15PM: Slept for a bit. The rain has pretty much moved on, but we’re still dealing with heavy wind gusts. But we were very lucky in all this. Hardly any water is coming into the basement at this point, so if the wind knocks power out, we’ll be OK, but the blog will be down for a while.