I suppose if you lived somewhere it froze at night and you had no heater at all this could be fatal if you didn't have money to go to a hotel or a relative or friend to stay with. However, we decided to stay in the house because I bought a generator at the beginning of the power outage a week or so ago already. So, I had power for keeping over 1000 dollars in food alive. I heard many horror stories of people losing 1000 dollars of food or more from friends and neighbors locally because they didn't have a generator and didn't feel competent likely or were too old to manage something like that. So, Thousands to millions of dollars in food were lost between Marin County and Big Sur last Tuesday when power went out for around 150,000 households and businesses. I started to think about just how many supermarkets lost millions of dollars of food unless they brought in refrigerator trucks with a diesel or gasoline powered refrigeration unit as well. At one point I had to drive 10 miles to get gasoline for my generator because that is how big the power outage was a week ago. The latest one didn't shut down every stop light for 10 miles like the last one did. And then the freeway recently was backed up 10 to 20 miles from a live power line that fell onto the freeway backing up traffic seemingly without end.
So, there has been a lot of hardship but for most people not as bad as those in Pajaro which flooded badly which is populated mostly by Farm workers mostly from Mexico on a work visa likely or with a long term green card. They had to live in their cars basically through the rains and storms and are pretty upset that many of their homes have been condemned because of the flooding. But, I think the state Government is giving each of them $600 which maybe will help a little in keep them alive and well.
So, though we chose to freeze rather than pay for a hotel for the last week many people just got a hotel or went to visit friends in another area during these times. But, finally Thursday I realized I was getting hypothermia from being 75 and in a house that was 58 degrees all the time. So, I got a hotel room so I could take a hot shower and turned the heater up to 77 degrees to try to thaw out. Then the next day I was raring to go and went out and bought 4 boxes of firewood and moved several plastic bins that have covers to shield them from the rain and put them outside to fill with firewood if the power outage continued anymore. However, we did run our Yamaha 2200 gasoline powered generator from Tuesday through Friday until 4 pm to keep our refrigerator and Wifi and Tivo and flat screened TV working and a few lights. So, there was at least one light one for safety 24 hours a day in the kitchen and the refrigerator was working 24 hours a day too.
No comments:
Post a Comment