What do you do?

[heidi]

When you look out the window and minutes go by without a car passing, on one of the more perpetually busy city streets in the US?

When they say schools may be closed for two weeks and they may cancel winter break because of it and private school for the rest of the year sounds reasonable as they're opening tomorrow, or perhaps teaming up with five or six other families and getting two tutors for a few hours each day, so they don't forget everything, would work just as well?

When they can't promise that the cellphones will keep working as the generators may run out of juice?

When the port is still closed because there is no electricity and the boats are just sitting offshore, where I can see them, and can't come in to unload?

When on the surface so many things are normal, and so many things are upside down, and underneath, everything, even the seemingly normal things, have been beset by hobgoblins?

Comments

[leiabelle.livejournal.com]

Seriously, have you looked at any of the pictures of the aftermath of hurricanes? Trees downed, streets flooded, debris everywhere? Yeah, that sounds lovely to walk in. Not to mention perfectly safe.

Also, do you really expect the post office to be running properly when there's either no gas or no power to pump gas if there is any? Especially given that many roads are probably undrivable due to aforementioned trees/debris/flooding.

I suppose I don't have the right to be sensitive about this, since the hurricanes this year haven't directly affected my area, However, you seem to be treating the situation in South Florida as a temporary inconvenience, when it is clearly much more permanant and serious. Advice like "use letters" comes across (at least to me) as very flip and dismissive and just plain unsympathetic.

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

She's not in the states, so I would assume that she hasn't seen all the images that are coming out from Broward and west dade with the downed plants and the construction and the streetlights. It is, to a large extent, temporary and we all know it - there was so little structural damage to buildings, which is, I think, a reason why we're all so floored about the incredible damage they're saying occured with the electrical infrastructure - we can, yes, see the poles down, but how can it be that it will take a month to fix that, especially when the keys have mostly been re-connected? But it's hard to think, really, how to work around the limitations we have, both from the landscape itself, and from the orders the government has placed on us in terms of gas lines and curfews.

[elseinane.livejournal.com]

They also said it would be 9 months to pump out New Orleans ( and that was before Rita) ... they did it in less than 9 weeks.

They say longer so that when you get them back sooner - everyone is happy.

[boniblithe.livejournal.com]

They say longer so that when you get them back sooner - everyone is happy.

Just like Mr. Scott always did in Star Trek *g*

Hang in there Heidi.

[stephandra.livejournal.com]

I think the power situation may have to do with the sheer amount of electrical workers traipsing across the entirity of the Louisiana coast and part of Texas. I know lots of Miami isn't Entergy, but a lot of people from all sorts of places were sent to help in Lake Charles and New Orleans.

I am sure y'all won't be without power that long. The month seems more like cover your ass to me. I hope things normalize for y'all soon.

Hurricanes really suck.

[tealin.livejournal.com]

the incredible damage they're saying occured with the electrical infrastructure

This is the part I have the hardest time understanding. Why is the infrastructure above ground?? Hurricanes aren't exactly new to the area, and the cost of rebuilding the wire system year after year has to be exorbitant. Why hasn't the state/county/city mandated buried lines?

[heidi8.livejournal.com]

We don't have much of a space below ground - we're about 3 feed up from sea level. And electricals need to go deeper than, say, tv cables, because of the danger. But also, here, the substations also went down...

[alexandramuses.livejournal.com]

No, I haven't seen the pictures, and yes, I'm certainly ignorant. All I was trying to do was to give Heidi some kind of encouragement--that even if the power's down, life can still go on. I'm sorry if I seemed flippant, but I wasn't in any way intending to be so.