<p>I have a coworker that lives in a community like that. He has trees and branches down quite frequently and he always loses power in a significant storm and he’s one of the last to get service restored because he’s fairly isolated. I ask him why he doesn’t get a generator and he just prefers to get a hotel room or two for his family when the power goes out. What may be a 1-3 day outage for us may be a week for him. We’ve had outages over the years due to ice storms and temperatures can get into the teens with those so you definitely want some kind of heat when that happens.</p>
<p>A community may be wealthy but it still might not want to bury everything. Do they already have underground cable?</p>
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<p>Always nice to know someone in the refining business. This storm is a reminder of how critical gasoline is to modern life.</p>
<p>Here’s irony…My beach house had power restored on Saturday at 6:30pm, but looking at Friday here in north Jersey. In this storm, JCP&L gets higher marks than PSE&G.</p>
<p>Our area in Fairfield County CT has so much ledge that putting lines underground would require an unthinkable amount of blasting. I just don’t see it happening. OTOH, our house has an underground line from the street to the house. When the street gets power back (last night BTW), we’re back.</p>
<p>You know my son doesn’t even tell people where he works. I tell him he should ask them if they drive cars, ride busses, purchase merchandise from companies that use trucks to move their products, fly in an airplane, etc. It is times like this that people realize how very dependent we are on oil. Yes, work towards alternatives and energy independence, but we need the oil companies until we do.</p>
<p>I’ve wondered why they don’t put lines partially underground but with some kind of low cairn at the surface. I would think it would be a lot cheaper.</p>
<p>Mattmoosemom, my father was a chemical engineer, and back in the Vietnam War era he worked on designing/building a plant in NJ that made tear gas. </p>
<p>I am wondering if someone can give me some advice. My D needs to go to NYC this weekend and she has been offered a ride to Poughkeepsie where she can apparently take the train into the city. Since I am not familiar withthe area I have tried to find out if the trains are running and one site says yes they and another said very scarcely. Would one of you be able to let me know if they are or not. It is not our choice or hers to go this weekend but it is College related. My heart goes out to all of you dealing with this tragedy either personally or for family and friends. This is when I think a lot of people forget that those firefighters, police officers and rescue workers cannot be home to comfort their own families because they are out helping others. I cannot fathom the fear, anger, frustration that some must be feeling, it makes my worrying about shoveling 6 -10 feet of snow seem very trivial.</p>
<p>A Central Maine Power spokesperson said that it’s INCREDIBLY expensive to put lines underground. There’s no way they could raise rates enough to cover the cost, even considering what they spend on storm damage.</p>
<p>Percussiondad, Manhattan is fine and I think your daughter would do very well to come in that way. Just keep an eye on train schedules, but they’re running now and will surely be better by the weekend. PM me on Friday if you would like a later update. FWIW, I would have my daughter take the ride to Poughkeepsie and the train into the city.</p>
Glad to help! The only caveat being that things could change if the new storm is much worse than expected. I still don’t think that will be the case, though.</p>
<p>Here in NJ we are often without power but no tree damage. Many, many roads closed. Traffic lights out. Power lines on the ground, in the street or about to fall. Not a disaster zone at all. But noticing fraying nerves when I go out. Some crazy driving. The gas issue seems to be driving some people a little cuckoo. It’s getting cold, too. That makes it harder.</p>
<p>Mattmoosemom, he worked for a chemical engineering firm, so luckily the tear gas plant was only a passing phase. Most of the time he worked with plastics.</p>
<p>Although there was the period when his firm was working on a plant in Beersheba, in Israel, and they received bomb threats at their office in CT. They actually set up a dummy company with a fake office in Manhattan for him. (He was, IIRC, the project manager. )</p>
<p>Who knew that chemical engineering could be so exciting. :)</p>
<p>cartera45–actually, if they are replacing them anyway, putting them underground isn’t that much more expensive. It’s well worth the cost given the frequency of power outages on the east coast.</p>
<p>The power companies added a lot of redundancy to the grid in my area after Snowtober. New poles, pole supports, etc. - everything was above-ground. They would have to dig a lot of things up to put lines underground and I think that has to be far more expensive than telephone poles or they would have done it.</p>
<p>Oil companies provide a lot of dividends for pension fund in addition to powering our mobile economy.</p>
<p>The cost to put them underground is anywhere from 5 times to 10 times more expensive, depending on how old the neighborhood is and how dense the population is.</p>
<p>Polarscribe–you obviously don’t understand Rand or listened to her fully–her philosophy comes full circle–the ultimate selfish goal is that you HAVE to help others in need (so charity exists at it’s best) because it is in your own self interest-- so it comes from you but not because someone told you to do so. But this isn’t an Ayn Rand discussion.</p>
<p>I’ve been through a hurricane which devastated our area a few years ago. The actual area involved wasn’t that large–you could drive an hour back to civilization. Homes and businesses were destroyed and we spent 2 long weeks minus electricity. It’s taken YEARS for the city to recover fully from that storm and we weren’t that big. Not many fatalities attributed to the storm–maybe 2. But the stress killed a lot of older people–you could tell from the number of obits that appeared over the next few weeks (our business kept close tabs on our elderly clients). The psychological effect is that of moving into survival mode–what to eat, shelter, what priorities exist, transport. Your brain blanks out and you feel alone even though you have services being provided to you. Our community was very close then–everyone helped each other no matter what. The amount of charity was gratifying.
The sheer amount of garbage was awful–there was a 2 story mountain next to my husbands office which had to be removed because with the next storm moving in it posed another real physical threat. Garbage piled on the street for pick-up was a driving hazard if the wind was blowing. The war zone look of our small town was overwhelming. The local landfill was overflowing. With electric out, no traffic lights. Road hazards–trees, lines down, garbage–an obstacle course. By two weeks, people didn’t stop when the traffic lights DID work–we were used to just looking and going.
The line of telephone trucks that moved in from other states formed a two mile line on our road. The number of hucksters that showed up was equally amazing–roofers, tree people, contractors…you name it. An interesting time. And now it’s multiplied by such a huge area that I can hardly imagine. I know the media will be on to the next thing and people want to be upbeat (you HAVE to) but it will be YEARS, not months for recovery.
On a good note–we’re better than we were before.</p>
<p>Started back at one of the two colleges I teach at today. Never was so happy to see them all, and they in turn were so happy to be back at school! I worried about them in the past week–sent emails, but most coudn’t answer.</p>
<p>My students live all over the state, so each had different stories and experiences. One is totally flooded out; several have long commutes so nightmare gas line worries, quite a few still in the dark. They’re all concerned about getting their work done (this is a writing and research class, so power is important.) One who couldn’t make it in (no heat, no gas, etc) emailed to say she was working on her paper at Starbucks.</p>
<p>Overall, I was very proud of them–and I assured them that I’ll be flexible enough to make sure everyone can get through. My mantra to them has been “Do what you can, when you can.”</p>
Most of the time he worked with plastics.</p>