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Be Prepared!


Tampa Turtle

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My husband teased me this morning about the oncomming hurricane. When I took Woodbadge, my first weekend was during the tail end of a hurricane, nothing to rip the tents off of our heads, but hot & steamy that you got drenched in even in a raincoat.. And the tent flaps opened & my sleeping bag (with about 5-10 other peoples needed staff to take to a dryer for us.

 

This year I am on staff for the first time, luckily it is not a woodbadge weekend, just the staff weekend.. But here we are with a hurricane coming again.. Hopefully this can brew now, and let us have good weather during the true Woodbadge weekends.

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I just fired off an e-mail to our troop about that.

 

We caught the quake pretty good in Baltimore. Our 100 year old office building rumbled hard, stopped and rumbled again. Everyone was just looking at each other. By the second shock, small chunks of concrete were dropping and I dove for the door, then remembered my training, came back and yelled to get out of the building. I tripped the fire alarm and nothing happened. I did a quick walk through then left.

 

I'm a little upset that the alarm didn't sound and let the office manager know that 1. I tripped it and 2. it failed to work.

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That's right, Scoutfish. Play it safe and spend the weekend with us, at least get to higher elevation. During Hugo, we had friends from Charleston stay for weeks while they tried to clean up and recover. Their house was damaged but at least the family was safe. When Andrew hit, we had friends from Florida.

 

The wind is deadly but the storm surge may be more damaging. During Hugo, we had a coastal laboratory that was practically untouched by the wind but the surge lifted and moved the entire 2000-4000 sq ft building off its foundation and left it crumbling off to the side. All of the equipment was ruined, $$$millions. But untouched by the wind.

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Irene has an almost identical path as Floyd did in '99 and I remember it. Dennis and Floyd did a number in Eastern NC. There were two huge trees, 100+ years old, that fell and cut off my block for about 2-3 days. One of those trees was so huge, it not only blocked the stree, but damaged 2 houses it fell on.

 

There is already a run on batteries and other supplies in my neck of the woods.(This message has been edited by eagle92)

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I hope Irene misses the east coast, I remember visiting the Battery in Charleston and seeing the high water marks on some of the facing historic houses. Brookgreen Gardens got a lot of damage inland as well.

 

I am sure that feeling an east coast earthquake was a bit of a shock. Grew up in the San Francisco area and never liked 'em. You can prepare for a Hurricane but if you are standing in the wrong place in a earthquake it is just bad luck.

 

Good job on (trying) to pull the fire alarm. Good idea.

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Thanks Tampa,

 

I was commended by a couple co-workers today for my actions in getting the building evacuated. I'm also going to be asked to be on the emergency prep team because the plan really didn't work in a real evac. Better yet, my scouts are almost all first year. They all earned First Aid MB last week. Two brothers were swimming at a friend's house when the quake hit. Their friend's mom sustained a minor cut and one of my scouts whipped out his personal first aid kit and bandaged her up.

 

Yep, I'm just a little proud.

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On my website, I have the following web page:

 

http://www.w0is.com/outdoor/Coffee.html

 

This is a someone tongue-in-cheek description of how to make coffee without electricity. I wrote this after encountering many people who insisted on camping only in electrical sites, because they assumed that it was impossible to make coffee without the use of electricity.

 

On that page, it mentions the fact that you can light your gas stove with a match, even if the power is out.

 

Over the last couple of days, I've gotten hundreds of hits. Most of the people got there from Google, and most of their searches were along the lines of "can I use my gas stove if the power is out."

 

I moved that vital information to the top of the page, but I'm still amazed that people didn't figure it out on their own. I guess they weren't scouts. :)

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Clemlaw...that was you! LOL

 

I saw that page a while ago. I liked it. When my boys were starting out in Cubs and we started buying our camping and cooking gear my rationalization to my wife was that it will double as hurricane gear.

 

Also whenever we have a Hurricane threat (we lose power real easy around here in just a tropical storm) I always brew up a couple of thermos of coffee before I go to sleep. If I have to face the end of the world in the morning I want to face the ruins of Tampa with at least some Cuban espresso in my hand.

 

One sunday our power was out for some time. This is the morning my wife always makes a big breakfast (bacon, pancakes, etc) before church. She turns to me and the boys and says "your the scouts, go out in the driveway and cook it".

 

 

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At a previous job where we architectural work we lost power for a week and the younger guys panicked because the computers with CAD where down. I said "drag the drafting table by the window, and break out the T-square and the pens we are going old-school".

 

I was the last class in middle school to have to use Log tables instead of calculators and the last class in architecture school to take manual drafting and CAD instead of just CAD. I like to to be able to do both...

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