Hurricane IKE leftovers!

One of the many trees that have fallen on to homes and cars in the last 24 hours. We have had a few deaths in the area due to falling trees. We got the leftovers of IKE yesterday about 2:00 in the afternoon. We lost our power, along with over a million others in the tri-state area. The news stations are calling it the Tri-State Blackout. Duke Energy reported that it could be this weekend before everyone has power restored. We were one of the lucky neighborhoods this time (last time, it was 2 1/2 days) and won the power lottery, only being without power for 9 hours. If you were watching the Bangles game yesterday, you would have seen the wind coming through the ballpark. Winds got up to about 75 mph, downing LOTS of trees and power lines. Schools were all cancelled in the area. We had some friends come over for dinner and to use our showers before they returned home to the dark. This is what it looks like right now for Duke Energy: County ** Total Customer Outages since 9/14/2008 10:41:18 AM------------Current Customers Out Totals 1,111,844------------------------591,124 Boone 29,271-----------------------------14,998 Brown 8,372-------------------------------2,718 Butler 176,721--------------------------105,970 Campbell 42,216--------------------------31,547 Clermont 119,816-------------------------55,222 Clinton 1,556-------------------------------965 Grant 1,625----------------------------------96 Hamilton 549,006------------------------289,143 Kenton 103,153---------------------------36,281 Montgomery 13--------------------------------13 Warren 69,338----------------------------45,518 * County not associated 10,757------------8,653 We are in Clermont county, and the kids will have school tomorrow. Oh well. Gas jumped up to $3.99 a gallon in a hurry. Since you need power for the gas pumps, and a lot of gas stations are without power, the lines for gas are CRAZY. I was pretty lucky when I got gas today, finding a pump right away when there were lines 4 deep. I'm glad we are prepared for such emergencies with flashlights, batteries, and fun games on hand. Scott has had a headcold for the last few days and stayed home to work today. He was happy because they are running off a generator at work where they have no air conditioning and you need a flashlight to use the facilities. Anyway, I'm glad we are all safe, that we have power, that we were able to help out some friends, that the kids will have school tomorrow, and that Scott is feeling much better. Here are some photos I got off the internet from IKE in the tri-state area: One of the many fires caused by Ike in the Cincinnati area. If you look close you can see the power lines in the distance. CRAZY! Check out the power lines -a very common sight for the next week.