Bama Hurricane Report
Steven Taylor reports that the utilities are still on at his home near Montgomery, although he appears to be an exception.
My folks are doing fine in Jacksonville (near Anniston), despite being under both flash flood and tornado watches and a tornado that killed four people elsewhere in Calhoun County. The Anniston Star and Jacksonville News websites are down at the moment, too.
Update (9/17 1208): Steven’s power went out and has deprived him of the ability to blog and, more urgently, the capability to brew coffee. He had to make an emergency Panera Bread run to take care of the latter.
Heard from my in-laws NE of Columbiana. They have no power and lost a couple of trees, but are fine otherwise. Apparently, a majority of Alabama Power customers have no power.
Memo to self: Restock earthquake kit, change batteries in flashlights.
All’s quiet here in Birmingham. Lost power only momentarily this morning – yet another advantage of living mere blocks from UAB hospital.
I live in Mobile, a few miles west of the bay. We have spent the past two days as chainsaw warriors, taking down the shattered trees in my yard and my neighbor’s yard. We had huge branches fly off our pecan trees and a large two trunked cedar was split down the middle, like a wishbone, leaving one half of the tree blocking the road. We’ve been eating out of coolers and are still without electricity. Thank God for a gas stove and my camp coffee perculator. My pal (whose computer I’m sitting at now) has electricity as of this afternoon, as does my father in far west Mobile. So I have hopes that I’ll be back to normal tomorrow. The crews are working day and night. One of my neighbors owns a restaurant and the officials told him it could be as late as the 29th before power is restored there. I think they are exaggerating this date, however.
One VERY cool thing about the power outage is, my son, my husband and I, seeing the milky way for the first time in our own backyard. After our hard day work yesterday, we sacked out in our lounge chairs, drank our favorite ice cold tasty beverage and star gazed. TODAY, we joined a friend for steak and A/C! But if the A/C doesn’t come back on tomorrow, it will be okay. The boy, the old man and I have actually been enjoying each other’s company and work around the yard.
Life is good on the west side of the bay. I finally got to see the footage and pictures from the east side. They was some very serious damage on the Eastern Shore and down Gulf Shores through Florida.
Booooy we were lucky! And I guess, we still are.
CBK