Reflections on Hurricane Irene - Like Camping with Comfortable Beds

My husband Jay was living in Charleston, South Carolina when Hurricane Hugo hit in 1989.  I believe I was living in City Island, New York at the time (we hadn't met yet).  Jay has experience with hurricanes, losing power, floods, downed trees, rescue operations (he was in charge of logistics and recovery at General Dynamics and led the restorations efforts after Hugo.  He was also a fire fighter during college).  I grew up as a tomboy in a rural area, rode horses and occasionally have had to "rough it" by peeing outdoors. 

Jay is one of those people who can watch the Weather Channel for hours.  If a storm is brewing, he's glued to the TV and gets excited about the possibilities.  I call him the Drama King.  I've lived in Connecticut for eleven years now.  During that time, our basement has flooded on three occasions (we now have a sump pump), but never due to a hurricane.  Every time there's a hurricane or tropical storm warning, Jay prepares the yard, securing objects that may fly into the windows, extending the gutter drain with god-awful ugly PVC pipe, filling up buckets with water, cleaning the gutters so the expected deluge of water has a place to go, checking the flashlights, filling the propane tank for the grill...you get the picture.

We've all seen the drama kings on the Weather Channel smile as they predict the impending gloom and doom from the sky, smiling because this is when their ratings go up, when they are worshiped and revered, when they are no longer the geeky kid with the barometer but the Great Wise and Powerful Meteorologists.  Then the storm comes and it's not nearly so bad as the predictions.  What's a little rain or snow in New England really?  To save face, the media will still caution people to stay off the roads, batten down the hatches, stock up on milk and bread, because it could get worse than it appears.  It's sickening, but it's television.

Call me a cynic, but every time my husband gets all nervous and the Weather Channel's ratings go up with their grandiose weather predictions, I laugh.  Wait and see, I say.  Hurricane Irene is already projected to just be a mere Tropical Storm by the time it reaches us.  It'll just be windy and rainy.  We've had wind and rain here before.  Remember the floods in March of '09 when we got 14 inches of rain?  Why are you so worked up about a possible 6 inches? 

Still, we had planned to visit our friends Jo-Ann and Chris in upstate New York that weekend.  I would've gone anyway since I was still poo-pooing the notion that Irene was a major threat, but Jay was afraid of driving back home on Sunday in the wind and rain.  My friend Jo-Ann, a fellow Maine Coon breeder, had delivered a litter of nine kittens that Friday night.  Her cat Maya, had looked big, but no one expected such a large litter.  My cat Cassie was nursing a litter of four 6-day-old kittens and had room for more.  So Jo-Ann and I rendezvoused in Springfield on Saturday morning to beat the storm and I took three of her kittens to foster.  Her cat Maya was nervous and seemed to be overwhelmed by the large number of mouths to feed.  Cassie readily accepted her new babies. 

Cassie and Her Brood

The storm came during Saturday night while we slept.  In the morning it continued and the power went off at 5 am.  Big deal.  We've lost power before, but never for more than a few hours.  It'll be back.  I took a picture of our fallen 10-foot sunflowers, our big tragedy of Irene.  After a while, I realized the real tragedy of a loss of power when a household lives on well water.  Electricity is needed to power the pump which brings us water.  No running water, no flushing toilets.  My cell phone indicated that the winds in our area were gusting at 45 mph.  Not that big a deal really, but several trees fell on power lines and across roads. 

Sunflower Tragedy After Irene

We were lucky.  Debris in the yard, toppled sunflowers, but no flooding in our area.  The inconvenience of living without power or running water began to wear on me pretty soon though and I had to admit that for once my dramatic husband was right.  I was not a happy camper and this was like camping but with comfortable beds.  Sixteen-year-old daughter Kelsey had a hard time accepting that it could be days before she'd have the Internet back and another week before she could start school (Kelsey loves school).  Everyday we drove past the three large trees which were still leaning on the power lines down our road, the anger toward Connecticut Light and Power grew.  Most of our community was without power and suffering the same inconvenience and resentment.  We were promised that we'd have power back by Saturday, six days after joining the dark side, but we hoped for action sooner. 

So we learned to flush the toilets when necessary with buckets of water from our full bathtub.  We texted more to preserve our cell phone batteries.  We learned to keep a flashlight nearby at night and take advantage of daylight hours.  I drove to four different places in search of ice for the coolers then stockpiled ten bags for fear of not being able to find ice again.  Most of the ice melted before we could use it.  Finding D batteries in the toy department at Target was a major accomplishment. We visited Jay's niece and her 6-month-old baby girl, Rori, at their home in New London where they still had power.  We used her shower and dishwasher, grateful for cleanliness every other day.  Jay started taking showers at work.  We used the dogs' large water jug to bring water home from New London.  We learned that boiling water on the grill and trying to wash dishes was more effort than it was worth.  Jay learned that puncturing a Keuring cup and straining it for a cup of coffee could be a little crunchy.  We bought a new game to play by candlelight, "Hedbanz".  Kelsey, who normally spends most of her time in her room on her laptop pretending to be annoyed with all things parental, learned to come in our room after family game time and keep us up late with conversation and flatulent humor.

Kelsey with Baby Rori

Our neighbor ran a generator which came to symbolize our suffering.  We did not have a generator and therefore lost most of our food even with our iced coolers.  We rationalized that even if we could find a generator to purchase, the cost of buying something that we'd only use once every ten years or so wasn't worth it.  Most generator owners run them for a few select hours to keep the food preserved, take a shower or have light at night.  Our neighbor ran his generator constantly.  Non-stop.  At first it hummed.  Our houses are far enough away from one another that when the trees are in full foliage, we can't see each other.  We can't hear each other either, but can hear loud noises like a barking dog.  It's normally very quiet and secluded at our house nestled in the woods.  Every day, I'd drive around to the nearby towns with power, charging my phone, in search of batteries, ice or some other survival tool and hope to come home to a house with all the lights on.  Instead, as I pulled up to our house and opened my car door, I heard the roar of the neighbor's generator indicating that we were still doing without.  I curse you generator.

Fortunately, the weather was perfect.  Not too hot, not too cold, no humidity, no rain.  Temperatures were in the high 70's during the day, mid-60's at night.  With our windows open, it was good sleeping weather.  That is, it would have been if it weren't for the incessant throttle of the generator pounding in our ears.  That damn generator teased us, "Nyah nyah!  We have power and you don't!  We can flush our toilets and and take showers and you can't!  We don't have bags of ice melting all over our freezer and you do!"  By Day Five, the noise was deafening. 

My Nemesis

In between all this, I was bottle-feeding newborn kittens four times a day, weighing them twice daily by flashlight, mixing up Kitten Milk Replacer with bottled water and trying to clean the bottles the best I could.  Cassie's milk supply took a few days to catch up with the demand of three additional kittens and the newborns weren't gaining well.  Two of the kittens faded and died.  I don't blame Cassie or myself as three of Jo-Ann's six kittens died also.  Sometimes there occurs an awful thing called Fading Kitten Syndrome.  It could be due to an underlying uterine infection that was transmitted to the kittens, but took a while to take effect.  Or it could be due to the large litter size and the mother not having enough natural immunity to pass around to everyone.  No one is completely sure of the cause.  Either way, the results were depressing. 

On the fifth day, the trees leaning on the power lines had been cut for two days, but still no power.  The newspaper had a headline: "CL&P: We're Working as Fast as We Can".  89% of Ledyard was still powerless.  I got an automated call from the school superintendent telling the community that our town would be distributing free bottled water and meals from the Town Hall.  Showers were set up across the street at the elementary school.  I despaired that it had gotten this bad.  Did this mean we were going to have to wait even longer as the rumors suggested?

That afternoon, an orange Asplundh tree truck drove up our driveway to check the lines.  We spilled out of the house like hillbillies, cheering it on.  Kelsey yelled to the men in the truck, "We love you!"  Hey, if a 16-year-old girl telling you she loves you doesn't inspire a flip of the switch, what will?  A few hours later, while were playing Hedbanz again by candlelight, it came back.  We cheered so loudly the cats scattered at our outburst.  Kelsey took off to her room to go on her laptop.  As she left to go upstairs, I told her it'd been nice talking to her the past few day and not to be a stranger.  Before I shut the windows to turn on the air conditioning, I yelled at the top of my lungs out the window toward our neighbors, "You can turn off your damn generator now!"