Flooding and landslides strike southern Appalachians after hurricane pummeled region and wreaked havoc
More than 50 people are confirmed dead and almost 3.5 million are without power on Saturday, after strong winds and torrential rain from Hurricane Helene wreaked unprecedented havoc across large swathes of the south-eastern United States.
Historic flooding continued over parts of the southern Appalachians on Saturday, as first responders worked to reach stranded communities in trying conditions while local authorities began to assess the scale of the damage and displacement.
“It looks like a bomb went off,” said Georgia’s governor, Brian Kemp, after surveying the damage from the air on Saturday.
central SC here, on my second day without power, and since i got a well, also without water, i see lineman working and passing by, but damage has been widespread, so may be a while before i get power back, i just flushed my toilets with pond water in a bucket 😂
Yeah, I have family who say that they’re gonna be out for an estimated three days. But, hey, that’s doable. They’re gonna lose climate control for a few days, lose stuff in a refrigerator or freezer. But it’s not too bad.
I’m assuming from the fact that you can post that you still have some form of Internet access going. IIRC cell towers have diesel generator backups that come on automatically. And a lot of folks out there have some kind of emergency inverter generator, cars can provide a small amount of accessory power (maybe 100W or more) and lithium batteries, and small solar panels are more widespread than they were just a few years back. Not enough to do a lot of things, but getting light and communications is a lot easier, even in power outages, than it once was.
3 days don’t sound so bad for a hurricane of this calibre. I had an outage for 6 days from a severe wind storm. Took down a ton of trees one being two houses down that was enormous and took down a power line with it. After that incident though my power company contracts a bunch of people to drive into town for extra help when there is another severe storm.
We had a really bad storm here last year with shear winds that made the entire town look like multiple tornadoes had come through. The cell towers were off for a day or so.
Might not hurt to boil a gallon of water. Big hurricanes often suck a big high pressure system after them, and you get muggy hot days for a while.
I dunno how Americans do it, but from life in the tropics dealing with monsoons and cyclones, we fill up the bath tub the day before we’re expected to get hit. Then we have plenty of water for drinking, washing, and cooking.
Most times it’s not needed because civil infrastructure is built for the environment, but some times water is shut off or compromised for a few days. I’ve also had pipes rupture while flooded in for a few days, so water was suddenly dirty, and my bath water become a supply for a few neighbours until floods receded enough for services to come in with water. Sounds a bit wild, but it’s kind of normal in places like that. It’s all part of the “day before routine”.
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