The longest 5 days in my life indeed~
For the past five days, J and I've been living without electricity entirely. Saving the battery of the cellphones for emergency only was rather challenging.The flood took more than Route 17, 434, and etc. Susquenhanna got expanded so much that plenty of properties were in water. 100+ lives in Petco were left behind. Rescue teams have been out everyday to check if there are more people trapped somewhere. The shelters around were completely full. On the second day after the huge rain, J and I walked around to see what has happened. We realized that we were blocked in the area because 434 got water on both east and west, and 17 became a river. 17 finally opened yesterday during our adventure. I once wondered why the posts of cables were set so closed to the ground and finally understood the power of flood. Yes, they got sunk into the ground. Later on we saw posts with regular height. And yes, the cables were broken because of the sunken posts, probably.
By living through this experience, I've noticed that unlike in Manhattan, people here were not taught well for preparation. Before Irene came, people were evacuated to safer places. In upstate New York, they were "rescued". As a Taiwanese person having several typhoons every year, we were taught to stuck some dry goods, flashlights, candles, matches, and etc. to prepare for the worst scenario possible. My dad even once thought about getting a tube just in case we were trapped in the house full of water. Luckily we never got flood in. It took several years for the power company in Kaohsiung to realize that they really shouldn't have put the machines which connect with the entire neighborhood in a basement.
One may think after 100 year flood in 2006, people would know better for Lee in 2011. It was shocking that not many business in the previous flooded areas got some sense of danger. I was in Town Square Mall on the way home before the outage. Barnes & Noble did close early. The rest of the stores were still planning on their regular hours without making anything higher up from the ground. Somehow, J's company still had the fantasy of having their facility open on Thur because they only made the voice message of "facility closed" in the morning. After all the roads and bridges got flooded, they finally announced the Fri off on Thur. NYSEG thought they could repair the power by 11am on Thur and they still thought they could repair it by 11pm on Thur. Eventually, they realized that the water wasn't going away and there was no way for them to do anything before the water's gone. This is the part that scares me. We weren't aware of how dangerous this could turn into. Maybe it was after Manhattan surviving Irene. People got relaxed? The media didn't care about upstate New York as much? Am I becoming ignorant?
I am glad that all my friends in the area are fine. For these past few days, I got a lot accomplished. It may be a good thing to give out electricity once in a while. All my guilty pleasure required electricity... J got parts of the house and the fridge organized and cleaned. He got to teach me how to play chess and I finally defeated him. Mwahahahaha with my nonsense moves. Squid has been a winner in the dark house. He loved chasing shadows made by the headlights.
Oh well, time to pack and go back to Manhattan~
