What I Did On My Isabel Vacation, by Hummingwolf
Thursday, September 25th, 2003 09:32 pmI kept meaning to write a detailed post about life in the path of Hurricane Tropical Storm Isabel, but nah. Here instead is a collection of mostly-unpolished notes I scribbled down while the power was out.
Thursday:
The storm feels amazing. All day long I had to keep going to a doorway, standing and breathing in the air, feeling the wind, seeing the sky. No big crashes of thunder and lightning, just wind humming along the land, along the skin, along the spine. A housemate's friend who lives on campus was told that he had to go down to the basement, but he decided he & the housemate had to go to a bar instead. I can understand the urge. In between trips half-in, half-outside, watched storm progress on TV. Isabel down to Level 2 Hurricane, then Level 1? DC's mayor on television said you almost have to feel sorry for Isabel, she's been downgraded so much. Parts of the area were passed over by the bands of the storm so they're barely touched. More of the area was hit by flooding (not a problem in our house on a hill), winds, power outages. The news at one point said that half of all people in Virginia were without electricity. Thought we might make it through the night without becoming a statistic, but at ten before midnight, the transformer hummed its last.
Got out my flashlight with its freshly installed batteries, helped a housemate find a big candle to light. Went to back door to look out at the darkened woods. Lights off to the right--just a neighbor with a flashlight, looking around. Lights off to the left--whoa. Um. Okay, it's too wet for anything to catch fire, right? So those sparks and puffs and fireballs shouldn't worry me, right? So said half of my brain. The other half said "Fire! Near my home! Fire! Near my home!" So finally called 911 and explained relatively calmly that the power line was trying to set the trees on fire. Fire truck came a few minutes later, and the nice young fireman agreed with the calm half of my brain, told me it was nothing to worry about, it was too wet for anything to catch fire for long, and as long as the lines were still strung up all they'd do was call the power company and report the problem. That night, he said, they'd gotten 15 similar calls from throughout our suburb.
Standing on the back balcony watching sparks fly like July the fourth, it didn't matter to me that anything in the yard would be too wet to catch fire. When I saw in one place on the ground sparks that would not burn out, I had to go down to see. I arrived at the spot, saw a spark, stomped on it. The spark still glowed. Turning on the flashlight, I discovered that I'd just killed an innocent glowing bug.
( More babbling inside. )
Thursday:
The storm feels amazing. All day long I had to keep going to a doorway, standing and breathing in the air, feeling the wind, seeing the sky. No big crashes of thunder and lightning, just wind humming along the land, along the skin, along the spine. A housemate's friend who lives on campus was told that he had to go down to the basement, but he decided he & the housemate had to go to a bar instead. I can understand the urge. In between trips half-in, half-outside, watched storm progress on TV. Isabel down to Level 2 Hurricane, then Level 1? DC's mayor on television said you almost have to feel sorry for Isabel, she's been downgraded so much. Parts of the area were passed over by the bands of the storm so they're barely touched. More of the area was hit by flooding (not a problem in our house on a hill), winds, power outages. The news at one point said that half of all people in Virginia were without electricity. Thought we might make it through the night without becoming a statistic, but at ten before midnight, the transformer hummed its last.
Got out my flashlight with its freshly installed batteries, helped a housemate find a big candle to light. Went to back door to look out at the darkened woods. Lights off to the right--just a neighbor with a flashlight, looking around. Lights off to the left--whoa. Um. Okay, it's too wet for anything to catch fire, right? So those sparks and puffs and fireballs shouldn't worry me, right? So said half of my brain. The other half said "Fire! Near my home! Fire! Near my home!" So finally called 911 and explained relatively calmly that the power line was trying to set the trees on fire. Fire truck came a few minutes later, and the nice young fireman agreed with the calm half of my brain, told me it was nothing to worry about, it was too wet for anything to catch fire for long, and as long as the lines were still strung up all they'd do was call the power company and report the problem. That night, he said, they'd gotten 15 similar calls from throughout our suburb.
Standing on the back balcony watching sparks fly like July the fourth, it didn't matter to me that anything in the yard would be too wet to catch fire. When I saw in one place on the ground sparks that would not burn out, I had to go down to see. I arrived at the spot, saw a spark, stomped on it. The spark still glowed. Turning on the flashlight, I discovered that I'd just killed an innocent glowing bug.
( More babbling inside. )
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