2024 Hurricane Season thread of DOOM

[Storm the Field 5254]

Just now, texasdago said:

Our neighbors in Austin have a house in Port A.  After Harvey, they went down and saw that the house looked relatively unscathed until they realized that the water had been forced through the siding and gotten inside.  Water finds a way.

Oh well, ain't my building.

[billfromlaketravis 11286]

33 minutes ago, Storm the Field said:

All of our first floor window offices had water come in through the floor to ceiling windows, but apparently not bad enough to rip out carpet. Building had those damn dehumidifier fans running 24 hours a day from Tuesday morning through Friday night. The noise made it impossible to get anything done.  Fortunately we had some extra space on a different floor so i was able to temporarily relocate and moved back in to my normal office yesterday morning.  

I shut my door. The industrial dehumidifiers and fans are here for the rest of the week. 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13295]

20 hours ago, UT_OB1 said:

 

Most of the major damage and tree loss in our area was huge oaks being completely uprooted 

Different areas have different results. It was the 40+ foot pines that took out roofs, cars ,power lines and blocked streets in my neighborhood. Oaks and other trees just created a mess with (smaller) limbs down. I'm not saying that zero oaks came down but rather they weren't the major factor.

[Gatorubet 29538]

57 minutes ago, texasdago said:

Our neighbors in Austin have a house in Port A.  After Harvey, they went down and saw that the house looked relatively unscathed until they realized that the water had been forced through the siding and gotten inside.  Water finds a way.

No problemo.  Sea water and electrical wiring go together like friendsies…

[HouTex 1838]

34 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

Different areas have different results. It was the 40+ foot pines that took out roofs, cars ,power lines and blocked streets in my neighborhood. Oaks and other trees just created a mess with (smaller) limbs down. I'm not saying that zero oaks came down but rather they weren't the major factor.

Exactly.  I saw pines down all over the Villages, with a few oaks, and numerous big oaks down in Tanglewood.  One home on Shady River Drive in Tanglewood lost two huge oaks from the front yard.  Luckily they fell to the street or the house would have been destroyed.  HCC lost 35 trees (actually, surprisingly few), mostly oaks.  That part of Tanglewood didn’t get power until Sunday.  Drive down Woodway between Sage and Voss and you’ll see that most of the power lines on both sides of the street are covered with trees (oaks and pines and even crape myrtles).  During the next storm many of them will fall and many people will be without power for another week.  CP likely won’t do anything so if was a homeowner along that path I’d be hiring a tree service right about now.  Some of those folks have generators, but not all of them.  I walked the area extensively after the storm and I suspect only 1 in 8 homes had generators running.  

[texasdago 7389]

4 minutes ago, HouTex said:

Exactly.  I saw pines down all over the Villages, with a few oaks, and numerous big oaks down in Tanglewood.  One home on Shady River Drive in Tanglewood lost two huge oaks from the front yard.  Luckily they fell to the street or the house would have been destroyed.  HCC lost 35 trees (actually, surprisingly few), mostly oaks.  That part of Tanglewood didn’t get power until Sunday.  Drive down Woodway between Sage and Voss and you’ll see that most of the power lines on both sides of the street are covered with trees (oaks and pines and even crape myrtles).  During the next storm many of them will fall and many people will be without power for another week.  CP likely won’t do anything so if was a homeowner along that path I’d be hiring a tree service right about now.  Some of those folks have generators, but not all of them.  I walked the area extensively after the storm and I suspect only 1 in 8 homes had generators running.  

What sucks is that even if you hire a trimmer, it doesn't mean anything if the others don't trim.

CP needs to get on it.  I know that stretch of Woodway well.  Unfortunately, what will happen is people along the way will fight back and not want their trees trimmed.  Happened in Austin.  Will be the usual mess which is partially on CP and partially on owners.  

Good luck.

[Da Fino 2665]

14 hours ago, Post Oak said:

Well I for one am shocked by this.

 

Wouldn't this really only be relevant in an event like the winter freeze where power generation was an issue? The issue this time was about lines being down, fuses, transformers..etc. Unless he's arguing about how those funds could have been better served on ongoing maintenance and preventative clearing.  

[winning_is_hard 38]

14 hours ago, Storm the Field said:

Posting tonight from my home computer for the first time in 8.5 days. Power came back on sometime between when I left my office and pulled into my driveway around 6:30. All I was planning to do was pop in and pack a bag while sweating buckets and then head over to my brother's house for the night. Immediately hauled ass to go pick up my dogs from the kennel before the cutoff between daycare and overnight boarding.  Never been so happy to see a front porch light on in my life.

Just started a load of laundry with a shit-eating grin on my face. Still uncomfortably warm in the house, but it has already dropped from 85 to 80.

We ended up being in the final 3% of addresses without power before getting restored. I stayed optimistic and held up pretty well for the most part, but yesterday when we started getting the "maybe not until Friday" texts, it finally broke me. Spent the evening alternating between pissed and depressed. It is my fervent hope that I was the last Surly poster still in the dark. 

We still don't have power.  Estimated repair date of 7/19, supposedly some underground issue that is difficult to access...

[Storm the Field 5254]

5 minutes ago, winning_is_hard said:

We still don't have power.  Estimated repair date of 7/19, supposedly some underground issue that is difficult to access...

Damn, that's brutal. Only 45K outages left per latest update. You're in the final 1.5%. What neighborhood?

[Pato del Muerto 52036]

27 minutes ago, Da Fino said:

Wouldn't this really only be relevant in an event like the winter freeze where power generation was an issue? The issue this time was about lines being down, fuses, transformers..etc. Unless he's arguing about how those funds could have been better served on ongoing maintenance and preventative clearing.  

5S would dictate that since they haven’t used them in 3 years, they get rid of them. 

Edited July 17 by Pato del Muerto

[winning_is_hard 38]

3 minutes ago, Storm the Field said:

Damn, that's brutal. Only 45K outages left per latest update. You're in the final 1.5%. What neighborhood?

West Houston near Memorial and Highway 6, most of the neighborhood has power but there are a few blocks of us that got screwed

[Js1 82949]

Yeah I have friends in spring branch who are apparently among the last 87 people without power in that area 

[WBT 20212]

Power restoration seems to have gone a lot better than following Ike.  The Houston area has a ton of trees, what do you expect?

*ducks*

[Pato del Muerto 52036]

1 hour ago, winning_is_hard said:

West Houston near Memorial and Highway 6, most of the neighborhood has power but there are a few blocks of us that got screwed

Are you aware that Highway 6 runs both ways?

[Nice Guy Eddie 13295]

I know that everyone is furious with Centerpoint but I was without power for 2.5 weeks with Ike and "only" 8 days with this Beryl. It's an improvement.

[Dahobbs 17180]

12 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

I know that everyone is furious with Centerpoint but I was without power for 2.5 weeks with Ike and "only" 8 days with this Beryl. It's an improvement.

Ike was a category 2 storm when it hit land. Winds in Houston were significantly higher and the actual damage was greater. I don't see anyway to call this an improvement. 

Edited July 17 by Dahobbs

[Nice Guy Eddie 13295]

4 minutes ago, Dahobbs said:

Ike was a category 2 storm when it hit land. Winds in Houston were significantly higher and the actual damage was greater. I don't see anyway to call this an improvement. 

I care about the end results. 17 days vs 8.  Was there significantly more damage with Ike? I have no idea as I didn't have power or TV for >half a month. If so say, I believe you.

[Dahobbs 17180]

6 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

I care about the end results. 17 days vs 8.  Was there significantly more damage with Ike? I have no idea as I didn't have power or TV for >half a month. If so say, I believe you.

Looking at just days without power is meaningless without the context of the actual damage done. Certainly you wouldn't think it is an improvement to lose power for 2-days after a small thunderstorm just because 2-days is less than 8-days without power after a hurricane. 

[SydneyCarton 47298]

7 minutes ago, Nice Guy Eddie said:

I care about the end results. 17 days vs 8.  Was there significantly more damage with Ike? I have no idea as I didn't have power or TV for >half a month. If so say, I believe you.

Let me know how you feel if you're out 3 days when a Tropical Depression blows through. 

Edit: DAMNIT

Edited July 17 by SydneyCarton

[NeverMarryAStripper 21765]

You can pretty much count on being without power for multiple days several times this hurricane season and I’m willing to bet the total days without will exceed what you were out during Ike.

[tokamak 6323]

Centerpoint was woefully unprepared and disorganized, and trying to claim otherwise is absurd. They spend way less on tree trimming than neighboring utilities. Their infrastructure is visibly decrepit. If there have been any significant efforts to trim trees and harden infrastructure over the last few years, I certainly haven't witnessed it. The utility pole in my back yard (which caused an outage last week) looks like it is about 200 fucking years old. It's rotting and falling apart. The crew that came to fix it told me they had to go get a part, because they didn't have a replacement on their truck, because the original was so old and outdated.

Centerpoint communicated virtually nothing for the first few days after the storm, and only after outcry and pressure began publishing any sort of outage map and restoration timeline estimates. Problem: the map and the timelines were utterly wrong and useless, even to this day. At no point did they provide widespread, accurate information. The map was even various shades of green, instead of red, to make it look better at a glance. People on Reddit had to manually edit it to even make it readable.

They hid behind "safety" as an excuse for the first two days of slow response, when everyone with a brain knows that these are trained out of town linemen, and a 15 minute tailgate safety meeting is probable the norm. Social media is chock full of anecdotes, anonymous reports, and rumors about trucks sitting idle for lack of any direction on where to go, untrained CNP office staff on the ground trying to coordinate repair crews, and inefficient paper-based ticketing systems. I'm flabbergasted that anyone thinks CNP did fine here.

 

All that said, I have a way different take on this that I've realized makes me an outlier here in Houston, in talking to my friends and neighbors. I'm not hardly mad at Centerpoint at all. It's a for-profit corporation, and a monopoly to boot. Its responsibility is maximizing returns for shareholders, not maximizing electricity uptime for Houstonians. Expecting otherwise is like expecting a snake not to bite. It's just what they do, that's their nature. Cutting down trees and upgrading infrastructure increases their costs. I'm sure they've done the math that it would cost more than the lost revenue from occasional outages. Are we really expecting that they would make improvements that benefit customers (who can't leave them) over shareholders, just out of the goodness of their hearts?

The only remedies for a private company with a monopoly are competition, nationalization, or a ball-busting regulator that is immune to capture. None of those things is going to happen, either for practical or political reasons. Centerpoint has a PR disaster every few years, customers and politicians get Very, Very Mad and then....life moves on. I think a big part of Centerpoint's usefulness is as a PR shield for the people that actually have the power to change the situation. If you're mad at Centerpoint, I think you're mad at the wrong people.

[SydneyCarton 47298]

23 minutes ago, NeverMarryAStripper said:

You can pretty much count on being without power for multiple days several times this hurricane season and I’m willing to bet the total days without will exceed what you were out during Ike.

Since the derecho I've been out 19 days already...

[Bevo 13436]

8 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

Since the derecho I've been out 19 days already...

 

Obviously, my wish of one more day was for naught.

 

[SydneyCarton 47298]

1 minute ago, Bevo said:

 

Obviously, my wish of one more day was for naught.

 

Sir, not even Houston utility infrastructure can keep the universe from pointing out your terrible, bad, shitty recruiting takes forever. 

[elfenix 34075]

One of our paralegals just got power back on this morning. Think she's on Entergy 

[Captainant 26902]

24 minutes ago, tokamak said:

The only remedies for a private company with a monopoly are competition, nationalization, or a ball-busting regulator that is immune to capture. None of those things is going to happen, either for practical or political reasons. Centerpoint has a PR disaster every few years, customers and politicians get Very, Very Mad and then....life moves on. I think a big part of Centerpoint's usefulness is as a PR shield for the people that actually have the power to change the situation. If you're mad at Centerpoint, I think you're mad at the wrong people.

Isn't it grand living under an oligarchy where the people have no recourse to change anything and the wealthy are cleared to bribe officials because it's """protected speech"""? Lol yeah I'll go write and call my Congressperson and senators (state and fed) about the outage, that VM will go right to a full inbox and they'll reply to my letter after a couple quarters. 

If you don't have a trough of donations, you're just another customer to exploit and extract wealth from

[Bevo 13436]

15 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

Sir, not even Houston utility infrastructure can keep the universe from pointing out your terrible, bad, shitty recruiting takes forever. 

Where were you when ctj called me out a few days ago for being a lib? I needed you then - not so much now.

[Pato del Muerto 52036]

So, what is more cost effective- paying people to routinely maintain transmission lines by replacing old poles and clearing vegetation (where there’s not an enormous fight by homeowners to do so) or ignoring that and paying out of state line workers triple time to fix things that break in these common storms?

there are two parts of CAPA after all. 

Edited July 17 by Pato del Muerto

[Brisketexan 103515]

55 minutes ago, tokamak said:

I'm not hardly mad at Centerpoint at all. It's a for-profit corporation, and a monopoly to boot. Its responsibility is maximizing returns for shareholders, not maximizing electricity uptime for Houstonians. Expecting otherwise is like expecting a snake not to bite. It's just what they do, that's their nature. Cutting down trees and upgrading infrastructure increases their costs. I'm sure they've done the math that it would cost more than the lost revenue from occasional outages. Are we really expecting that they would make improvements that benefit customers (who can't leave them) over shareholders, just out of the goodness of their hearts?

The only remedies for a private company with a monopoly are competition, nationalization, or a ball-busting regulator that is immune to capture. None of those things is going to happen, either for practical or political reasons. Centerpoint has a PR disaster every few years, customers and politicians get Very, Very Mad and then....life moves on. I think a big part of Centerpoint's usefulness is as a PR shield for the people that actually have the power to change the situation. If you're mad at Centerpoint, I think you're mad at the wrong people.

Outstanding, bullseye post.  Bolded some parts for emphasis.  Maybe, just maybe, each time something like this happens (and it will continue to happen, on repeat), a few more people each time will have the metaphorical light bulb over their head click on, and realize the truth...and what it would take to create a new truth.

It won't happen in my lifetime, I'm sure of it.  But maybe my kids' lifetimes.

[Js1 82949]

Who was the idiot who posted about the fentanyl water?

https://www.khou.com/article/news/verify/verify-linemen-hostage-fentanyl-water-bottles/285-a35274f0-78ff-413c-adab-fadb35938649

Idiots will fall for everything that fits their worldview.

[tokamak 6323]

39 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

So, what is more cost effective- paying people to routinely maintain transmission lines by replacing old poles and clearing vegetation (where there’s not an enormous fight by homeowners to do so) or ignoring that and paying out of state line workers triple time to fix things that break in these common storms?

there are two parts of CAPA after all. 

You may have a point, but my wife works in the corporate world (a major public company that you've all heard of), and short-termism has begun to infect everything they do. Stategic thinking is completely out the window in the holy name of This Quarter. It's driving her so crazy that she's started looking for an exit.

[winning_is_hard 38]

Just got power back.....

[Pato del Muerto 52036]

Think of how small all of your July electric bills will be!

[Beau Vine 53653]

23 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

Fucking seriously.  It was an entirely political post, and the cherry on top was the insane allegation that someone gave out the totally real thing that absolutely exists: FENTANYL WATER.  And don't ask any questions as to "ummm....why in the hell would anyone do that?  If people even want and use fentanyl....why are they giving it away?  Wouldn't they prefer to ingest it themselves?  Might as well have said that "Antifa BLM MS-13 members gave out water laced with fentanyl and heroin and the cocaines and marihuana!"  Just use a tiny bit of scrutiny and your bullshit filter before passing shit on as if it was true.

Can't you read???  He doesn't have the time to research and find out what everyone's motivation is!

[mbtex 683]

One thing about Ike was we had a cold front come through right after and being without power was somewhat bearable. I would take those  2 weeks from Ike over the 1 week from Beryl. The same thing happened in both cases when I lost power it would not have occurred if they did tree trimming.

[Js1 82949]

Outages up from 34k to 45k with this storm that rolled in

All that duct tape ain't gonna hold the rest of the summer, let alone for the monsoon we are going to get from Friday through the end of July

[The Royal We 3051]

I live out in the sticks and we are on Deep East Texas Coop. I know we pay higher rates, but they do not fuck around with tree trimming. They are out whacking everything back off the lines at least every other year, probably more. I've seen them using a damn chopper with a long series of blades hanging down below it for areas where they can't get their ground equipment in.

We were without power for a little under 24 hours last week. One of our neighbors had a snag/dead standing Pine that fell from 25 yards into the woods across the line that runs down our road and shithoused everything. The Coop was out here early on Tuesday morning and had it patched up quickly.

[TOR 5122]

1 hour ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Think of how small all of your July electric bills will be!

Hilarious.

That $65 monthly fee on apartment electricity never goes away, tho.  Next year it will be tree fiddy.

[TOR 5122]

I'm in EP, so if someone can pick it up or pay for shipping, this is what I got.  All of this is new in the box:

 

[bolverk 29036]

1 hour ago, Js1 said:

Who was the idiot who posted about the fentanyl water?

https://www.khou.com/article/news/verify/verify-linemen-hostage-fentanyl-water-bottles/285-a35274f0-78ff-413c-adab-fadb35938649

Idiots will fall for everything that fits their worldview.

This fucking idiot: @Hard Times

 

[miguelito 11095]

So when's the next hurricane?  I thought they were lining up in the Atlantic.  Are they waiting for the last person in Houston to have their power restored first?

[Chopper 16353]

56 minutes ago, bolverk said:

This fucking idiot: @Hard Times

 

Reminds me - No CR but the manifesto in the news, plan 2025, if enacted, would eliminate NOAA and privatize its functions.

[Captainant 26902]

1 hour ago, bolverk said:

This fucking idiot: @Hard Times

 

Lmao and Icono repped it too, surprised pronghorn wasn't on there too

[twosheds 370]

I live out in the sticks and we are on Deep East Texas Coop.

We were without power for a little under 24 hours last week.

And half of those hours were probably when AEP SWEPCO cut all transmission lines out of NW LA. We also are behind the pine curtain and lost power for about 10? hours.

And yeah, the copter/chain saw trimmers are bad ass

[atomheartbevo 88913]

3 hours ago, miguelito said:

 Are they waiting for the last person in Houston to have their power restored first?

 

Well, just those people in Houston.

[Pato del Muerto 52036]

11 minutes ago, atomheartbevo said:

 

Well, just those people in Houston.

They’ve been doomed. 

[SydneyCarton 47298]

17 hours ago, Js1 said:

Who was the idiot who posted about the fentanyl water?

https://www.khou.com/article/news/verify/verify-linemen-hostage-fentanyl-water-bottles/285-a35274f0-78ff-413c-adab-fadb35938649

Idiots will fall for everything that fits their worldview.

 

16 hours ago, bolverk said:

This fucking idiot: @Hard Times

 

There's a site I follow in Houston, Grizzy's Hood News, on Facebook. If you're in the area, it's worth a follow, they are on top of everything happening everywhere. I think she has almost a million followers in the Houston area. Anyway, she got pissed at that fake ass video, and her followers hunted the guy down. Not surprisingly, he is a convicted wife beater. 

Edited July 18 by SydneyCarton

[Gatorubet 29538]

18 hours ago, Brisketexan said:

It won't happen in my lifetime, I'm sure of it.  But maybe my kids' lifetimes.

in your kids lifetimes, the Vegans and the Meats will be at war, with each side perfecting ever better fire-hardened wooden spearpoints.  

It will only be until one side finds the Shopping Channel Knife Show warehouse that the arms race will finally tilt to one side - and slavery is reintroduced..

[Dahobbs 17180]

20 minutes ago, SydneyCarton said:

 

There's a site I follow in Houston, Grizzy's Hood News, on Facebook. If you're in the area, it's worth a follow, they are on top of everything happening everywhere. I think she has almost a million followers in the Houston area. Anyway, she got pissed at that fake ass video, and her followers hunted the guy down. Not surprisingly, he is a convicted wife beater. 

so that's what johnny sacks has been doing. 

[Js1 82949]

1 hour ago, SydneyCarton said:

 

There's a site I follow in Houston, Grizzy's Hood News, on Facebook. If you're in the area, it's worth a follow, they are on top of everything happening everywhere. I think she has almost a million followers in the Houston area. Anyway, she got pissed at that fake ass video, and her followers hunted the guy down. Not surprisingly, he is a convicted wife beater. 

I obviously don't follow Grizzy because I'm not 77 with a Facebook, but I know she's been on top of shit in Houston.  She gets reposted on Reddit often.