Bottled Water and Ham Radios

Although you may call me "behind the times" posting this one week after the hurricane hit us, turns out as of yesterday, there were still over 580,000 people along the East Coast without power thanks to our friend Irene. So I'm really completely up-to-date on my current events.


Phew! Two natural disasters in one week. That should fill our quota for a while right?! I learned that I am NOT prepared for these types of unexpected events and that I should GET prepared!


Exhibit A: sitting at my desk on the 7th floor of a DC office building when things start to shake. I learned my reaction time in a potentially dangerous situation SUCKS! Approximately 15-18 seconds after initial shaking and rumbling of our 5.8 beauty began, I finally got up from my desk. It took at least another 8-10 seconds to get in the doorway. I definitely would have survived an earthquake higher on the Richter scale...not! The good news is, I now have another great story to share about my DC experiences! Any other survivors of the tremor can purchase their commemorative T-shirt here.


Exhibit B: staring open-mouthed at the completely empty shelves on the beverage aisle in the water section at Giant. It took me two stores and some shelf-climbing to reach a couple of the last liter bottles of water Friday afternoon to prep for Irene. I also plugged in all my electronics to brace for a power outage, parked my car on the most treeless street I could find, and actually turned on my Ham radio and broadcasted! Found a repeater, found a friend and assured myself that even if ALL other forms of communication failed, I would be among the biggest dorks in Maryland with radio communication capabilities: "this is KD7HEC, monitoring..."


Forty-eight hours later, we were enjoying a fair weather and sunny sky, churchless Sunday, having lost power for a grand total of about 45 seconds sometime after 1 am. I cleaned up our "hurricane damage" Monday when I mowed the lawn (about 8 small downed branches). 


While these events actually did cause damage on other parts of the coast, I think someone was just having fun...This is a test, only a test. If this were a real emergency...