Our disgraceful inability to restore power in times of emergency.

[appleannie1]

11. I live in a rural area with a co-op service. No power means no water since we have wells in this

area. When we first moved here 40 years ago, we routinely had outages 4 or 5 times a year. The longest we have gone without power after an ice storm was 9 days. Three days without power is not uncommon after a storm of some kind. But each year they are getting to be less often because they have started to trim trees near the power lines and the last two years have been replacing old lines with new ones. That is what they have been spending our yearly dividend checks on and the customers do not mind in the least. All the people in this area have lanterns, candles and flashlights just for power outages. If even thunderstorms are predicted they fill their tubs with flushing and washing water and water bottles with drinking water and fill ziplock bags with water and place them in all the empty places in their freezers. We always have at least one bag of ice in the freezer at all times to put in a Coleman cooler for perishables. I keep a gas grill on my porch that has a roof year round for cooking during power failures. I really feel for the people of New York because they are not used to going without power and really do not know what to do in this kind of situation and Sandy was one hell of a way to learn.