DC Grocery Stores Out of Food, Gas Unavailable, Grid-Down As Summer Heat Rages

Originally posted by RealSpoke
A thunderstorm can cause outages for this long? We need to do some serious infrastructure spending in this country and stop giving it to bankers.

It would have been nice,if those "shovel ready jobs" involved putting Americans to work, fixing Americas Infrastructure, Hey ?

Just imagine......

Originally posted by 1947flxible
oh yeah sure sounds like a nutjob to me, geez.

Just a quote from the story i found very interesting, and very very reinforcing to my thoughts for why i prep.

I've been called a nut too. I have enough water stored right now to get me up to a year for a family of 3. I have had family call me a nut because I keep food stored too. A long time ago I was in a flood and we had no drinking water for 3 weeks. FEMA came and made us all stand in 100 + degrees weather for water rations. I learned my lesson then that if I ever got into another situation like that I would be prepared.

Originally posted by berkeleygal
It's a wake UP call folks!

I agree. I see young kids on these forums laughing about how they are going to grab a ruck sack and run for the hills if SHTF. Let me tell these kids, I live in the hills and you won't be getting mine! I have a kid myself to care for and my family will come first, stragglers much later. I don't mind helping, but if we get deep in a situation then we will be on lock down here.

I can attest to the complete non-preparedness. My power company is Dominion who supplies power to most of Northern Virginia. I live less than a mile away from an Emergency Services Center and am on the same grid as them. I didn't get power back until this afternoon. That's almost four days that power was not being supplied to a necessary facility. Throughout the entire ordeal Dominion provided no information other than everything should be back on by Sunday. It should be noted that Dominion is actually one of the better companies in the area. Pepco, who was mentioned in the OP and supplies most of the power to DC, is notorious for not being able to keep their grids up and not being able to get their grids back up in a reasonable amount of time.

I would also just like to mention my experience with getting water. All of the grocery stores by me were out as early as Saturday. I had to drive 30 minutes away to find anything. And since I didn't know when power would be back on I had to make numerous trips to make sure I had enough water for both myself and the numerous amounts of pets I have in the house.

reply to post by Thunder heart woman


You actually have 1,100 gallons of water stored?
That's roughly what 3 people would need for a year.

reply to post by hdutton


Ever tasted an MRE? I tried one about two years ago. They are alright but I wouldn't want to have to live off them. I'd rather live off Ramen noodles.

One of the major problems are overhead electric lines in suburban neighborhoods, every time a good storm comes through there's a possibility of downed electric lines from broken tree limbs. If the electric company has to run new lines it could take days just to restore power in a single grid. Now take that and multiply it by a thousand and you see the amount of time and labor it takes to recover from a storm like this one.

reply to post by sonnny1

It would have been nice,if those "shovel ready jobs" involved putting Americans to work, fixing Americas Infrastructure, Hey ?

In modern construction there is no thing as a "shovel ready job" construction is now a high-technology industry with machinery using gps/agps computer systems and will become more so in the future.

Originally posted by CynicalWabbit
reply to post by sonnny1

 

It would have been nice,if those "shovel ready jobs" involved putting Americans to work, fixing Americas Infrastructure, Hey ?

In modern construction there is no thing as a "shovel ready job" construction is now a high-technology industry with machinery using gps/agps computer systems and will become more so in the future.

Sorry.

You don't need modern technology to rip a road up . You don't need modern technology to lay brick and mortar .

Sorry. You don't need modern technology to rip a road up . You don't need modern technology to lay brick and mortar .

That is true but go find a contractor on a road project who doesn't have modern equipment and has a labor crew out there using shovels.

not that great of a 4th of July for millions, i hope it gets better for them.

reply to post by siluriancryptic


I don't think that would explain all the power lines that are down that I have seen just driving to work yesterday....
it was a storm, which, I believe was due to the psychic energy of all those angry americans when they heard the supreme court decision on obamacare. I mean it started where obama's career started, chicago, and barreled through and didn't stop till it hit dc!!

we americans need to check our negative emotional energy is all....

Originally posted by CynicalWabbit

Sorry. You don't need modern technology to rip a road up . You don't need modern technology to lay brick and mortar .

That is true but go find a contractor on a road project who doesn't have modern equipment and has a labor crew out there using shovels.

Yes, you are correct.
There is a reason for it. It would cost a lot more to pay the labor and costs associated with it to have a crew do with picks and shovels what a piece of heavy construction equipment can do in one tenth the time.
A bulldozer doesn't file workmen's comp claims and a front-end loader doesn't get fined by OSHA for failing to wear personal protective equipment.
It all comes down to money.
Why would the power companies pay for another plant to supply power to the grid when what they have now will just get them by? If the weather gets too hot or cold, just shut down power to the industrial and commercial customers that have signed curtailment contacts, if that isn't enough, do a few rolling blackouts and blame the weather.

Originally posted by butcherguy

Originally posted by g146541
reply to post by Skada

 

A little off topic but maybe not, you are the second person to mention 2 weeks of food is illegal.
Was this a hoax somewhere or is someone trying to say it is illegal to have more than 2 weeks of food?
I always have known I could have 2 MONTHS of anything as long as it is not harmful.

It was a reference to 'preppers' being labeled as domestic terrorist risks by the DHS.
Being prepared for natural disasters makes you a possible terrorist nowadays, it seems. [/quote




Oh, for heaven's sake- Having more than 2 weeks worth of food makes us terrorists? And the government thinks WE'RE paranoid?!

reply to post by butcherguy


in this case....
it was the weather!!!

why do I keep getting the impression that some of yas are thinking otherwise??

the only way this could have been avoided would to have buried the power lines, which someone else mentioned.
and well, that sounds like a great idea, till a problem pops up in the buried line and you have to tear up the streets to get to the line. I've lived in subdivisions with buried lines, there were still outages, mostly originating outside the subdivision.
at this point, we should just start bulldozing areas of the country and redesign our city structure so that it addresses this issue along with many others. if global warming is a problem, well, having the workers living close by the companies they work for would help. trucking the food a community eats halfway around the world is not as efficient as it being grown in the area that needs it, better systems could be developed to deliver the energy needs, water need, ect. pollution could be cut down, ect. ect...

but all that costs money, and it would be inconvenient as all heck to bury the lines in our present city structures!!

I mean how many of yous really want the street you live on off limits till they dig up the road, lay the lines, and repave it? I wouldn't. most people wouldn't. maybe it's better just to sit back and wait for mother nature to destroy the old, and then start new with a different design structure.

Originally posted by 1947flxible
James Wesley Rawles has long predicted a grid down situation, ofcourse he is discussing a nation wide or planet wide grid down senario, but his writings and books are great and a wonderful resouce, he also is very articulate on radio and in interviews.

James Wesley Rawles Blog Site, years of archives and the massive SHTF list of lists - survivalblog.com...

James Wesley Rawles on Coast to Coast - www.youtube.com...

James Wesley Rawles on The Alex Jones Show - www.youtube.com...

It makes alot of sense to update the nation's power grids with 'Smart Grids' and I think they tried to get this passed in Congress (or the House, not sure) but it was rejected. We've raised our debt ceiling and are spending so much money and now we can't afford a new grid system, as it costs somewhere between $3-5 billion dollars. Why can't our government spend money wisely?!

Good luck to all of you out there. Stay safe in those temperatures!!!

Originally posted by dawnstar
reply to post by siluriancryptic

 

I don't think that would explain all the power lines that are down that I have seen just driving to work yesterday....
it was a storm, which, I believe was due to the psychic energy of all those angry americans when they heard the supreme court decision on obamacare. I mean it started where obama's career started, chicago, and barreled through and didn't stop till it hit dc!!

we americans need to check our negative emotional energy is all....



It's crazy you said that. I was noticing that, too, and thought how strange that this storm started in Chicago and barreled its way to DC! SOMETHING was crying foul!!

reply to post by 1947flxible


Whatever. I live here in the DC area. And the power was out over a few areas in the National Captial Region for maybe 24 hrs or so. Not everything is a conspiracy. Good grief

reply to post by 1947flxible


And it was caused by a thunderstorm which knocked down several trees and a few small structures. No wonder people think we are nuts, people like the OP

reply to post by CannibalCorpse1982


Hi, I wonder how all our treasures stored in our nations capital fared as the power grid went down?

Is our constitution safe? Remember the movie National Treasure? Nicolas Cage had to steal our US Constitution to save it. How and when the constitution was safely whisked away in case of emergency was very interesting. I would hate to be in the underground mall if the power goes bonkers.