Tuesday, October 4, 2022

Ron DeSantis and hurricane preparation

While the media try to pin hurricane deaths on Gov. DeSantis, here's what they are not telling you:

Linemen have reportedly restored power for roughly two million customers in Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian last week, the governor said on Sunday.

45,000 linemen from all over the country* were pre-positioned before the storm hit.  In 4 days (Friday - Monday) they're restored ~ 80% of all outages.

The media are biased jerks who have changed Mark Twain's old addage.  It used to be "If you don't read the newspaper you're uninformed; if you do read the newspaper you're misinformed."  Now you're uninformed no matter what, but you're only misinformed if you read the paper.

* I saw one in the last day or two from Kansas City.  That's a long way to come to help out, and we appreciate it. 

8 comments:

Beans said...

Just saw a small convoy of utility trucks pulling travel trailers heading down south.

Now here's the thing. Remember 2004? The year 4 hurricanes (or 3 hurricanes and 1 bad tropical storm) rolled over Florida? Three hits in North Central Florida alone, over a 2 month period. Yet no matter how bad things were, 98% repairs were done within 1 week of being hit, even after the first 2 storms pretty much depleted utility supplies in the Southeast.

It's why many in Florida looked at Katrina in 2005 and said, "WTF? What stupidity ensued that one storm did sooo much damage when Andrew in 1990s and the 4 storms in 2004 pummeled, dog-piled, smashed and trashed Florida yet WE bounced back so quickly?"

It's the reason I actually supported JEB! Bush in the primaries until Trump came along. Because, knock him all you want, JEB! did a really great job in 2004 and was excellent in his response in 2005 in sending FL assets to Mississippi and Louisiana. (Still better than Hillary and/or Biden, so there's that, too.)

Wife worked for local utility company in 2004 and basically spent all the hurricane recovery time using the company credit card to stock our van full of supplies for the linemen and she went from crew to crew giving them water and snacks and clean underwear and socks and arranging laundry and rooms and meals. One person (well, with my help afterhours) serviced all of the utilities' linemen and visiting linemen.

Glen Filthie said...

Sounds about right. Can’t believe anything they’re saying about Trump, the Kraine or the economy right now. It’s been that way for years.

What about your preps, BP? Any shortfalls or mistakes or changes in the way you guys prepped for it…?

SiGraybeard said...

How about the way the media is treating DeSantis with the line about he didn't order the evacuation of Lee County soon enough. It seems to rest on one corner of Lee County being in the warning cone more than a day. A real life "ackshually..." story.

Nowhere does the concept show up that preparing and evacuating for a storm is an individual responsibility.

Beans said...

And to add to what SiG said, gee, Lee County wasn't targeted until late in the game. Now, did everyone evacuate from Tampa Bay? Everyone? Everyone??

And the real kicker, lots of people who did evac from the Tampa Bay area went where the Cone of Death wasn't supposed to go, like... Lee County.

Unless you are at or below sea level, or in a low area, evacuating is a big big crapshoot.

Aesop said...

If people would remember that there are a helluva lot more linemen in the country than congressweasels, and the former should affect your life to much higher degree than the latter, we'd all be far better off.

Wayne said...

Seen any linemen from Wichita?

Weetabix said...

I can't help wondering why they don't just bury as many of those lines as possible. I understand there are water table issues, but transatlantic cables have dealt with that for years.

Has anyone ever done a lifecycle cost analysis on that?

P.S. Kudos to the linemen, but I'm an engineer, so I have limited social skills.

Brad_in_IL said...

>> Linemen have reportedly restored power for roughly two million customers in Gov. Ron DeSantis’s (R) Florida in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian last week, the governor said on Sunday. <<

This is nothing new. Same thing happened ~30 years ago during Andrew. Line crews from GA and the Carolinas were rolling south while the storm was still raging across the southern tip of FL ...