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Ohio weathers storm on its own
(by Dave Lange - September 24, 2008)
Ohio weathers storm on its own
About 300 First Energy Corp. workers reportedly returned to Ohio from Texas last Wednesday. I was among the power company's estimated 111,000 customers in the Cleveland area eagerly awaiting their arrival, because, three days after wicked winds generated by Hurricane Ike walloped our area, we were still without electricity.
If your home depends on a water well, like mine does, not only were you surviving without lights, refrigeration and television, but your dishes couldn't be washed, your showers weren't operating, and, worst of all, your toilets weren't flushing. People who live in places where the city water keeps running do not know the true hardships of power outages.
Our hardworking First Energy crews, along with their brethren from power companies throughout the country, had been dispatched to the Texas Gulf Coast, because mighty Hurricane Ike's arrival there early Sept. 13 had been forecast by the weather experts nearly a week in advance.
None of those experts told First Energy or anyone else that the hurricane's aftermath also would be devastating to the Midwest. The weather report that arrived on my lawn the morning of Sunday, Sept. 14, predicted mostly cloudy with a thunderstorm that day, followed by more clouds, another thunderstorm and breezy that night. If by breezy they meant wind gusts of up to 78 mph, they would have been right.
No, our winds didn't match the 110 mph hurricane force that crashed into Galveston about 36 hours earlier. But, unlike us, Texans had received ample warning to evacuate ahead of the storm.
About 2.2 million people in Texas were reported without power soon after Hurricane Ike hit land there. Gov. Ted Strickland reported that 2 million people in Ohio were without power after its winds hit here. News reports out of Texas attributed about 15 deaths to the hurricane there, including three due to carbon monoxide from electric generators and two due to fires caused by candles. At least six deaths in Ohio were blamed on the windstorm, including a boy hit by a falling branch in Lorain County and a man tossed from his boat into the waters of Lake Milton in Mahoning County.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff was in the Houston-Galveston area last week to survey the damages. He said he was "not afraid to kick someone in the rear" for delays in getting emergency supplies to the area. We don't expect to see him or federal supplies in Northeast Ohio -- neither after deadly windstorms nor after the killer snowstorms that hit Geauga County every winter. And I won't hold my breath for one of those free generators the federal government likes to hand out in the Southern states.
President George W. Bush, who was traveling with Federal Emergency Management Agency chief David Paulison, promised that the government would pay for 100 percent of the debris removal in Texas and reimburse displaced residents for their hotel stays.
Thanks to First Energy, my wife picked up a free bag of ice and a free gallon of water at Giant Eagle. Unfortunately, much of the food in our freezer was beyond salvation, and it would have taken a lot more water to flush the raw sewage that was fermenting in our bathrooms.
Although we all know about the president's brush-clearing and wood-chopping skills, I don't expect any help with that 70-foot-tall tree that the wind blew over in my yard. I would like to take Mr. Bush up on that hotel bill, but nobody told me to get to get out of town.
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