RE: Isabel - Ground Zero (or close to it...)

[Gone-Camping]

 Well, I m thrilled the board is back up. But to be honest, I just got power back on this evening. Being without the board for a week is bad, but being without power for 6 days is even worse!
 
 We took a hard hit here in the Chesapeake/Va Beach area, really hard hit. It was only a minimal cat-1 storm, but it wreaked havoc. Lucky for me I have this Hybrid, which despite 6 days without power, I ve had the luxury of hot showers, flush toilets, running water, refridge/freezer and yes...even the deep cycle batteries proved their worth.
 
 I did learn however, that the Group-24 battery that came with the trailer has it s short comings. It did keep the trailer s refridge/freezer (electric start) running since last Wednesday as I knew we d need to have it cold and ready. But after 4 days of continuos running, lights on & off, DSI water heater on & off, radio etc.. it wore the poor battery down.
 
 I went out there two nights ago, and no lights! A quick look at the idiot light on the fridge told me we had a bigger problem. I grabbed the multi-meter and put it on the battery, got 1.2vdc reading. I quickly hooked up jumper cables from the Jeep and charged it for an 90 minutes. It held enough power until morning when I charged it with jumpers again for about 30 mins. When I got home from work yesterday, I checked again and it was down to 5vdc. But thinking ahead, I grabbed a brand new Group-27 off the shelf and brought it home with me, so the trailer has good power now!
 
 We survived the storm, and the subsequent gasoline lines, Ice hunt, and all around basic staple goods scavenger hunt without a problem. But my new trailer paid a price. A couple of large tree limbs came down on top of it, and cut 2 holes in the rubber roof, and tore off the am/fm antenna. I ve got the claim in at State Farm now, the Adjuster will be out sometime this week. Just when I thought that I was past this " Roof Replacement"  business!!! [: (]
 
 Power came on here about 8pm this evening, just as we were four hours into our sixth day without power! Oh so happy....now if I could just get my broadband back! []

[C. Hains]

 Gone-Camping
Very sorry to hear about the damage to your trailer -- very glad to hear you all survived as well as you did.  What I saw on the news about the storm looked awful and I am sure that didn t tell even a small portion of the tale!!!
 Hope all goes well with your insurance claim.

[Miller Tyme]

 Gone-Camping
Cliff-
 Read about your damage at IRV2- sorry to hear about it. Good luck with your claim and keep us posted.[8D]

[tlhdoc]

 Gone-Camping
Sorry to hear about the damage you had, but glad you are all right.  []

[SheBantam]

 Gone-Camping
For the most part, Delaware dodged the bullet this time, There was some flooding and trees down. We had the tropical storm end of this. Earlier in the week remnants of Henri came through and left major flooding. One subdivision was evacuated and condemned. It was hit bad during Floyd 4 years ago, flooded in the Spring and now this. Our beaches were hit, there were mandatory evacuations, also evacuations in the City of Wilmington as at one point the track may have come up the Chesapeke or Delaware Bays, and at that point it was at Cat2, bordering a Cat3.
 
 We were luckier (blessed) than a lot up here. Many, like Cliff in Chesapeke, lost power, some here also got turned on yesterday. Our Power did not flicker, I had cable/internet all the way through the storm. We do have a yard full of kindling, and out Weeping willow lost a few branches, but nothing major. I prayed over the trash maple in the neighbor s yard, hooked the trailer and pulled them to the edge of the drive, moved the car and van to the other edge of the drive (we have a circular drive, on a corner lot, that runs behind the house from street to street.

[Ernhrts3n8]

 Gone-Camping
I was at the Delaware State Fairgrounds in Harrington, DE when the storm hit.  We had approximately 70 - 80 mph winds and lost power a few times.  We were there camping for the Nascar race.  The Delaware Memorial Bridge was closed on Thursday evening and didn t open until Friday morning.  We were put in a building at the Fairgrounds and was spared most of the turmoil.  People from VA brought some of their animals up to the Fairgrounds to protect them.  We had 4 Llamas and 12 horses and a three legged dog.  It really was quite interesting to go through this storm.  My sister lives in Mineral, VA and was hit pretty hard.  Lost some trees and power until Saturday evening.  She said they had a big party cooking up all the food in everyone s freezers before it went bad.  I guess we just had to make the best of a bad situation and just go with the flow.  I am sorry to hear about your roof problems, but at least you are here to talk about it.  Good luck getting it fixed and back to normal.

[labontefan]

 Gone-Camping
Down here in southwest VA, it missed us completely! A few stiff breezes Thursday night was about it--no rain at all.
 
 However, my employer s main offices are in Charlottesville, VA, and Isabel pretty well rolled right over top of them! They let everyone go home early Thursday, and then lost power Thursday night. They had no power till sometime Sunday evening. And for a call center who depends on phone lines and computers to conduct business, that s BAD!!
 
 The IT department managed to keep all the servers running on backup generator power, so that those of us down here in Norton could have access to all the computer programs and databases. Our satellite call center is much smaller than the main one. We have less than half the phone sales people, about half the tech and customer service people, about 20% of web sales, and none of the support people (order processing, admin, warehouse, etc.) But we managed to keep things going!
 
 We worked lots of OT, but the people in Charlottesville really had it bad! I saw one e-mail from headquarters that said the IT people were working with flashlights and laptops to try and keep the servers running. They had enough power to keep 2 or 3 desks in sales and customer service running, so the folks up there were taking turns with the computers that worked--with no lights and no air conditioning! The phone lines were up so the phone sales people that didn t have computers were using flashlights to handwrite orders!
 
 Most of our customers were very understanding when we told them that the warehouse had no power and that UPS/FedEx hadn t picked up any deliveries since Thursday morning, and probably wouldn t pick anything up until Monday.
 
 But there were a few jerks! I sit next to several of the Customer Service people. I heard one of our reps talking to a guy who was threatening to sue us and call his credit card company and tell them we stole his money! He apparently placed his order Wednesday night/Thursday morning. His order processed normally, was invoiced, packed, loaded on the trailer...but then UPS/FedEx never came to pick up the trailer. Since his order technically went " out the door" , it was shown as shipped and his CC was charged. He demanded that someone go over to the warehouse (in the dark), find his package on the trailer (among the hundreds that were packed on there), pull it out, put the stuff back on the shelves and refund his CC! I got a little tickled at the CS rep trying to tell him why he didn t have his package yet.  She said, " Sir, we got your order. We processed it and packed it. We charged your credit card. We loaded it on the truck. The hurricane hit. That s what happened. We re very sorry."  I said maybe he should sue the National Weather Service instead of us, since the problems were weather-related. Someone else said maybe he should sue God, since I think the hurricane can be classified as an act of God! (And someone else commented that God has very good lawyers! LOL!)
 
 Anyway, the power is back on Charlottesville, we re pretty well caught up on shipments, and things are just about back to normal. (Don t know if Mr. Jerk got his package or not, though!)

[Gone-Camping]

 Gone-Camping
I guess I ll file this under lessons learned...
 
 I removed the Group-24 battery yesterday, and the battery box it goes in. I replaced it with a Group-27 battery & box, then added a second Group-27 battery & box forward of it located right next to the electric tongue jack. They are now wired in parrallel and I should never experience a dead battery in anything short of a week now!!!!
 
 Bring on the next Hurricane! (and send it somewhere else....)

[stateparkgrl]

 Gone-Camping
Cliff - sorry to hear about your camper.  It s been quite a strange 2 weeks for us, too. We finally got power back on late Saturday (10 days in the dark!), and still have alot to do to even get our road, driveway, and yard cleared. So far we have hauled 4 truckloads of firewood out of the roadway alone - and that is probably only a third of it.
 
 Luckily, our camper was safe in the backyard - we left it in the open away from oaks and pines. We got some water damage in the basement, but no permanent damage.
 
 I hope I NEVER have to go through that again...our area took a direct hit from the worst of the hurricane. Luckily the wind speed had decreased some after it hit land - or things would have been much worse. We spent Thursday afternoon and all night huddled in a corner of the west end of the house - listening to trees falling all around us. At Pocahontas State Park were I work, you can actually see where the " bands"  of wind came through - taking down all the trees in a 20 yard path with it.  That s something I never understood about hurricanes until now. It almost seems like a bunch of tornados came through.
 
 Anyway - we are all okay.  We were mostly disappointed about the Westmoreland trip being cancelled.  They got THE WORST of the storm...and may be closed for the rest of the season.  We hope to have the campground at Pocahontas back open by next weekend.
 
 Again - I m glad to hear you are okay.  I guess a Virginia camping trip will have to wait until spring!
 
 Louise
 
 1992 Starcraft Starflyer
 2003 F150 Supercrew
 DH and 1987 daughter
 

[vjm1639]

 Gone-Camping
Louise, how is Pocahontas  campground looking?  We had hoped to try it out sometime either this month or next. DH does some work in that area every now and then and we ve thought of planning it on a Friday and just bringing the PU down there.  We were hoping to go there the weekend the hurricane hit!!!! []

[jawilson]

 Gone-Camping

ORIGINAL:  Gone-Camping
 I removed the Group-24 battery yesterday, and the battery box it goes in. I replaced it with a Group-27 battery & box, then added a second Group-27 battery & box forward of it located right next to the electric tongue jack. They are now wired in parrallel and I should never experience a dead battery in anything short of a week now!!!!

2 group 27 s? Together they might last " only"  a week, if you ran the fridge off them too! [] Realistically, they should last longer then a week, unless you leave all the lights on 24/7.
 
 But why not a single group 31 instead? It probably would have almost as much capacity as those 2 27 s do. And it would be a lot easier to setup then parallel batteries.

[Gone-Camping]

 Gone-Camping
Well, a single group-31 would be nice, but... I already owned one Group-27 that I bought for use with the PU last year, I sold the PU but kept that battery. Then last week while still without power, I found a pair of Group-27 s sitting on a shelf at work, brand new and never been used! These were part of some scheme by the former boss, but he s no longer there and the batteries will just go to waste sitting there, so the new boss let me take one home...free. Now I have two of them, so the choice was easy since it didn t cost me anything to upgrade!
 
 After lugging the Grp-24 & Grp-27 in and out of work for recharging during the week we were without power, I came to realize that the 27 weighed almost double what the 24 did (it certainly didn t help my Hiedel Hernia - sp?)....
 
 Louise, glad to Pocahontas survived the storm! We ll be camping there next spring, but was considering it this fall too. Now looks like we re going back to the Blue Ridge on the 10th....maybe!

[stateparkgrl]

 Gone-Camping
vjm1639,
 
 It looks like we should be able to get the campground open by the middle of next week.  Please come!  I m not sure how many of the trails will be open, but I m sure there will be plenty of available firewood!!!!!  
 
 The campground stays open until December 1st. (See Cliff - plenty of time for a fall trip!)
 
 Louise
 
 1992 Starcraft Starflyer
 2003 F150 Supercrew
 DH and 1987 daughter

[vjm1639]

 Gone-Camping
Terrific. that sounds great Louise!  So far we re booked for the next two weekends (at a place Cliff recommended ;>)  and then the weekend before Halloween at a Thousand Trails for the Halloween festivities...the rest of the fall is open!  I ll have to see when DH goes to Richmond next and start planning!  :>
 
 We just did a drive through the park the weekend before the Hurricane hit...as usual with our Virginia Parks, it was lovely!

[Gone-Camping]

 Gone-Camping
vjm1639...
 
 I spoke with Cindy briefly this evening about next weekend. We re still a little in " flux"  about where we re going, but we did discuss Goose Point as the place that I wanted to go. However, friends are now talking about joining us for the trip, but they want to go to the Verona KOA (sewer connection for their MH)... I m trying to talk them into Goose Pt as well, they ll just have to conserve water usage!!! []
 
 I m not bringing the kids this time, they have school. Pretty neat, I take vacation when they can t go!!!! [8D]