[SCA-AE] Crown fighting questions and a WNY storrm update

[Haraldr Bassi (AE)]

Clare Jackson wrote:

> We had a major snow storm onto trees that were still leafed out and
> almost a quarter million are out of power until sometime this coming
> week - maybe as late as the weekend.  Callidus and I are in a very
> very lucky pocket near a transfer station - we never did go down.
> Most of the damage to the electric grid is widely scattered downed
> wires, so it's going to take a long time to get everybody back up.
> We've also lost or damaged many many old deciduous trees - Buffalo
> and the rest of northern WNY is not going to look the same for years,
> maybe decades.  Only 3 deaths - two falling trees, 1 car crash.
> We've been lucky.  Now if we can just explain the idea of carbon
> monoxide to people - dozens in the hospital with symptoms, only 2
> critical, so far.
> 

Hi Cori,

How well I can sympathize with your plight... I remember October 1987, 
we got a similarly freak snow storm here in the Hudson Valley area of 
New York, but ours came a full week earlier on October 4th. Most of the 
area was out of power for a very extended period. We were down for 
almost two weeks. More annoyingly, we had a birthday party scheduled for 
my son, who turned 6, just 5 days after the storm. There was no way we 
were going to cancel his party. They had a blast anyway...

The morning after the snow, we knew we were going to be power down for 
several days, so as soon as the neighbors with plows and chain saws 
cleared the roads, I went to the local electrical supply store and 
bought a new electric panel and replaced the fuse box with a circuit 
breaker panel and added a connection for a generator. We were back up 
and running off a tractor driven PTO generator until it broke about a 
week in. The second week we were without power entirely.

The trees in the area, especially those lining the Taconic State 
Parkway, are finally starting to show signs of recovery. It had for 
years looked like a giant had taken a scythe to the forest and clipped 
all the pines and other trees at the same uniform height. It was so 
weird for so many years to see all the trees topped at a uniform height. 
There are still forests around here where you can see almost as many 
downed trees as there are standing trees, from that particular storm. So 
yes, your trees will be very unhappy for quite a while.

Hang in there...

Haraldr Bassi