General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: I just got power back in NJ after 49 hours. [View all]I was so overjoyed when the lights came on that I wanted to come here and share my experience with people who don't live in the region.
I was extremely lucky. All I lost was power. Many people have lost much more. In my case, there was probably not much more government could have done, but having to sit in the dark for so many hours makes you realize that it could easily have been much worse. I saw many trees knocked down by the storm. I read about one person who was killed when a tree fell on him. People only a few miles away are trapped in their flooded homes. I heard on the radio about elderly people in highrises in Manhattan who are effectively trapped in their homes. Even in my case, if it weren't for government regulation, the power outage could have lasted much longer if PSE&G reasoned that paying people to work overtime isn't worth getting power back to a few hundred people.
When I read about Romney wanting to privatize FEMA, I wonder if people (working-class people voting Republican) stop to think about what that means. As far as I can tell, it means that you pay for your own rescue. If you can't afford to be rescued, you're on your own. That's not the kind of society I want to live in.