We are caught with our proverbial pants down in this ice storm in Montgomery County, PA... [View all]

[PCIntern]

Now please allow me to preface this by saying that the vast majority of those involved have places to go, have relatives, friends, churches and synagogues opened their doors and invited those without power to spend the night or charge their phones, computers, or whatever. We are definitely NOT going to have an apocalypse of any type here anytime soon and the power should be back for virtually everyone within three days.

However, it is worth noting that there have been some real catastrophes: an ER doc was helping a neighbor remove a tree limb from his driveway and another branch fell and the doc was taken to the hospital in very critical condition. There are downed sparking power lines all over the place and believe it or not, the valley in which I live has very very poor cellular service BECAUSE building a cellular tower nearby has been voted down time and again. So the people with their power lines cavorting in their driveways can't leave their homes since 13000 volts is easily conducted through the standing water around the houses and they can't report the disaster because there's no phone service. Conundrum,eh? anyone else want to "preserve the environment" BY NOT BUILDING A FRIGGING CELL TOWER???!!!!! We have been warning about EXACTLY this issue for YEARS here: the roads are tree-lined and any storm, but especially a storm such as this one, knocks branches down and we lose power routinely. If the phone lines go down we can't call anyone and tell them that we have no power. When we tell vendors that we have no cell service, they talk to us like we're stupid or something. "How can that be?"

Anyway, there are almost 600000 homes without power and even when it comes back on for many, it goes off again due to more falling branches or shorting transformers.

Well, life sure ain't dull....