Let’s start today with our continued hopes and prayers for RBT and OFD… to make a speedy recovery and to know you have people rooting for you.
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FEMA’s brief from PR and the USVI shows continued improvement. In PR, more people are covered by cell service, clean water, sewage systems, and hospitals. One hospital that was running on gennie has closed.
The constant movement of hospitals on and off grid says that the story is more complex than the PPT briefing suggests.
Also, St Thomas is still only ~34% under grid power, St Croix less than 11% and trending DOWN, and St John at 30%. Note the amount of time that has passed. Most of us don’t live on what are essentially remote islands under 2nd or 3rd world conditions, but are you prepared to be THAT LONG without power, hospital, and water? There are still 3 shelters operating in the USVI with 66 occupants. PR of course has more, but the number and occupants are steadily declining.
It’s interesting to me that Houston and parts south have completely vanished from any disaster reporting. Funny how quickly that happens. In areas with heavy flooding, you can still clearly see the damage, but recovery is well underway.
PR and USVI have also fallen to the wayside in news coverage. Perhaps the rest of the nation is as tired of hearing about the lazy wastrels whining as the Gulf Coast and Florida are…
Speaking of Florida, when I was there last week there was little sign of the hurricane. A few trees down was about it. I drove from Tampa Int’l Airport to the Sarasota area. Pretty far up the coast, and out of the bad storm… did have one relative down there who lost some window screens on her “Florida room.” And that’s about it…
Here in Houston, we’ve had a cool front move in and should be cooler for a couple of days. I’ll take the reprieve and do some work in the attic, garage, and driveway, which work depends on if we get the forecast rain or not.
Which brings up another thing I’ve been meaning to mention. I find it very convenient to have a bunch of projects to work on in rotation. I’ve found that I can’t just ‘bust ass’ on one thing anymore, but I can move from indoor to outdoor, hard lifting to sitting down, doing bits and pieces. This is a completely different style of working for me and has taken some getting used to. The main difference is how long everything takes (measured by calendar.) It helps tremendously to gather all the stuff you need, and have it handy for the smaller segments of effort you can direct at it. I can get a surprising amount of stuff done this way. If you’ve stagnated or let a bunch of stuff pile up, you might find this ‘little bit at a time’ ‘chipping away at it’ approach useful to get moving again.
Speaking of moving, I better get a couple of tasks started….
nick