Irene'd

Thankfully, it seems like overall, Hurricane Irene's impact was not as bad as predicted. Speaking only of our own property, there wasn't any flooding in the front yard and the water in the basement was much less than I expected. But, we've been without power at our home since 2am Sunday morning. Since we have a well, no electricity means no water.

We're at the point where we need to decide if we stick it out at home for a few more hours, or if we need to find somewhere else to stay for a night or two. I called Met Ed to see when the juice would be back on, and got this recorded message:

"The Met Ed Customer Service Center is closed due to outages from Hurricane Irene."

That's sure not the answer I was looking for, but unfortunately, I guess it is an answer. Looking for more information, I went to Met Ed's website and was surprised to find an informative outage map.

If you look at York County, we have 2,000-5,000 outages, which I was surprised to see was more than counties closer to Philly. However, I think it's because other utility companies service those areas. Compared to Berks County (Reading area) and it's 12,000 outages, York County got off relatively lightly with just under 5,000.

A quick drive around Manchester last night made it appear as if it were just our street that was without power, but there's 144 customers without power in Manchester.


This, along with Met Ed's own outage, makes me think the lights won't be back on for quite awhile.

If you're reading this from somewhere within Irene's Path of Devastation, or in our case, it's Trail of Inconvenience, I hope you fared well and/or wish you the best of luck with any repairs.

Update: Moments after posting this, I got a call on my cel from Met Ed's automated system to verify whether power had been restored. (Hit "1" for yes, "2" for no.) I felt like this was a huge cause for optimism, but since I'm not at home, I called my wife, only to find that the power is still out.