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View Full Version : About 1M without power after Hurricane Michael shreds electric grids; towns flattened



Teh One Who Knocks
10-12-2018, 09:51 AM
By Stephen Sorace | Fox News


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About a million people remained in the dark Friday morning after Hurricane Michael left a trail of destruction that claimed at least six lives, flattened entire towns and "shattered" electrical grids.

The scenes were familiar across communities in Florida and Georgia: uprooted trees cracked like toothpicks, buildings with roofs peeled off, homes flattened into an unrecognizable landscape.

As dawn broke in Albany, Ga., residents arose to find trees sticking out of houses and blocking 100 intersections, local news station WRAL-TV reported.

Mexico Beach, Fla., looked as if a bomb had gone off as residents emerged to tally their losses. Thirty miles up the coast in Panama City, blocks of beachfront homes were obliterated and debris lay strewn aside overturned vehicles.

"We'll have to bulldoze and start over," Linda Marquardt, of Mexico Beach, said of her mud-filled home.

“It looks like an atomic bomb had hit our city,” David Barnes, of Panama City, told the Panama City News Herald. “Damage has been widespread.”
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Former President Barack Obama, in a tweet, asked Americans to help rebuild. “America is always at our best when we look out for each other,” he wrote.

There were at least 6 confirmed fatalities, including a Florida man killed by a tree that crashed through his roof, a North Carolina man also struck by a fallen tree, and an 11-year-old Georgia girl who died when a carport rammed the family's modular home.

Assessments by Georgia's Department of Agriculture show incredible losses to the state’s crops, animals and infrastructure.

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Georgia’s $23.3 billion poultry industry was hit hard after 84 chicken houses, estimated to have held more than 2 million chickens, were destroyed. Damaging winds annihilated much of the state’s cotton crop or tangled it, making it harder to extract clean lint during the ginning process.

Boston-based insurance company Karen Clark & Company is estimating Hurricane Michael caused about $8 billion in insured losses. Total damages from storm surge are estimated to be $3.7 billion, of which about ten percent will be insured.

Emergency management officials are urging residents to stay off the streets until utility crews and other service providers finish clearing away hazardous obstacles.

As of Thursday evening, more than 370,000 customers were without power in Florida and 202,000 customers in Virginia were in the dark. Nearly 500,000 customers were without power across the Carolinas as Michael swept through, the Raleigh News & Observer reported.

Meanwhile, Georgia Power reported to have restored electric to 234,000 customers across The Peach State by Thursday evening.
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Florida Senator Marco Rubio said restoring power was going to be “long & difficult” as the storm “shredded” its electric grid. He expected it to take several days before crews could even get to work on bringing Floridians out of the dark due to the immense cleanup that needs to take place.

Officials estimate that it could take days or even weeks to restore power in some areas.

Rick Reichmuth, Fox News' chief meteorologist, said Michael was the fourth-most powerful storm to make landfall in the U.S. when measuring by wind, which topped out at 155 mph, and the third-most powerful in terms of pressure, at 919 mb.

Michael was the first storm of its magnitude to make landfall in the Panhandle since record-keeping there began in 1851.

Fox News’ Travis Fedschun and The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Goofy
10-12-2018, 10:44 AM
:rip:

Teh One Who Knocks
10-12-2018, 10:59 AM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPJ6fhQ8-Tw

RBP
10-12-2018, 12:24 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hPJ6fhQ8-Tw

:shock: all those pads were homes that are just totally gone?

Teh One Who Knocks
10-12-2018, 12:26 PM
:shock: all those pads were homes that are just totally gone?

Yup, complete destruction

DemonGeminiX
10-12-2018, 12:37 PM
I feel for these people. And the people in the Carolinas that got hit a few weeks or so back. It always seems like the coastal towns and surrounding in the Carolinas are getting wrecked.

That's the risk of living near the beach in the South. My sister wanted to live near the beach her entire life. She and her husband moved down to a nice community in North Florida back in '09 or '10. Every year since she's moved down here, she's wigged out when the storms threaten. The year before last, when we actually had to leave the area, she was a complete and total mess. I've been down here since '91, so I'm used to it. When they first moved down here, they were like, "No way, we're never going back up North. We never want to see a Northern winter again. We'll never miss snow." After 2 years ago, during both hurricane seasons, last year and this, she's whimpered about going back up home. She keeps asking me how I remain so calm.

I told them so. Both of them.

Teh One Who Knocks
10-12-2018, 01:09 PM
I feel for these people. And the people in the Carolinas that got hit a few weeks or so back. It always seems like the coastal towns and surrounding in the Carolinas are getting wrecked.

I don't. They choose to live there. They know the risks. And by living there, even though they are the ones in the middle of the devastation, their living there affects the entire country. Once again, I can guarantee that all my insurance rates will go up for the third consecutive year because of all the claims being made because of the two major hurricanes that hit this year. It pisses me off that my insurance rates have to go up just because someone wants to live on the beach.

/rant

DemonGeminiX
10-12-2018, 01:15 PM
Don't blame them, blame the insurance companies. It's their bullshit practices.

Pony
10-12-2018, 01:22 PM
:shock: all those pads were homes that are just totally gone?


Yup, complete destruction

Wow. I'm equally impressed by the few stand alone homes that remain, Wonder if they did something different during construction or just luck. Either way that builder should be the standard.

DemonGeminiX
10-12-2018, 01:33 PM
There are ways to build house to be more resistant to hurricanes. My house was built to withstand a Cat2 head on.

Pony
10-12-2018, 07:04 PM
There are ways to build house to be more resistant to hurricanes. My house was built to withstand a Cat2 head on.

I know some things are required in storm areas, strapping, particular fasteners, etc. Don't know if they glue and screw panels yet. Still, considering this was damn near a cat5, I'm super impressed.

Godfather
10-13-2018, 01:35 AM
I don't. They choose to live there. They know the risks. And by living there, even though they are the ones in the middle of the devastation, their living there affects the entire country. Once again, I can guarantee that all my insurance rates will go up for the third consecutive year because of all the claims being made because of the two major hurricanes that hit this year. It pisses me off that my insurance rates have to go up just because someone wants to live on the beach.

/rant



Don't blame them, blame the insurance companies. It's their bullshit practices.

I can't speak for US Flood Insurance as I know it's federally insured and different than anything we have here.. but anywhere you live probably has some sort of catastrophe threat. In Vancouver we fear 'the big one', in Ontario they get ice storms and flood, some provinces get tornadoes, Alberta gets insane hail storms, Northern areas have high forest fire risk. Insurance is about spreading risk out. You could try and find a local company that doesn't touch those areas, but every company is looking to spread risk so that a bad year in Colorado doesn't cause a company to increase it's rates 10-fold, because they had a good year in Texas, and eventually it'll swing the other way. I agree that people shouldn't build in insanely high flood/hurricane risk areas at all, but to some extent we all have risk and the companies do what they can to make it fairly equitable. As we get better analytics, the ability to target the highest risk areas with the highest rates becomes more accurate.