Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, CaryThe Triangle Area
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Next question to ask is who's been here when a hurricane went through. Hurricane Fran in 1996 was a doozey! It effected the entire Triangle with trees down everywhere and many areas were without power (including clean water since there was no power to run the water filtration plants) for up to 2 weeks. It was early September, hot, and the smell of bbq grills cooking meat b4 it spoiled was everywhere for days on end! It was really quite a disaster that I hope I never experience again.
Fran was a real surprise. Nobody expected it to get so far inland.
We lived in Mini-City off Capital. Went across to Lowe's Foods for ice.
Guess what sold out first? Milk, No. Water, No. Diapers, No. Beer, Yes.
My experience from living through hurricanes has been beer and cigarettes are the first to go.
Having said that we've survived Hurricane Fran (2 big trees came down on the house over our little boy's room); the "snow storm of the century" in Jan '00 (stores closed for 3 days and schools were close for 1 week--we had a blast!), the ice storm of 02--scariest night of my life (even above a number of coastal hurricanes I endured) and lived without electricity for 10 days, heating with only a gas fireplace in a 2000+sq foot house! brr! The ice storm of 05 wasn't as scary per se, but bad just the same, esp in Wake Co. I remember the buses turning back b/c they couldn't get up the hills and some kids ended up spending the night in the nearest schools. People who lived close to those schools brought in food, blankets and sleeping bags. It's really cool when everyone pitches in in bad situations. Nothing though of course compares to my experience with Katrina...but that of course isn't NC experiences.
I was on 540, going back to the office from Twin Lakes. The roads were getting icey and yet, I watched crazy people driving FAST. I stayed in the far right lane and drove slow and yes, people were passing me.
As I made my way DOWN the Creedmoor Road exit, I went extra slow as I knew there was a dip at the end of the exit and I KNEW it would be a puddle of ice. Some smartie pants FLEW past me, couldn't stop and ended up skidding past the stop sign, at the bottom of the exit, and hit the medium. Lucky for him, there were no cars coming in the opposite direction and he wasn't hurt.
What usually takes me another 5 minutes to get home, only took me about 10 minutes, just because I was driving slow.
Daughter's bus usually gets her home in 30 minutes. It took her TWO HOURS to get home.
Hubby left from Clayton and could not get home. Too much traffic. Cars just stopped. People running from their cars to the woods to take care of business! He finally went back to his office and watched TV for a few hours. It was midnight before he ventured out again and the roads were deserted so it only took him 30 minutes to get home, which is about normal.
There were two elementary schools that had kids that didn't get picked up so they spent the night with teachers.
Fran was a real surprise. Nobody expected it to get so far inland.
We lived in Mini-City off Capital. Went across to Lowe's Foods for ice.
Guess what sold out first? Milk, No. Water, No. Diapers, No. Beer, Yes.
I lived in Chapel Hill then and the water treatment plant was out of commission so water was the first thing off the shelves in the stores. When it came to getting water there were some pretty desperate people. I saw many panicing and ripping it out of others hands in the stores. When the stores ran out we had to wait sometimes a couple days for a delivery. When the town realized it was going to be quite some time till the city could provide water again they had the delivery trucks at the grocery stores start giving it away for free to residents along with ice. After several days of no water we starting coming over to Durham to catch a break and eat in restaurants that could offer water with a meal since ours couldn't serve any or fountain drinks, not to mention serving them cold. It was kind of crazy experience.
Haha funny I remember that day. I am 18 just graduated high school this year, but at the time i was in 9th and one of 3 student stuck over night at school. I live just outside of wake county in Durham, or did at that time... and don’t ever ask how i got into wake county and bussed to a school downtown Raleigh! But I was for 4 years, never the less that night sucked. There was nothing to eat, we broke into the vending machine lol... but because of wcpss's health food laws, there was nothing good in there. I ended up breaking threw the firewall (at that time was a local proxy.wcpss.net at the school and very insecure.... all that has changed now and its remotely hosted) Never the less I don’t remember getting much sleep that night. We found bean bags though... that rocked.
If that link doesn't work, surf to wral.com - weather - triangle snowstorms through the years (under weather extras)
There used to be an overhead shot or two of most of raleigh showing all surface streets covered in vehicles from bumper to bumper... still looking for it...
After 7 hours from 64/us1/beltline headed north through crabtree and UP leadmine, i finally ditched the car when I knew I was a mile from the house (its always good to have these distance markers burried back in your survival pile...) - the nerves just couldn't take it any longer after darkness fell.
ah, video! http://raleighskyline.com/content/20...lyzed-raleigh/
Last edited by eFab; 11-28-2009 at 04:33 PM..
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