What have we learned from this storm. (Iselle)

[james weatherford]

Albizias are a big problem -- and the regrowth from breaking that has occurred will cause a bigger problem.

A bad idea: relying on the electrical grid, with wires suspended on poles and electricity (supposed to be) coming from a central power station.

Geothermal got a very low assessment on the claims of "24 / 7 reliability".

[bluesboy]

my solar system never lost power.

[macuu222]

Never have an election the day after a natural disaster.

[wax]

Where we need emergency roads are from Kalapana to Kapoho and then to Pahoa and connecting towards Mountain View.

[4antares]

Mother Nature is mightier than, and often indifferent to, humans.

life is short. enjoy it

[csgray]

A connector through HPP on the often mentioned route of Railroad would have been useless. Any alternative routes, along with main routes, need to be kept clear of big weak trees!

Carol

[missydog1]

As Carey said, packing the frig and freezer with home made ice-packs really helped keep the food cold. The frozens stayed frozen during our outage.

I was using plastic bottles, but my son came up with the idea to use zip-lock (with zipper closure) gallon freezer bags full of water, which we layered in one side of our bottom drawer style freezer. This provided for maximum frozen power with no wasted air space between the way there is with bottles. Also it makes for a lot of storage using one little box of bags as opposed to saving bottles.

The bottles I used I cleaned first and filled with drinking water that was filtered. As things thawed, they would provide cold delicious drinking water.

[Guest]

For the investment in a 6-10k watt generator, you could install a solar kit worth its weight. I think I will invest my money there. It sucks still not having power !

[missydog1]

We learned that generators can break. []

We learned that even though we are tied to the grid, our water is not unless it gets shut off by the County (which has never happened). Our water was completely normal, and we could take showers and wash dishes with no power.

As we already knew, solar hot water doesn't heat during a storm, but it is nice afterwards.

Re outside lights, we had a stored box of 12-volt lights, and my son wired a two-light section to a track and powered them off of a big battery that he had pre-charged. He also rigged a charging station for cell phones etc.. to the big batteries. The lights would have run for about a week. We have lanterns and flashlights, but it was great to have bright lights in the kitchen.

We don't use candles, because years ago, we had an extended power outage due to a storm, and a candle got knocked over, and our house burned down, and two families almost died in the process. Have never been fond of candles since.

[Opihikaobob]

We learned that PGV had to have emergency services because they had an un-controlled release of toxic gases , and that they don't have any live people answering the phone , even though their was a hurricane coming and someone shoulda picked up. Even the Fire Department did not have a frigging tel # for PGV, so they went online and found one and it didn't have a live person available in a frigging hurricans buid up situation.
We learned that those people who had solar power , didn't loose their power, those who had catchment in general still had water, and how important it is to have a good generator
We learned that a chainsaw is an essential tool as well as being able to effectively sharpen it yourself .
We learned that ATT even though they have a mega cell phone tower at PGV , who I am sure is supplying power for ATT, that for some reason they can't transmit a wireless signal to affected customers for a least 5 days and counting.