Tornado

Well, this week I got to Practice what I've been preaching about emergency preparedness.

I went to Memphis to celebrate my mother's 92nd birthday and spend some time with her and my Dad, who is 91 and an invalid with serious dementia. Basically, he's a 160-pound infant. My mother is the primary caregiver for him, with home health aides morning and evening to get him up and put him to bed.

We had a lovely visit and a happy Birthday outing with her ... until the Tornado struck on Friday night.

I heard the thunder, so I had just shut down the computer equipment when we heard a loud crack very near. The cable went out. Moments later, the power went as well.

My mother knew just where to go to get the two flashlights in the darkened house. She gave me directions to the battery-operated radio, which was an enormous boom-box from the 70's that didn't turn on.

I went to the store for more batteries, and decided to buy an emergency radio -- the kind that works on batteries, or in a pinch you can wind it up with a crank for an hour's service. The boom-box didn't work even with fresh batteries, so I was glad for the new emergency radio.

The essentials in a house with an invalid are basic care, water, fans to keep him cool in 90-degree weather, and refrigeration to keep the food from spoiling. Television too is a staple in their house, for companionship (he doesn't speak).

Four years ago in the wake of Hurricane Elvis the power was out for weeks. My sister scooped up my parents and took them out to her house for the duration. This time, however, we can't move Dad without an ambulance. We were in for the seige.

His health aide for Friday was so rattled by the storm that she went straight home and forgot us. But I was there and could fill in, with my mother holding the flashlight. We have a Heiler lift which works with hand-pumping so moving him was manageable. We had no way to cook (their stove is electric), so we ate some left-overs cold, played NPR on the radio, and sponged him with cool water.

The older phones in the house worked (including the rotary dial phone that has hung on the kitchen wall for more than 50 years), but the newer "remote" phones did not work. We were glad for the wall phone and the Princess phone.

I was impressed with the number of friends and neighbors who came by to check on them. One couple brought picnic food, pre-cooked. Three neighbors came over with a generator on a dolly and worked for over an hour to get it started, but never succeeded. We were grateful for their thoughtfulness, but decided we were fine for the night. While I'm normally up working until at least 11, that night we went to bed with the sun and got the longest, most quiet night's sleep I can remember.

On Saturday we began to get a clearer picture of what had happened. Their neighbor on the west side (Eric) had lost a tree which ripped the wires off the side of his house and down from the pole we share with him. This had left wires in the yard and across the roadway. Another neighbor two doors away to the south had lost an enormous oak tree, which fell across the street, completely blocking the way and another neighbor's driveway. Other neighbors with chain saws helped to free up the driveway and make passage for one car across the street.

Altogether there were more than 140,000 people in Memphis without power. Clearly this was much more than the normal crews could handle. They brought in additional repair crews from 35 other communities as far away as Chattanooga (10 hours' drive from Memphis). It was going to take a while. They were forecasting at least a week.

My brother-in-law came with another generator, borrowed from another friend, and this one started. By the afternoon we had refrigeration and fans and a few lights. I went out to pick up a take-out lunch.

On the third day, following my third call, the fire department came to take the wire from across the street, and by evening the power people began their repairs. They had men on three poles at the same time fixing the wires. By the end of the third day we had power.

Cable didn't come back until the 5th day. Meanwhile I rented DVD's and my sister brought a bad of video tapes.

With the power back, my mother had her regular bridge game at the house on Monday. Two of those ladies still had no power at their own homes, so they were glad for the relative coolness of our house. But my sister and I realized that the house was 78 degrees, and while it was sufficient for most needs, we wondered about the health of the air conditioning system. In fact the compressor was blown in the power surge, and that was not fixed until day 7.

We fared well through the outage. Life was different, but manageable. The most important factor was the network of friends and neighbors who all pulled together, checked on one another, and pitched in as needed to keep people safe.

We took the batteries out of the emergency radio and stored it with two sets of new batteries in a plastic bag. It might be another four years before the next major outage, and we didn't want the batteries to leak and ruin the radio.

You never know when you're going to need it!