Interesting Times


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Heh, my life in this neck of the woods has been quite interesting as of late. Up here in Prince Rupert, B.C., Canada we have had a series of events that are quite unusual.

A month or two ago we had a landslide that knocked out main power in our town for about a month and we lived on auxiliary power supplied by two large generators. Recently some other things have happened. We had another landslide which closed the highway; the road was covered by 40 feet of rocks and mud. Sadly two people in their car were killed in the slide. After several days road crews got the debris cleared. Last week the Skeena river which flows through Northern BC flooded as a result of warm temperatures and a record snow pack on the mountains. Highway 16 which connects us to the rest of the world is now under 3-4 feet of water. The flooding has also made the rail lines inoperable, the trains can't get through. The only way in or out of our town is now by ferry or plane. Thankfully, food and supplies are being shipped up to us by ferry along the coast as no supply trucks can get to us. Last week when it was announced that the highway was closed some people panicked and went on a buying spree cleaning out the store shelves of milk and produce. Several of our gas stations have run out of fuel (some gas should be shipped up by barge soon). On Thursday night the first shipment of food, supplies via ferry arrived and we are in no danger of running out of food now.

Our Internet fiber optic cable between here and Terrace ( our nearest town) was severed yesterday by the flood waters. Our ISP has rigged up a microwave Internet link between a series of towers which connects us to the Internet. At this point we don't know when the flood waters will recede.

Interesting times indeed. :unsure:

some pictures:

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Makes me glad I live in the real world and all we have to worry about is the occasional tornado and flash flood and they are gone pretty fast.

If one store is out of something, just drive across the intersection to their competitor or down the street a mile or so to another chain.

And hearabouts in Texas, we have more than one road in and out of town.

Of course you do have some beautiful scenery and the summers are probably a bit cooler than here although so far we only topped 90 degrees four times, three of them in the last week.

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Hang in there. At least it's mostly infrastructure. Our tornado's and some hurricanes here are far more devastating, taking out whole towns and utilities. Very good that you have aux. power set up. WhooHoo that your ISP has taken steps to keep you connected. Right pretty country, BTW.

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Hey Pete_C, handplane, bozodog, Carnevil:-)

Pete_C: Yeah I haven't been inconvenienced too much as I don't need to travel out of town yet. I'm hoping to do a road trip in July so I'm hopeful that the waters will recede by then. Yes, we do have beautiful scenery here and the weather is typically rainy and cool. Man, 90 degree heat would freak me out:-)

handplane: Thanks for the well wishes. We are in no danger at the present time. I'm hopeful that a fuel barge will arrive in town so I can gas-up my Malibu:-) We are doing fine thank you:-)

bozodog: You are right! I have not endured anything like what some of your residents get hit with. The video clips that I've seen of a tornado are awesome and truly terrifying. No one has lost any houses in our town. In the interior of BC the flooding has been severe and some people have had to evacuate their homes.

Carnevil: Good to see my friend:-) Agreed. People can get very stressed in times like these. When we had the buying spree and the shelves were cleaned out two little old ladies got into a fight over the last head of lettuce........that's really weird. I mean I can understand fighting over the last case of my favourite malt beverage:-)

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You seem fairly well prepared for it. Glad everyone's OK. We just got through a tornado warning. The hail that came with it was the size of softballs. Destroyed a whole bunch of cars and stuff

Mark

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Hey Pete_C, handplane, bozodog, Carnevil:-)

Carnevil: Good to see my friend:-) Agreed. People can get very stressed in times like these. When we had the buying spree and the shelves were cleaned out two little old ladies got into a fight over the last head of lettuce........that's really weird. I mean I can understand fighting over the last case of my favourite malt beverage:-)

When you think about it fighting over lettuce or something like that is funny. I mean if they stopped to think about it, fighting over something that will only last a week or so, is dumb as hell. That year we had that major black out that took out the whole eastern seaboard, I saw people stocking up on stuff that will parish in a week or so. Oh I won't mention the idiots going to the gas station and filling up 5 gallon buckets with gas. That's right I said buckets as in open air buckets, one spark and kabooom.

I'd never have to worry about fighting over my favorite drink of choice I keep a stockpile for just such occasions. Who needs food as long as I can get hammered. :lol:

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Hey Hitest

Ya, most of the western most interior sections are flooding now, and with so much snowpack still on the mountains, it ain't over yet unfortunately. I haven't seen you guys hit this hard by floods in some time, probably since I lived in Whistler in 78 or so.

Here's hoping the weather stays cool for awhile yet so the waters can recede before the main snowpack melts, cause if it warms up in the higher altitudes too soon....well, you know what'll happen...

Heheh...about the only thing we DON"T get here on the prairies, is Hurricanes. Oh...maybe Avalanches are rare too, our ski slopes aren't quite large enough out here I guess, but we do get slides in the vallies...just a tad smaller than Frank's (Canadian's will get that one), and the entire province is hardly "Flat". Tornado's, flooding, heavy snows in winter, sweltering heat in summer, huge grass & forest fires, and of course the "Infamous" Prarie Winds. A light breeze here can blow your dog into the next town, a strong gust will blow you there too...

Just watched a show where they chose the 7 Wonders of Canada, and the Prairie Skies was one of them, no arguments here. They can be breathtaking when the entire sky is full of Northern Lights and the visible sky is endless. Sight to behold I tell ya, everyone has to see something that beautiful at least once in their lives, and we get it all year round. And with so many natural wonders up here, to have our skies chosen as one of the top 7 is rather humbling I think....of course seeing a prairie sunset is even more humbling. Oh...I'm getting off subject here ;)

Well George, you guys stay safe over there and I'm keeping watch on the news about how things are doing out west lately. Let's hope that after the floods that the forest fires will be low this season. Last couple of years have been devastating for allot of towns out there.

You guys take care and if you need any Lettuce, just lemme know and I'll ship some over. I know a guy who knows a guy who's got a plane, and I can still skydive....

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Wow, so many calamities. Sorry to hear you're getting hit so much.

On the other hand, you've probably seen how we handle natural disasters in the U.S. (Katrina ring a bell?). Internet service already? Gasoline shipped in? You guys have your act together!

Hope things continue to be more of an inconvenience than disasterous.

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garmanma: Yeah, I've read about those huge hail stones.....thankfully I've never experienced them. Yeah, so far we're okay:-)

Carnevil: LOL, I have to admit that when this first happened I did go out and buy a few more tall ones than usual........for medicinal purposes of course. B)

irregularjoe: Yes, adversity does make life interesting. There's an old Chinese curse that goes like this: "May you live in interesting times". Heh, I'm looking forward to boring times:-)

Chappy: Thanks for the offer of the lettuce, Dave! If we get desperate I'll go up on the roof and put a target there so you have something to aim for:-) I just read a rumour on the Internet that our natural gas pipeline has also ruptured. It is a good thing it is June so we won't freeze, I've got a natural gas furnace. This makes me glad that I replaced my gas hot water tank with an electric one ( I can at least have a hot shower).

JDoors: Yes, I was thrilled that the IT guys re-routed our Internet connection to the microwave towers. This was an easy fix as the towers were already in place. This was how we had our Internet connection before the fiber optic pipe was put in place. Microwave Internet is okay, there's just a bit of an annoying ping latency. Heh, it sure beats having no Internet at all.

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WOW!!!

Looks like i missed out on some fun times. :blink:

Glad you weathered it out..... yes there was a pun in there......LOL

Good to see everything is going OK for you.

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Hi bozodog and JSKY :D

Yep, as Bill Shakespeare said: "All's Well That Ends Well"

Things are slowly returning to normal up here. Our gas line should be fixed in a day or two. Now that the highway is open the gasoline tanker trucks should be arriving in a day or two to fill up the service stations which are bone dry now.

Life is good. :thumbsup:

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I can't get passed the point that you seem to live out of the main city, yet have access to hi-speed internet(not satellite).

We have a fiber optic cable that stretches 100+ miles to the nearest city that provides broadband. The flood took out the cable. It should be repaired at some point. What we're using now (our old method) is a series of microwave towers that extends between here and the lower mainland of BC, our Internet signal is relayed through the air from tower to tower.....it isn't too bad it just has crappy latency.

I'll be very happy when the fiber is re-connected.

Yep, shanenin we are indeed lucky to have broadband up here:-)

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Hitest, who is your ISP? Sounds like they went through some trouble to keep yalls internet on. MOst ISPs would probably just say your SOL.

Hi Bubba Bob:-) Agreed. Our ISP got us out of a jam very quickly. My ISP is probably one of the few independent ISPs left in BC, the Company is called CityWest. Just about everyone else in BC is on Telus (formerly BC Tel).

Because we're at the end of the line we do have bandwidth issues, that is, sometimes our download speeds really suck big time.

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WOW!!!

Looks like i missed out on some fun times. :blink:

Glad you weathered it out..... yes there was a pun in there......LOL

Good to see everything is going OK for you.

Hitest:

I hope everything is going well ;) I have read this thread, although I have not posted in it till now - I will keep you in my thoughts and prayers ;)

Brian

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WOW!!!

Looks like i missed out on some fun times. :blink:

Glad you weathered it out..... yes there was a pun in there......LOL

Good to see everything is going OK for you.

Hitest:

I hope everything is going well ;) I have read this thread, although I have not posted in it till now - I will keep you in my thoughts and prayers ;)

Brian

Hi Brian,

Everything is going just fine, thank you for asking! :D

The flood waters have receded and our town has been re-supplied. I think our gas line has also been repaired as I have heat:-) The only think left to get done is to have our fiber optic cable re-attached and that'll be done at some point.

We are in good shape now:-)

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WOW!!!

Looks like i missed out on some fun times. :blink:

Glad you weathered it out..... yes there was a pun in there......LOL

Good to see everything is going OK for you.

Hitest:

I hope everything is going well ;) I have read this thread, although I have not posted in it till now - I will keep you in my thoughts and prayers ;)

Brian

Hi Brian,

Everything is going just fine, thank you for asking! :D

The flood waters have receded and our town has been re-supplied. I think our gas line has also been repaired as I have heat:-) The only think left to get done is to have our fiber optic cable re-attached and that'll be done at some point.

We are in good shape now:-)

Strange, ain't it. You guys are concerned about heat and I'm trying to get my AC running. It's like Marty says, you so used to chatting with everyone you don't realize exactly how far away they really are

Mark

Mark

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