Is everybody OK? (Hurricane)

[veteranof1000psychicwars]

Hey, just checking in to see if all of our friends in the South and on the East Coast are OK from Hurricane Helene hitting.
I'm in Jefferson GA, just outside of Athens. I got some heavy rain Thursday night, but not a drop today (Friday). A friend about 30 miles from here (Gainesville) got pounded pretty hard last night and this morning.
Parts of metro Atlanta are flooded which is very unusual-another friend got caught in some of that yesterday.
So, wondering if everyone is all right. Don't know where most people live that might have gotten hit that are members here, except for Sean in Atlanta, and some folks in NC.

[Garyhead]

Brother in St Pete got 1” in his house. Garage 3” but the exterior waterline was 12” so garage door seal worked pretty good. They moved there in 2020. “She” didn’t like the textured cement / epoxy floors so had a Costco vendor install a hardwood floor last year. That’s gotta all come out now. Her daughter 4 miles away got 4’ of water indoors. Third time house flooded since 2020….why do we allow folks to keep rebuilding on these areas? They are 3’ above sea level. Brother is 9’ above sea level. Anyway, brother has an airstream in the side yard that stayed dry so now living in it. Haven’t heard from buddy in Blairsville, GA….looks like he took a direct hit up in the mountains. His community spent the week clearing the two creeks of debris in anticipation of these creeks becoming rivers….. hoping the best for him.

[veteranof1000psychicwars]

Good Lord. That sucks. Hope your friend is all right. Haven't seen what the storm did up there.

[Digital_Man]

No issues here but it has been talked about a lot on the news. I expect some kind of leftover rain or something. It actually was a bit rainy here today in the Philly burbs but I'm not sure if the hurricane had anything to do with that.

[StarThrower]

Some friends of ours sustained major damage to their property in S. Carolina. I was just reading about the situation in Asheville, NC and it's really bad. My parents and sister are three hours away in Greensboro, but there was no damage there.

[moecurlythanu]

I was in Asheville a week ago. Lucky to have missed the mess.

[Seven8]

When I heard Asheville was hit so hard I immediately thought of Moog and wondered how Moog Music and the Moogseum fared. IIRC the Moog factory either just moved to a new location or was in the process of moving but I think they were still in Asheville. Last I heard the whole town is without power and a lot of road are washed out. Hope everyone is okay.

[SteveSly]

When I heard Asheville was hit so hard I immediately thought of Moog and wondered how Moog Music and the Moogseum fared. IIRC the Moog factory either just moved to a new location or was in the process of moving but I think they were still in Asheville. Last I heard the whole town is without power and a lot of road are washed out. Hope everyone is okay.

Robert Shindler posted on Facebook that the building is without power, but there was no actual damage.

[SteveSly]

Check out this Facebook post from John Mitchell who is currently touring with The Richard Cross Band and were supposed to play a show in Ashville (I had to break it into two parts as it is too long).

DCB tour day 3
Currently en route to Nashville.
I'll be honest, the last 72 hours have been a bit testing for all involved.
Never in my life have I found myself in the situation that I found myself in these past few days in Asheville, NC.
It's difficult to know where to begin really.
The hurricane hit Asheville and basically decimated the place.
Bridges and houses were destroyed as the flooding swept hundreds of people's homes and cars away.
There was no electricity, water, mobile signal, petrol or WiFi and the stores all sold out of water and food in extremely short order.
We obviously had to cancel the Grey Eagle show in Asheville on the Friday and as there was no gasoline to put in the sprinter and all the roads out of Asheville were blocked, we had to cancel Louisville as well.
Fortunately the hotel where we were staying didn't suffer any real damage apart from being cut off of water and electricity so when it got dark we just had to stay in our rooms.
We took it in turns to go to the local JS convenience store which had very limited supplies of water and crisps and peanut butter and could only accept cash and we basically lived on peanut butter and Cheetos for a couple of days.
In the absence of water, going to the toilet became a bit of a challenge but we all overcame this predicament in various fashions which I won't document here.
The Duke Power relief crew had been summoned from Ohio and used our hotel as their base camp to begin with and sat around in the car park waiting to be sent into work. They were last seen drinking beers and making merry only to be told they weren't required and were sent home, only to be resummoned last night to start dealing with all the downed power lines.
Both Jack and I and E.P. the tour manager took it in turns to go on limited distance reccy missions for petrol to the surrounding stations, only a few of which were operational on generators due to the power outages.
Jack and E.P. went on the first trip and got a lift into town with Scott the hotel manager who dropped them off near the gas station, the queue for which snaked back for miles.

[SteveSly]

Part II:


Apparently a kind man called Jeremy let them fill the cans whilst he filled his car thus precluding the need to go to the end of the car line.
It didn't however take long for tempers to fray and some man pulled a gun on a woman with a screaming child and had to be talked off the ledge into putting his gun away.
We then had 2 gallons of fuel from empty to play with, so upon Jack and EPs return, I elected to go back out in the van for a wider search in the vain hope of filling up and leaving the town.
Thus we did a circuit of the town and eventually concluded that going back to where Jack and E.P. had been earlier was the only viable option.
By this point however, the owners son had taken it upon himself to direct traffic into the station wearing a Hawaiian shirt and yelling into a radio mic whilst simultaneously blasting hip hop from a rudimentary speaker.
At one point he lost his cool with a man in a Dodge and yelled 'get in the goddamn line sir, I will not hesitate to kick your mother******* *** out of here, all we want is peace and love, peace and love'. Indeed.
So it was that I joined the back of the queue for pump number three whilst E.P. joined the line waaaay back to fill up the van.
Several hours past and the Jamaican chap in front of me started regaling me with tales from his time in Miami, the trouble he'd been in, and why Asheville isn't the hippy Mecca it's painted out to be.
I then told him about the trouble at the station earlier and the guy who pulled out a gun and how that sort of thing didn't usually happen in England.
He replied telling me that us 'lot in England waste time getting into fights and posturing and squaring up to one another'.
Then he lifted his shirt and pointed at his Desert Eagle tucked into the front of his jeans and told me that he 'aint got no time for that'. Apparently not.
Eventually we reached the end of the queue to find out that the station was almost empty and that there was a ration limit of fifteen dollars per person.
My two gallons equated to about six dollars and E.P. reached his pump at precisely the same time that I did only to find out about the restrictions.
We were quite LITERALLY the last two people at the pumps before the guy on the mic announced that they had just run out of juice and absolute pandemonium broke out.
Peace and love, peace and love.
Our combined 21 dollars worth gave us a maximum range of about 96 miles so upon returning to the hotel I suggested we cast our net a bit wider in the search for a full tank.
Thus we headed down the I62 in a last ditch attempt to find a working petrol station that might get us further afield and hopefully towards a gig we could perform.
In the end we drove 65 miles to Spartanburg and spotting a fairly deserted Circle-K petrol station, came off the freeway to investigate.
The lights were off and no one was home, but all of a sudden a huge truck containing generators pulled onto the concourse and a crane truck started unloading one next to the shop. In short order a gas truck appeared and drew up alongside where we were parked.
Before you could say boo to a goose, the entire petrol station was filled with cars, all racing to claim a pump in the slim chance of getting fuel due to these sudden developments.
We still hadn't unloaded our two Jerry cans into the van, so we parked next to a pump and E.P. startes pouring the six dollars worth into the filler pipe.
All of a sudden, an African American lady shouted over asking for our assistance in helping push her car to a pump as she has ran out of fuel.
I walked over to her and noted that her car was jammed in park and told her it needed to go into neutral in order to move it.
It then became apparent that her car actually had a flat battery and that zero gas didn't appear to be the only problem after all.
E.P. then flagged down a guy in a pickup truck who agreed to come over and give the lady a jump start.
I took the cables out of her boot, connected the positive to positive, negative to negative between the truck and car and told him to rev a bit and wait a minute of two to accrue some reserve charge.
She duly started her car and drove it to the pump adjacent to our van and E.P. finished up transferring our precious juice into the van.
The lady then shouted over asking us to give her some gas at pretty much exactly the same time that we finished emptying the cans much to her chagrin.
I then suggested we go over to the generator crew to get a low down on the time frame getting the station back online.
E.P. spoke to an elderly gentleman in dungarees who turned out to be the electrician hired to hook up the power and who told us that unless someone turned up to open the shop, then it was a no go and that he was going home, at which point coincidentally the gas truck fired up and left without ever having filled a single reservoir.
E.P. and I thus decided to abandon the Circle-K and venture further into Spartanburg itself in search of fuel.
Upon returning to the van, we noticed that the fuel cover has been pulled out and upon starting the van we noted that our overall milage had dropped waaaay beyond what it was even before we deployed the emergency cans.
That's right folks, quite unbelievably in the time it took for us to go and have the brief chat with the electrician, someone had siphoned fuel out of our van. Even more mysteriously, the woman who we helped and asked us for our fuel has driven off and was nowhere to be seen.
So much for the milk of human kindness!
The good news is that 3 miles down the line, in the leafy burbs of Spartanburg, we finally found a BP with the lights on, a dancing Mexican lad directing the line and a full tank of fuel and a shop that sold apples and oranges and lots of bottles of drinking water.
The evening only ended on a slightly sour note as yet again, there was an altercation between a woman and a guy in a Fed-Ex van, both fighting over the much needed petrolioli.
Anyway, after driving the 65 miles back to Asheville and taking the back roads to the hotel to avoid the Police who had imposed a 7.30 curfew on the whole town, we finally reached our dark and eerie hotel which was now once again sequestered by the power company and decided to wait til morning to make a break for it.
Not before however, one of the Duke Power guys had a massive tantrum in reception about not being able to use the toilets, and the whole fleet noisily departed the car park in search of a hotel with basic amenities after going around every single hotel room in darkness and bashing on every door and screaming 'WE'RE SHIPPING OUT!!!!!!'.
I guess the moral of the story is that we, the western 'civilisation' are an EXTREMELY privileged bunch who take a great deal of things for granted and very quickly have the capacity to resort to feral behaviour when our very narrow parameters of existence are upended. We take for granted basic amenities and luxuries such as mobile communications and WiFi.
The one sight I will NEVER forget as long as I live, was the sight of hundreds of people huddled around local fire station number 3 in downtown Asheville, mostly in their pyjamas and gazing into their phones, the fire station being the only place in town bar the library to have working WIFI.
We truly truly have become a synthesised society, tethered and encumbered by the vice like grip of post internet and social media dependence.
I want to leave you with a small irony which did not go unnoticed during my one visit to the civic library in order to check in on my son (or at least attempt to).
Should you ever visit said Library, the password for said WIFI is 'READMORE'.
Which is precisely what I have been doing in my spare time during this catastrophe ��
Love to you all,
John Mitchell xxx
PS can I go home now please?

[veteranof1000psychicwars]

Jesus. That is quite a story.

[rdclark]

My son lives less than an hour east of Asheville. His power's been out since the storm, but he's fine and there was no real damage to his place. But lots of road closures in the area, including between him and his job. The National Guard and responders are staging from an airport he can see from his deck. Incredible that it's so bad this far inland, the sort of place you live in order to avoid these coastal catastrophes.

[veteranof1000psychicwars]

Yeah Asheville getting hit that badly is pretty scary
As l think l mentioned there was flooding here in GA in downtown Atlanta which is unheard of.
I was also worried about folks in the Triangle and Storybook Farm (Progday site), but l haven't seen anything on the news about that area so l am hoping all is well there.
The bands of this storm were really weird...areas 15 or so miles to the east and west of me got pounded as well as Atlanta, but l got one fairly heavy rain Thursday night and that was it.

[vandergraf]

Here in Durham it was pretty calm on Thursday night- so got to the Gong show in Raleigh. The band was in theory going to Asheville for a Friday show - Are those guys allright? Friday was v. wet with lots of tornado warnings. I'm thinking Storybook got thru just fine. well, I hope...

David

[Garyhead]

My buddy who bugged out to North Carolina arrived home to Blairsville, GA Saturday. No damage to his home or neighborhood but he said the whole trip was harrowing. The rain, the closed roads. Lack of power to run gas pumps. He said he slept all day Sunday and he still sounded a bit shook up Monday. And this was a fellow coworker.....we've endured Hurricanes, Typhoons at sea on ships for years.

[veteranof1000psychicwars]

Here in Durham it was pretty calm on Thursday night- so got to the Gong show in Raleigh. The band was in theory going to Asheville for a Friday show - Are those guys allright? Friday was v. wet with lots of tornado warnings. I'm thinking Storybook got thru just fine. well, I hope...

David

I think l read in another thread that they managed to escape NC and were able to make it to Chicago.

[veteranof1000psychicwars]

My buddy who bugged out to North Carolina arrived home to Blairsville, GA Saturday. No damage to his home or neighborhood but he said the whole trip was harrowing. The rain, the closed roads. Lack of power to run gas pumps. He said he slept all day Sunday and he still sounded a bit shook up Monday. And this was a fellow coworker.....we've endured Hurricanes, Typhoons at sea on ships for years.

Yes they got it pretty bad up in that area. Glad your friend and his home are ok.
Still seeing reports come in about Asheville. Feel horrible for those folks. Looks like it is a living hell.

[SteveSly]

I think l read in another thread that they managed to escape NC and were able to make it to Chicago.

Gong played in Grand Rapids Michigan last night. Unfortunately I was unable to attend, but I knew several people who were there.

[rdclark]

My son in Hickory (an hour east of Asheville) says they hope power will be restored by Friday, which will be a full week. Besides the usual issues of power loss, he needs a CPAP to get proper sleep, so its doubly disruptive. But nothing compared to people closer to the center of the devastation.