Before Hurricane Helene was forecast, I had arranged to travel to Georgia to help my parents for two weeks after my dad got out of the hospital. By the time that I got off the Silver Meteor Amtrak train in Jesup, Hurricane Helene was just about to make landfall. Considering how well constructed our family homestead is combined with its 60kwh whole-house generator, we thought that we were well prepared for the storm. Of course, Helene’s global-warming-intensified onslaught exceeded expectations all along its path. We worked with neighbors to clear fallen oak trees from the dirt roads leading to our neck of the woods. Our generator kept us with power for the first two days of the power outage, but then, a woefully underclassed plastic tensioner pulley broke into two leaving the generator without its fan to pull air through its massive radiator and promptly shut down in the dead of night. My dad and I pulled it apart but without a replacement part, we were unable to get it going again. We went without power for three days. The food in the refrigerator spoiled and we would sit in the cars in shifts to keep cool. Cell phone service–Verizon and Google Fi–was completely down and then slowly restored in fits-and-starts. It goes without saying that I wasn’t able to write on my blog, but I did use the time to read Terry Pratchett’s The Colour of Magic (1983). A repair crew went through our property’s power line easement around 9pm on the third day and our power was restored. The generator repair company replaced the tensioner pulley two days later (more on this later). As I’m writing this, there are still thousands of folks in the Satilla ERMC service area without power. Crews are working non-stop to clear the lines and restore power. There are, of course, many more along the 500 mile stretch of devastation in much worse shape than us.
