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That Was Wild One

EastTexFrank

Well-known member
GOLD Site Supporter
Friday afternoon was memorable.

We had two waves of storms come through, both had hail but not too bad, pea sized. However, someone pulled to plug on the bathtub. The rain was torrential and the lightning spectacular. I don't know how much we got as both rain gauges were full at 7". Tornados were all around us. The little town of Lindale, 10 miles to the south got hit bad. Several building were destroyed and many, many homes were damaged by flying debris. The tornado hit a mini strip mall. The Dollar General was totally destroyed. The Family Fitness Center next to it was destroyed. Both were gone down to the concrete pad. Nothing left. Strangely, the Family Dollar store next to them was completely untouched. So there is a whole bunch of cheap shit scattered all over East Texas. That one passed to our East. There were others to our west and to our north.

We lost power about 5 o'clock in the afternoon. No big deal as we are prepared for such things ... kinda. That's when life started conspiring against me. No power, no TV, no internet, no weather updates, not a problem. I dig out the weather radio and am listening to the warnings being issued. It dies. Nothing. I reprogram it and it keeps telling me "No Channels Available". Still not a problem. I get the old boom box out and am listening to the local radio channel issue weather information when there is one horrendous clap of thunder and the station goes off the air. They took a direct hit. So now, in our highly technological age, I have nothing left that works except my cell phone. Luckily, I can still get a signal and know roughly what is going on.

When the power went out and while it was still light, I dug out the generators and lights and got them lined up. No need to get the generators fired up. It might only be a short outage. We ate a nice supper and waited. After about 6 hours, about 11 o'clock at night, it was obvious that the power wasn't coming back on anytime soon. Time to spring in to action. SOB. One generator wouldn't start. The other one started and run like a top so I could keep the 3 freezers and 3 fridges operating but it was a chore with only a 3 kW generator.

My wife announces that since she can't help, she's going to bed, see ya in the morning. :flowers::flowers:

I'm outside about 3 o'clock in the morning, the rain has pretty much stopped and I'm getting ready to swap one set of fridge/ freezers to another set when I walk past the "dead" generator. I reach down and grab the pull start, yank it and the puppy fires right up. Now we're cooking. I've got all 6 fridges and freezers working at once. Let them run for a couple of hours and we're good for about an 8 hour sleep. It finally all came together.

Got up in the morning, a beautiful day, had my coffee and went outside to refuel the generators and start the routine all over again when BING, the power came back on. We were without power for about 20 hours. That's the worst outage we've had in well over 5, maybe 10, years but it got me to thinking about that back-up generator that I've been talking about and putting off for years.

Life is good ... if it don't kill ya!!!!
 

pirate_girl

legendary ⚓
GOLD Site Supporter
Wow, you really went through something there Frank.
I'll never bitch about it simply raining too much again.
 

300 H and H

Bronze Member
GOLD Site Supporter
Glad to hear it was not worse for you. Say a prayer of thanks...

Could have been a real adventure, not one you would care to repeat..

Regards, Kirk
 

XeVfTEUtaAqJHTqq

Master of Distraction
Staff member
SUPER Site Supporter
Usually as soon as I fire up the generator and get everything set up the power goes back on. I don't "wait" anymore. I just get it all set up and figure at the very least I get to give everything some exercise (including me).

Glad everything worked out for you in the end.
 

EastTexFrank

Well-known member
GOLD Site Supporter
Usually as soon as I fire up the generator and get everything set up the power goes back on. I don't "wait" anymore. I just get it all set up and figure at the very least I get to give everything some exercise (including me).

Glad everything worked out for you in the end.

I used to do the same. As soon as the power went off I hooked up the generators and kept the fridges/freezers cold before they even started to thaw out. It was just easier that way. The other thing I used to do was fill a 55 barrel with water. The water utility company was on the same electrical loop as we were so when I lost power, they lost power to their pump. The water utility got a back-up generator on their well pump so even when we lose power now, we don't lose water. The electric company has spent a lot of time and money upgrading all their equipment, transformers and substations and clearing their ROWs so we never lose power for more than a couple of hours these days. The last few years I've just got lazy.

The reason I was saying that I thought that life was conspiring against me is that I serviced every piece of equipment in March and I mean everything. I changed oil and filters, went through a dozen tubes of grease, checked all the batteries and tires, rebuilt wiring harnesses and on and on. That's about all I did in March was to get equipment ready for use in spring.

When I go to use the little tractor last week, it blows a hydraulic hose, the hedge trimmer which was running like a champ a couple of weeks before won't start because the spark plug is cracked, the big tractor won't start because the battery is dead. How can that happen in 3 weeks? The generator won't start but was running just fine a month ago when I used it to start repairing fences. The chain saw won't start because the primer bulb is split. All my hard work in March went for naught. I'm right back to my usual Spring fix and repair before use schedule. It's frustrating.
 
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