Post-Irene

We fared just fine through hurricane Irene, though many have not.


There was a lot of damage here in the central Virginia area, and many people are still without power nearly a week later. That is a familiar situation to what we experienced with Isabel in 2003. I moved to my current neighborhood not too long after Isabel, and they had power the day after the storm, but my old neighborhood, just a mile or two down the road, was without power for 6 days in 2003. That was not fun, what with all my fish tanks! I used a large plastic cup to stir the water, scooping it up and pouring it back into the tanks, aerating it. I lost no fish during that time, happily.


This time, the power went out around dinnertime on Saturday night, August 27, and was back on the next day about noon. Not too bad. Even so, as the storm was approaching I got out surge protectors and long outdoor extension cords, putting a surge protector in the middle of the floor of my office and connecting it to an extension cord that ran down the stairs and plugged into a surge protector in front of my 150 gal tank in the living room. This surge protector had a cord running outside to the small generator (800 watts). The minute the power went out I had my tanks running on generator power, since I did not wish to take any chances, and that generator is too small to run appliances with heating elements or the refrigerator. We have a large generator that we used for that.


So, my fish fared just fine this time, and hopefully the rest of our area will have power restored soon.