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Bitchslapped by Helene
Episode 5430th September 2024 • Call Me Donovan • Donovan Adkisson
00:00:00 00:19:54

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My first update since Helene came through the southern part of the United States and basically bitchslapped everyone.

We're fine; no property damage, no loss of life for our family, but people have gone nuts around here!

Colquitt EMC outage numbers as of posting this episode (9/30/24):

  • 45,491 Total Customers without Power
  • 4,238 Moultrie
  • 13,865 Tifton
  • 27,388 Valdosta

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Transcripts

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Good morning. It is September 30th. It's currently 7.53 in the morning.

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Oh.

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Past several days have been interesting.

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So,

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if you're not aware, there was a little storm called Helene,

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Category 4 hurricane, that decided to bitch slap the southeast.

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Just utter destruction in Florida. It came up through Georgia.

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I live in Tifton, which is, we're kind of south central.

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We're roughly about,

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I don't know, 50-60 miles north of Adasta.

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It takes about 45 minutes on I-75 to get down there. I've never really

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looked at the distance. I just look at time.

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And that storm came through Georgia Thursday evening, Friday morning.

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It hit us around 2.30, 2-2.30 in the morning. We really started

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seeing the high winds around one o'clock, I think, midnight,

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at the earliest.

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And we were fortunate because the original

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projected path would have probably wound up with even more

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devastation in this area for us. And that's not to say that we don't have

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quite a lot. Trees down everywhere, homes destroyed or damaged, vehicles

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destroyed or damaged, swaths of the entire area without power.

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Last time I looked, and I've been mainly paying attention to the Colquitt EMC

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numbers because, well, we're on Colquitt.

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And last time I looked, of all of their customers, and they have

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about 66,000, as they say, 66,000 meters,

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there's still a little over 44,000 that are without power.

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And then it's divided up between

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Moultrie, Tifton, and Valdosta. If I remember correctly, I think Tifton

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is down to in the 13,000 range.

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Moultrie's in the 40,000 range, 4,400. Valdosta's still up in the like 26,000,

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27,000 range.

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Valdosta got hit hard. And it's not the first time.

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It's not the first time at all.

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So we were fortunate in that when our power went out at

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about 2 30 a.m. Friday morning, it came back on around 10 o'clock Friday

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morning. So we were that lucky handful of folks

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who not only did not have a very long to be

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without power, but have power now where there's still

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over 13,000 folks here in Tifton and Tift County

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that do not have power. Part of the problem,

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of course, you can imagine, you've got you've got trees that are down that have

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taken down power lines. So they've got to get the trees removed.

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We've got obstacles as far as road closures because of the

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fact that trees are down in the road. So you got to get those

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cleared up so that they can get to the areas where they can actually

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start working on the power poles and the power lines.

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And a much larger issue too is the transmission lines.

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The transmission lines are what supply power to the substations. And then, of

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course, the substations branch out and supply power to the neighborhoods.

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I think they said something like 13 of the substations were without

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power right now. Don't quote me on that number. I've been

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looking at a lot of numbers over the past couple of days.

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And the way it was explained, the CEO of Colquitt EMC explained, their crews do

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not work on the transmission lines. There's actually

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there's actually a company called Georgia Transmission

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because it requires certain knowledge, certain certifications, certain

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levels of education, expertise, etc. So all transmission lines, and I learned

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this, all transmission lines in Georgia are

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handled by Georgia Transmission. I don't know if that means they're an

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offshoot of Georgia Power. I don't know. Because down here that's also the other

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other big power provider is Georgia Power.

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Over in Fitzgerald in that area you have Irwin EMC. And I think all of these

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EMCs, I'm not entirely sure if they get all of

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their power from say like Georgia Power or they source it from multiple places. I

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do not know. That's beyond my area of expertise.

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But you would think the way

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people have been acting, and this is based on nothing that I have

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personally seen, because I have made it every effort

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to stay my ass at home. Because I don't want to contribute to the problem

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of congestion. We were getting reports and we were seeing on Facebook

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that Saturday '82 was basically gridlocked.

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You know people trying to get to Walmart, trying to get to Publix,

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trying to get the gas stations are overrun. People trying to eat,

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a lot of people just trying to get gasoline for their generators.

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And I get that. I saw a short little video from

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the Tifton Grapevine. They're kind of a friendly competitor of mine to the

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Tifton Talks Facebook page and the newsletter and all of that.

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But they were down in Waycross and they were showing this one particular

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gas station. And I mean there had to have been a

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hundred plus cars in the right lane waiting to get into the gas station.

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They had people directing traffic in and out of the gas station.

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You had people walking up to the gas station

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with gas cans. And they zoomed in and there was a line of people,

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a line of people. If I had to make an educated guess, I'd say

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easily 50, 75, 100 folks standing in line

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with their gas cans trying to get gas.

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It's almost like we're operating in a third world country now.

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This was an unprecedented storm.

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Some of the weather folks are saying this is the most devastating storm this

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area has ever seen. And I'm starting to believe it.

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I remember when Michael came through here and I mean that was bad.

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But damn.

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Damn. You know there's fear mongering and there's

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disinformation and misinformation now because

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something potentially is brewing, and I say brewing in quotes,

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in the Gulf again. And I get it. The meteorologists and all the people

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that really pay attention to the weather. And I follow this one guy,

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Ryan Hall on YouTube. He's from Kentucky.

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There's only about three things that are good about Kentucky.

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And that's the three people that I know that live in Kentucky.

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But he goes ahead and I mean they're doing

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their due diligence. They're saying, "Hey, there is a possibility something may

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form down here. But so far, and we're early into this,

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all of the modeling says that this could be weaker. It could be nothing.

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We just don't know." And now we've got people sharing

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on Facebook that another major hurricane has headed this way.

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And that you better go and start stocking up now.

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So you know anybody that looks at that it's going to freak the fuck out.

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We're going to have this mass run on supplies again. We're already

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having supply issues down here. Not just in Georgia, but in Florida,

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Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina. It literally kicked the shit out of the

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southeastern section of the United States. I'm not kidding.

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And that's the last thing we need is more fear-mongering.

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I took, Ryan did a video and I took it and I put it on the Tifton Talks

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Facebook page and I simply said, "Look, stay vigilant,

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but don't panic." This is the type of information

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that we need to pay attention to. You see posts on Facebook of people

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talking about the end times are near because there's another major storm

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heading this way. You need to fucking ignore these people.

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You need to go to reputable sources. Maybe that's your

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maybe that's your local weather person. You know, WALB is out of Albany.

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They're trustworthy. Watch the Weather Channel.

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Jim Cantore and all those folks. Find people. There's a guy called Mike's

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Weather Page. Look it up. He seems to be credible. I don't know that

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much about him, so I'm not going to put my

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my reputation on the line and say he's the deal.

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But I started following him when this when Helene started being a thing and

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he seems to be knowledgeable. I think he's located down in northern Florida

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somewhere in there. Follow Ryan Hall. Not only is he a

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meteorologist, but he does good things with with the Y'all Squad

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where they they take up donations and then they go into areas and they try to

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help with supplies and money and what have you.

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But this area took a hell of a beating. A hell of a beating.

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And I mean we're fortunate. We really are.

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I said something to my wife the other day and she told me it it was kind of a

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positive thing, but then you know she I go to the extremes on

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certain things and I said you know what in my older age I think I'm

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I think I'm gonna start adopting the prepper

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attitude. And she's like it's about time. I said yeah but I'm getting a

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standby generator put in. I've already put in to request a quote.

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I already know that it's gonna cost me probably close to ten thousand dollars.

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Fortunately they say they've got financing and I think I can swing that

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as long as my sources of income don't dry up or

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or get stunted because of this storm.

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And I mean if I could swing it I'd not only have a standby generator

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but I'd have a solar panels and backup batteries.

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Because even with a standby generator you gotta have propane or natural

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gas if that's the type you're gonna get and

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that's the type I'm looking at is going to be propane.

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So I'm gonna have to have a propane tank minimum 200 gallon.

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I've been running over these numbers with Tyler he looked up some stuff it

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looks like it at about a half load of what a 14

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kilowatt unit would be we could probably run 100 hours almost

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five days I guess before we ran out of propane. And as long

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as we could keep that tank filled up you know every three days

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you know at that point I don't give a shit what it costs.

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I'll just have to go in debt and then pay it off.

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I have no idea what propane costs now. I haven't I haven't had anything that is

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that is gas fed for well practically

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Lee and I've been married 34 going on 35 years she does not like gas appliances.

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So we got our double wide in 96.

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So I haven't had gas appliances since 1996.

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Everything's been electric electric heater

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well heat pump electric stove electric water heater

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electric dryer.

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So no need to have any kind of propane around here.

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If you lived in the city you'd have access to natural gas

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but anyway so that's my prepper mentality is

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first and foremost is getting a generator. Then I'm going to start

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looking at how to stockpile

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other supplies maybe a little bit of gasoline with some stabilizer in it

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because I was looking that up this morning and you can get stabilizer that

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will keep gas good for up to

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24 months. So you know if your vehicles run out of gas and

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or get low and you can't get to a gas station or the gas stations aren't

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aren't available because that was another problem too is you could get gas

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at a lot of these places you could get supplies at a lot of

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these places they were cash only because they didn't have internet.

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Every single every single place that does business should have a backup method

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of being able to process credit cards and debit cards

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because people don't fucking carry cash. I think I got forty

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dollars that I just carry in my wallet for emergencies that's it that is it

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and as much as I have advocated for a cashless society

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I realize that in times like these that's dumb.

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So I'm having to rejigger and rethink my my my ideas about this stuff.

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So yeah I'm coming up on 55 in in a handful of months roughly four

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months actually three months. Lee's birthday is next week she'll be

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54 and then roughly three months later I'll be 55.

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But coming up on that I'm really starting to

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I'm backing away from all of the tech stuff a little bit.

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I mean don't don't get me wrong it's still my core business I still love tech

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I still love technology but I'm gonna have to look at going a

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little bit more quote analog because I don't think these storms are

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gonna let up.

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Whether you're a believer or not you cannot deny that these storms have

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gotten worse over the last 20 to 30 years and that

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is due to climate change. Again you can believe me or not if you

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don't believe me you're wrong. All the data indicates that you're wrong

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but I'm not going to have that argument with you because I don't care enough.

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You don't want to believe it that's fine.

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I'll be the guy with the generator that still has lights on in his house

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has adequate food for several weeks and gasoline stores

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and maybe even possibly solar panel and batteries.

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I don't know I can't swing both of those.

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A good solar system solar system not not like where the planet's but

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a solar powered system for your house for a whole house

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would be like two times the cost of having a generator installed.

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So anyway that is the update here on the 30th.

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Schools are still closed around here until Wednesday.

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Like I said still a lot of people without power

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and their place is down in Valdosta. Valdosta may not have power for a couple

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of weeks if not longer. And that that's the other big issue is

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is folks are coming up from Valdosta. I mean it's

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it's bad enough and look I'm not knocking these folks I'd do the same

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thing if if I had the need and I'm not saying that I won't get to

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that point at some point in my life. But we've got people right now that are

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trying to get food and trying to get gas and just trying to

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trying to get some semblance of normalcy

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in their lives for the next several days while

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all these these men and women these these line crews at the power company

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and and all the crews that are cleaning up

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and all you know tip of the hat to them. We we need this area needs

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access to all of those resources but we got folks coming up from Valdosta and

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probably even north northern part of Florida

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coming up in through here and I'm not going to say ransacking but

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they are draining the resources. And I get it. Love your brother right? I

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get that. I'm you can't say no.

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But it's it's putting a tremendous strain on the area

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to not only have to deal with the folks who live here but to deal with the folks

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who don't.

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They may have to divert and go go southwest to other areas where they can

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get food and and gasoline if they can get there. Go

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to Columbus. I don't think Columbus was hit. Go go into Alabama

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if you can make it. Otherwise be cordial to everybody. Everybody's

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stressed. Everybody's burned the fuck out. Everybody's tired.

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Everybody's aggravated. Everybody's in fear.

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It's not a good time. It's not a good time and we're coming in

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into what is supposed to be one of the happier times of the year.

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The last three months. October, November, and December.

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Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas. This is supposed to be our coasting

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quarter where we look back on all of the trials

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and tribulations of the first nine months of the year and

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go holy crap. I think that's all I can say. I'll end it

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right there. Holy crap.

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