The Shrine

My town got rocked by Hurricane Fiona, a category 1 hurricane/severe tropical storm depending on where you were. Debris smashing into my Northern wall, shaking everything with loud crashing, and deafening rumbling from the wind. I was sure windows would break… but they held, and deflected all debris. Lots of siding torn off (usually the sort of damage reserved for extreme blizzards). Storm surges caused the waterfront blocks of the downtown area to be in the ocean for a bit. Certain stores with generators are filled with people charging phones (we used our car battery to get a bit of juice). I walked over to my in-laws today and saw some of the devastation… downed lines everywhere, trees uprooted, roofs broken, and leaves/branches everywhere.

Night number three of no power. 12 hours of darkness means time spent by candlelight, writing with pen and paper, and reading… Keeping our phones charged by a car battery (doing that sparingly now). I’m mostly electronic , but I did find a paper codex of the Silmarillion, the Longman Anthology of Romantic Era literature, and… economic books, Das Kapital by Karl Marx, along with A Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith… so now I’m reading about the economic theory of the industrial Revolution, industrial era, and the criticisms of mercantilism and capitalism. Now I too will know the ups and downs of 19th century Western economic movements
Marx is known for his communist theory, historical materialism (that inspired Asimov’s Foundation), and criticism of capitalism, but he also wrote the first real book about capitalism—while capitalism had been tossed around as a term before and concepts discussed in various works, it is Marx who first defines capitalism and writes an extensive and in depth book on it. He also coined the term capitalist for the drivers of the capitalist/liberal economic order. So, interesting enough, he can be counted among the fathers of capitalist thought. Although, he looks more at where capitalism is going as an angle… similar to Smith on mercantile economics.

I’m sure you’re interested to hear about this fun stuff!!!

Looks like most of the city is still without power, they’re still assessing damages, so it may be a few more days before get back our electricity.

I'm glad to hear you are safe. I have a friend of mine in Florida that may get hit by Ian, so I'm very worried about her, as it is looking like it's gonna be a nasty one. I know she has been through this before, but I'm hoping she will stay safe.

Taiwan gets typhoons all the time and I vaguely remember having them when I was young but it didn't seem like it was that big of a deal. I mean the whole apartment gets flooded so you have to sit on a table or something but other than that it didn't seem terribly dangerous, though I don't think I lived at somewhere that'd be directly in the path of a typhoon.

Haha, I was more worried about housing damage than anything. Flooding sounds horrifying. I live up on a hill—exposed, so a lot of wind damage, but relatively safe from the storm surges.

There was one death in my town from the storm, a guy who lived on his own. Right now, the main problem is people up and driving around when military and repair crews are trying to fix up damage. I’m at my in-laws right now, they have power because they’re on a green energy grid… warm food, warm showers. My block (and most of the city) is entering night 5 with no electricity. I did take a few cold showers… not pleasant.

While we’ve weathered a lot of powerful blizzards, the ground is ice, so trees are much less likely to fall. We’ve never had a hurricane before. Storms that were once hurricanes have hit us, like Dorian and Juan, but they didn’t cause this level of destruction. We’ve got the military deployed, as well as a large number of crews from Ontario. The Prime Minister of Canada, Justin Trudeau, is here visiting communities—taking a look at the damage.

Here’s a couple photos.

M'k'n'zy wrote: ↑

Mon Sep 26, 2022 11:01 am

I'm glad to hear you are safe. I have a friend of mine in Florida that may get hit by Ian, so I'm very worried about her, as it is looking like it's gonna be a nasty one. I know she has been through this before, but I'm hoping she will stay safe.

Yeah, and the winds are probably stronger than what hit us. I hope it all turns out alright. Elm, pine, and oak trees caused the most damage here. Aspen and spruce were surprisingly resilient.

To give an idea of the level of damage rendered against my province:

Before

After


Here was the storm to illustrate why the winds came from the North, rather than the south.



So, while the hurricane itself moved in from the south, because of the rotation of the cyclone, we ended up getting a strong blast of wind from the North for hours as the storm moved northward. Then about 8 hours in after the beginning, as the eye approached, the winds quickly shifted north-westward. About 16 hours in it was a westward wind, and it gradually weakened over the next 8 hours.

I’m missing Avatar 2 and a bunch of other films because our movie theatre lost its roof and the place got trashed. How does a roof blow off?!?

As one of the 4 people who admits to being an Avatar fan, I’m kind of pissed!

We’re not going to see a reopening until February 2023, maybe it’ll still be in by that point. Fellowship of the Ring played for like 5 months, after all (I saw it about 9 times in that frame).

You might have to take a drive! Let's see how real of an Avatar fan you are!

Well fuck.



On the bright side, it looks like this one is going to be a tropical storm about 2/3rds the strength. But damn, Fiona was terrifying at the time, and even after a year of heavy cleanup efforts, there are still buildings with their siding gone, damaged roofs, and fallen/broken trees in every woodland park. In fact, the downtown park here (called Victoria Park) which had a nice woods in it, is now patched with large clearings in places that were once thick with trees. The pond in the middle of the woods is an absolute mess, and it didn’t look like there were nearly as many frogs, salamanders, and dragonflies around.

This time I’ll have my hurricane prep kit, so I’m not scrounging around an emergency power supermarket looking for scraps of food and charging outlets. I overkilled and invested in about $220 worth of backup batteries… enough to charge a notebook computer about 30 times over

My power flickered, and the wind was probably on par with a spring storm or a blizzard. This was nowhere near Fiona. That money could have gone to something more fun. Fuck