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Just a reminder that today starts hurricane season. Anyone on coastal areas knows this. So check your preps and have a plan.
Just a reminder that today starts hurricane season. Anyone on coastal areas knows this. So check your preps and have a plan.
While I do love Louisiana I do NOT miss that. I'll be right here on top of my mountain. You guys just carry on with all that hurricane nonsense.
But your going to miss all the hurricane parties!
I'll go ahead and admit that any mention of Hurricane parties makes me truly sad. I was at the Beloxi Air Force base when Hurricane Camille came ashore as a Category 5 Tropical Cyclone. We sat in the hallways of the classroom buildings and felt the reinforced masonry shake as if the storm were somehow enraged at us because it could not kill us all. It really did feel like a demonic living thing. When the storm was over our World War 2 emergency wooden frame barracks were gone all the way to the slabs. We were rapidly detailed to disaster recovery work. I was eventually assigned to Graves Registration and we worked for the Mississippi Coroners efforts to locate and identify the dead. Steel framed masonry buildings along the sea front were stripped of everything but the frames which were so twisted as to be hard to recognize at first. Families had been thrown down wind for more than a mile after their apartment buildings came apart around them. People had held Hurricane parties in beach front summer homes and were killed fairly gruesomely. We would find the decedents, hose of the mud, get them into body bags or spare GI blankets once the body bags ran out, and carry them to a 21/2 truck to be driven to the Coroners temporary work site. We didn't have to deal with anyone who was dismembered because we weren't actually trained Grave's Registration Personnel. Graves Registration technicians are trained to use all available clues in attempts to identify the dead. It was toward the end of the Vietnam War so those guys had gotten pretty good at their jobs. The technicians who handled the actual bodies would try to identify as many as they could through fingerprints, dental records, and pocket litter if they still had pockets to check. I got an attaboy for having the presence of mind to salvage the dental records that were still in the file cabinets of 2 dentist offices we encountered. The guy in charge of the Mississippi Coroners team thanked me personally and the Graves Registration Non Commissioned Officer In Charge (NCOIC) said he'd write me up for a letter of merit. I just looked around and said "Sarge I think you already have plenty to do without that stuff." We shook hands and went back to work. After the third day we were all wearing our respirators and changing out the NBC filters once a day. We'd shower adjacent to the site and leave our fatigues behind. We'd get them back the next day cleaned and pressed. I found that getting a pressed uniform each morning was depressing in itself in a way. In the midst of all this death and destruction to be given clean clothes every day seemed kind of obscene when most of the civilian population didn't have any clothing but what they were still wearing days later. At the end of ~5 days i was shipped out to a permanent assignment because they were getting everyone transferred out that was there for training given that they wouldn't be able to resume training for some time. The Construction Battalion personnel from the Gulfport Naval Station took over the Military Assistance to Disaster Relief efforts. The last day I was there I spent in a communications tent because my Boy Scout telegraph code was good enough to send hundreds of Health and Welfare messages from the GIs to their families. Since we were communicating with Military Affiliate Radio Service volunteers I learned the American Radio Relay League's standard message ARL 10 well enough to send in my sleep. ALL WELL HERE. DO NOT BE CONCERNED BY DISASTER REPORTS. Many of our families cried when the Amateur Radio Operator called them with that reassurance. They had been waiting for an Air Force car to pull up with an officer and a cleric from our religious preference of record to tell them that their son or daughter was dead. I thought I had troubles when I had to take documents to Vietnam. I was the classic green troop. I didn't know whether to sit on my flack jacket and ware my bullet proof vest or vise versa. Then one of the old hands told me to sit on my helmet. I asked him why and he said "If you take a shot to the head your troubles are over. If you get hit down there not so much." He could have gone all month without making me think about that. Those five trips were nothing compared to Hurricane Camille!But your going to miss all the hurricane parties!
I lived in Jackson and we got hit by Camille (still a Cat 1 150 miles from the coast). I remember it well. The dog ran away and didn't come home for three days, LOL. And I also remember the thousands of square miles of forests in South Mississippi that were leveled. The trees along Highway 49 between Jackson and the coast were leaning over for decades after that.I'll go ahead and admit that any mention of Hurricane parties makes me truly sad. I was at the Beloxi Air Force base when Hurricane Camille came ashore as a Category 5 Tropical Cyclone.
I wasn't talking about a suicide hurricane party. You have to be prepared and know where it's not safe to be.I'll go ahead and admit that any mention of Hurricane parties makes me truly sad. I was at the Beloxi Air Force base when Hurricane Camille came ashore as a Category 5 Tropical Cyclone. We sat in the hallways of the classroom buildings and felt the reinforced masonry shake as if the storm were somehow enraged at us because it could not kill us all. It really did feel like a demonic living thing. When the storm was over our World War 2 emergency wooden frame barracks were gone all the way to the slabs. We were rapidly detailed to disaster recovery work. I was eventually assigned to Graves Registration and we worked for the Mississippi Coroners efforts to locate and identify the dead. Steel framed masonry buildings along the sea front were stripped of everything but the frames which were so twisted as to be hard to recognize at first. Families had been thrown down wind for more than a mile after their apartment buildings came apart around them. People had held Hurricane parties in beach front summer homes and were killed fairly gruesomely. We would find the decedents, hose of the mud, get them into body bags or spare GI blankets once the body bags ran out, and carry them to a 21/2 truck to be driven to the Coroners temporary work site. We didn't have to deal with anyone who was dismembered because we weren't actually trained Grave's Registration Personnel. Graves Registration technicians are trained to use all available clues in attempts to identify the dead. It was toward the end of the Vietnam War so those guys had gotten pretty good at their jobs. The technicians who handled the actual bodies would try to identify as many as they could through fingerprints, dental records, and pocket litter if they still had pockets to check. I got an attaboy for having the presence of mind to salvage the dental records that were still in the file cabinets of 2 dentist offices we encountered. The guy in charge of the Mississippi Coroners team thanked me personally and the Graves Registration Non Commissioned Officer In Charge (NCOIC) said he'd write me up for a letter of merit. I just looked around and said "Sarge I think you already have plenty to do without that stuff." We shook hands and went back to work. After the third day we were all wearing our respirators and changing out the NBC filters once a day. We'd shower adjacent to the site and leave our fatigues behind. We'd get them back the next day cleaned and pressed. I found that getting a pressed uniform each morning was depressing in itself in a way. In the midst of all this death and destruction to be given clean clothes every day seemed kind of obscene when most of the civilian population didn't have any clothing but what they were still wearing days later. At the end of ~5 days i was shipped out to a permanent assignment because they were getting everyone transferred out that was there for training given that they wouldn't be able to resume training for some time. The Construction Battalion personnel from the Gulfport Naval Station took over the Military Assistance to Disaster Relief efforts. The last day I was there I spent in a communications tent because my Boy Scout telegraph code was good enough to send hundreds of Health and Welfare messages from the GIs to their families. Since we were communicating with Military Affiliate Radio Service volunteers I learned the American Radio Relay League's standard message ARL 10 well enough to send in my sleep. ALL WELL HERE. DO NOT BE CONCERNED BY DISASTER REPORTS. Many of our families cried when the Amateur Radio Operator called them with that reassurance. They had been waiting for an Air Force car to pull up with an officer and a cleric from our religious preference of record to tell them that their son or daughter was dead. I thought I had troubles when I had to take documents to Vietnam. I was the classic green troop. I didn't know whether to sit on my flack jacket and ware my bullet proof vest or vise versa. Then one of the old hands told me to sit on my helmet. I asked him why and he said "If you take a shot to the head your troubles are over. If you get hit down there not so much." He could have gone all month without making me think about that. Those five trips were nothing compared to Hurricane Camille!
If the Weather Service even breaths the word Hurricane pay attention! You definitely don't want to end up like those poor folks did.
Be well all and take care of each other.
--
Tommy H
You may know this already but in case others don't, You can buy a 35 or 55 gallon drum of Gasoline without any ethanol nor Methyl Tertiary Butyl Ether (MBTE) at many fuel distribution companies. They'll order it for you or direct you to a depot were you can buy it. If you buy the Agricultural Fuel kind it will cost less than road fuel and the main difference is that it is dyed, much like heating oil, to detect illegal on road use. There will be a deposit or purchase cost for the drum. If the one you buy from uses the deposit system you may want to buy only the 35 gallon size so as to keep your rotation frequent enough to avoid the seller closing the account record so you cannot get the deposit back. some deposits are more than you would pay if you purchased the drum.Thanks for the reminder. Need to refill my gas cans, just in case. Note, I only use Ethanol-Free gas for generators and small engines. Need to top off my supplies.
I knew that and I didn't mean to imply that you were one of the utter fools who would do that. I was just reacting to the memories of the consequences that suicidally foolish behavior causes. I did not mean to cast aspersions onto you. "Never attribute to malice what incompetence will adequately explain." I don't know who first said that.I wasn't talking about a suicide hurricane party. You have to be prepared and know where it's not safe to be.
Sorry accidentally posted reply for another thread here.But your going to miss all the hurricane parties!
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