Anybody from Buffalo NY?

I'm in California and can't reach a friend in Buffalo where they are having a continuing power blackout. What is the situation there? Is there a shortage of batteries? I'm thinking of sending flashlights and batteries to my friend by express mail.

no, but I spent a night in the Hilton there once after being arrested on the train in Toronto, but thats another thread..


http://www.buffalonews.com/CityRegion/

Buffalo TV stations reach us in Toronto and they're cleaning up downed power lines right now, with 300,000 people in darkness in the area. Some places have power and some across the street don't, apparently many trees fell from the snow collecting on leaves.

There's still an urgent travel advisory in effect for Buffalo and many businesses are closed, so a well intentioned care package may not move for a few days.

Hope your friend is ok, here's a link with some emergency phone numbers for you to check out.

WIVB News Buffalo

I'm from the suburbs of Buffalo and actually got hit worse. We're in a state of emergency and were just declared so by the president. Heavy wet snow on the night of the 12- 13 weighed heavily on the still leaved trees. It was lightning and thundering and you could see the sky glow blue from the transformers blowing. Power went out at 12:40 for me and I got them back at 5 yesterday. There arent any generators for a 100 mile radius.
Im sure glad i had my Surefires, I showered by them, ate by them, and bailed sump-pumps out with them. There arent any shortages of batteries near me. There were gas shortages though and the stations with gas had 100 cars in line, literally. Some people wont get power until wednesday at the earliest.

ATVMan said:

I'm from the suburbs of Buffalo and actually got hit worse. We're in a state of emergency and were just declared so by the president. Heavy wet snow on the night of the 12- 13 weighed heavily on the still leaved trees. It was lightning and thundering and you could see the sky glow blue from the transformers blowing. Power went out at 12:40 for me and I got them back at 5 yesterday. There arent any generators for a 100 mile radius.
Im sure glad i had my Surefires, I showered by them, ate by them, and bailed sump-pumps out with them. There arent any shortages of batteries near me. There were gas shortages though and the stations with gas had 100 cars in line, literally. Some people wont get power until wednesday at the earliest.

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Thanks for the info ATVMan and Mosport. I read on the 'net that some people won't get power till NEXT weekend. Are the mail services operating? My friend lives in Williamsville.

ATVMAN: Just curious, which model Surefire do you have and how many CR123 batteries did you consume in the emergency?

Yesterday my wife and I drove a care package to her mother's house in Buffalo. Even after seeing the damage on the news, it was far worse than I could have imagined. In Tonawanda, where my mother in law lives, every tree I saw, every single on regardless of its size was damaged in some way.

So far, the population seems to be civilly minded, and actually quite neighborly. My mother in laws neighbors were helping her, and one another out with whatever they had to offer. Nice to see cooperation these days.

Let's hope they get power back sooner rather than later. Judging by the shear number of trees I saw still laying on power lines, it's going to take a hurculean effort to get Buffalo (especially the hardest hit suburbs of Amherst, Tonawanda, and Williamsville) back up and running on all 8 cylinders.


Ordin

rodmeister said:

Thanks for the info ATVMan and Mosport. I read on the 'net that some people won't get power till NEXT weekend. Are the mail services operating? My friend lives in Williamsville.

ATVMAN: Just curious, which model Surefire do you have and how many CR123 batteries did you consume in the emergency?

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I believe Williamsville got hit harder than us. Im getting mail so they should be getting it too

I mostly used my E2e with a rechargeable 17670 in it and it worked beautifully, I got to recharge them at my cousins house and they lasted the rest of the ordeal. I also replaced the G90 with the P60 in my G2 and went through about 4 battery changes with that.

Some towns like West Seneca wont get power back until Friday at the earliest. We lent our generator out to a friends mother who lives there bc her basement's flooding

It was not a pretty storm at all, some are saying it could size up to Katrina only we dont have the water problems other than flooded basements. I've definitely gotten closer to my neighbors because of it, everybody keeps trying to pay me but we're neighbors and I know that they would do the same for me

I'm in East Amherst. The power went on at about 6:00 today. I got by without using my surefire very much- it had only a pila cell in it, and no dc charging options.

I used mostly a fenix l2p, fenix l2t, fenix MM l2p, Fenix MM l1p, fenix MM L0p with 3 stage. I had a NiMH charger in my car.

The first thing i did was offer people lights, even though the power went off at about 8:30 pm on thursday and people might as well be sleeping.

No one accepted, and i asked again, still no one wanted to use any of my lights. Later, my friends wanted to use it, but than the power went back on soon.

I REALLY liked the MM L0P, as it was about as bright as the stock l2p in it's hotspot, with more spill on high, and half of the time, i was trying to NOT be seen or cause a disruption.

The L2p stock was really great. It is REALLY hard to choose between the increased output or the increased runtime, but both are appreciated.

It is pretty important for the light to be waterproof for taking showers and everything, as well as "stand upright". The surefire L4 was used mostly in a 2 liter bottle filled with water, to keep the temperature a bit lower, and maybe improve battery life.

I did a lot of homework while it was dark, and ended up charging batteries a lot out in my car (AA and AAA charger came with a DC addaptor).

I dropped my lights a lot, and one thing i would like would be a floatation attachment for them.

the three most used lights were probably the L2P (what i did my homework with), MM L1P (my "always at my side no matter what" light), and than my MM L0P, which was just always there. They all are about the same brightness.

It was REALLY sad not to have heat because of having an electric blower on a gas furance =\

I used 2 liter bottles filled with hot water as "heaters" or Hand warmers.