CourtasanSatine,
I live in Richmond now, but most of family is down in Newport News, Williamsburg, and Gloucester.
The whole area got hit pretty hard. Trees are down, power out. An uncle has three trees on his roof and can't get anyone to take them down. An aunt was told that power work wasn't just a repair job, but that it was a replacement operation. They were told that the power would be out for days.
In addition to power being out, public water supplies are contaminated (here in Richmond too). Here in Richmond and surrounding counties, the power outage caused most of the population to be completely without water - contaminated or not.
The few stores that are open don't have batteries or bottled water to sell.
Most of family members have generators but they are all running out of gas. The few stations down there that have power generally have lines in excess of an hour. After an hour waiting at one station, my brother got to the front of the line and the station ran out of gas.
We spent the day collecting gas cans and filling them for a resupply trip down tomorrow for the family.
I have heard unofficial reports that it may be as long as 3 more days before we can drink the tap water and may be as much as 3 weeks before everyone in the state has their power restored.
A resturant here in Henrico County burned to the ground yesterday while the fireman could only stand by and watch. No water from the hydrants, and they couldn't get enough tanker trucks back and forth to a pond two miles away to make much difference.
Fortunately for us, we only lost a couple of trees and had to run the generator for about 15 hours.
Danny
