FORWARD OPERATING BASE OLIVER

[mountainborn]

A large part of Arkansas is out of electricity as a result of hurricane Ike. When we got home from RVER II, our home was ok and the livestock were ok.

However Betty's folks, both semi invalid shutin's, had been with out power for about 12 hours. Betty's Sister had made a meal for them with a barbeque grill. The evening news said that it may be next week before some areas get electricity back.

So, we immediately began to get ready for Betty to take the Oliver over there to provide services for her folks.

The Arkansas National Guard has a generator running the local water plant, so water will not be a problem.

The Ollie's generator will keep the refrigerator and deep freeze at her folks place, from losing their contents, as well as provide lighting and access to news, weather and so forth.

Knowing her, Betty will set up a kitchen and start providing for others as well as her folks.

I will work three twelve hour days on my job, then go over to help as needed. By then Betty will need supplies and I will bring in a pickup truck load of groceries, fuel and other stuff.

Here is a link to a newspaper article on the Storm damage:

http://www2.arkansasonline.com/news/2008/sep/14/1-dead-ark-180000-without-power-ike/

We are lucky to have such a marvelous tool to help others with, such as our Oliver !

Are there other ways that we might use our Ollie to help those that are in the disaster area ?

[mountainborn]

I recieved a text message from Betty early this morning. Sometime during the night, while everything including the generator was shut down, the power was restored to her folks place.

Power crews from surrounding states flooded into the area, they were determining which power lines had medicaly housebound patients, restoring them as soon as possible.

Betty unplugged the Ollie and threw the breaker to reconnect her folks place to the grid. Her folks home will be able to go back to normal energy consumption and not have to ration energy so the Yamaha gen set on the tongue of the Ollie can carry it.