cleve callison’s blog

Wilmington StarNews

We got through Hurricane Irene in pretty good shape, all in all. There was a lot of wind and rain from the storm, which made its closest approach to Wilmington (about 80 miles) in the middle of Friday night/Saturday morning August 26/27. But there was little real damage compared to what was feared.

We went to bed Saturday night with strong winds and rain, and woke to calm blue skies. The photo, from the Wilmington StarNews online, is from an area not too far from both the apartment and the rented house we’ll move to in a couple of weeks.

The biggest problem for most people was probably loss of power. At one point early Saturday Progress Energy was reporting that over 50% of customers in New Hanover County were without power. We were without power at the apartment for something less than 24 hours (I was at WHQR, on the air, for much of that time). But we got power back at about 10 pm Saturday. Cable came back this morning, and Internet service a bit later.

This was my first hurricane. To tell the truth, we’ve seen more problems in Cincinnati with the Hurricane Ike windstorm and some blizzards. But we were lucky — hurricanes are frightening, and many people in Irene’s path weren’t so fortunate.