Letter Re: Tropical Storm Ike’s Devastation Works its Way North to Ohio

Hi James!
I heard you this morning on WLW [in Cincinnati, Ohio] radio when you did your quick interview. Nice job.

It is amazing here in Cincinnati the level of chaos that exists. The power is still out to over half a million people. My power just came back on about 10 minutes ago, but I’m waiting until it stabilizes before shutting down my emergency power system.

We had quite a mess with lots of downed trees and power lines, but overall it wasn’t as bad as Houston – thank God! There has been quite a run on gasoline, and a bit of gouging here. About 50% of the grocery stores are down without power. [The] Krogers [grocery store chain in the region] has over 50% of their stores closed and are predicting quite a loss in frozen/fresh foods at those locations.

I’ve been well prepared for quite a while, so no long gas lines for me, plenty to eat, power and we’ve enjoyed a couple of days Internet free, which I might add hasn’t really been that bad! Maybe this will be a wake up call to more people locally to get prepared. One can only hope. God bless you and yours! – Larry in Cincinnati, Ohio