Citizen X
Friday, March 2, my fair Commonwealth was hit with an outbreak of severe weather. Heavy thunderstorms, high winds, and tornadoes. The town of West Liberty was hit very hard; a more appropriate description may be "devastated." Most of the buildings in the town's central area were badly damaged or destroyed, and another small burg in the eastern end of the state, Salyersville, took a bad hit, too. As of this afternoon, 23 people are confirmed dead from the storms, with a fairly large number of injuries of varying severity.
Here in Lexington, we had a brief tornado warning, brought on by a fast-moving cell. It blew through quickly, spawning some damaging winds in a couple of counties to the south and east of here. Another bullet dodged.
The good news out of all of this, on a local scale at least, was the seriousness with which local businesses, agencies, and organizations took the warnings. The city/county government offices closed up shop ahead of the storm, schools dismissed early, and even my own alleged employer sent non-essential staff home. We got lucky here, and to some degree, that helped the smaller cities that were damaged, as rescue and recovery personnel from Lexington were able to deploy to the outlying areas.
On the night of Sunday the 4th, we had our first real snowfall of the season - 3.5" - 4". It mostly melted off by Tuesday, when the day's high temperature blew past 55F in the afternoon.
In trivial news, I've started playing WizKids' new Star Trek Heroclix game. It's fun, the ships look good, and it's as close to a miniatures game as I want to get ever again.
Citizen's Fire Academy continues, and I like this course a lot. This week's class was on EMS activity, and included hands-on training with intubation and intraosseal (sp?) fluid delivery. I did not know that fluids and medications can be delivered straight into the marrow of the long bones if an intravenous feed can't be established.
Tomorrow night is the finale of the first adventure in my All For One game. I think this one's going to continue on for a while; my players and I are having a great time with it. Honestly, I don't see how a person couldn't enjoy this - Musketeers hunting monsters and witches and other bad things in 17th Century France. Heck yeah.
Here in Lexington, we had a brief tornado warning, brought on by a fast-moving cell. It blew through quickly, spawning some damaging winds in a couple of counties to the south and east of here. Another bullet dodged.
The good news out of all of this, on a local scale at least, was the seriousness with which local businesses, agencies, and organizations took the warnings. The city/county government offices closed up shop ahead of the storm, schools dismissed early, and even my own alleged employer sent non-essential staff home. We got lucky here, and to some degree, that helped the smaller cities that were damaged, as rescue and recovery personnel from Lexington were able to deploy to the outlying areas.
On the night of Sunday the 4th, we had our first real snowfall of the season - 3.5" - 4". It mostly melted off by Tuesday, when the day's high temperature blew past 55F in the afternoon.
In trivial news, I've started playing WizKids' new Star Trek Heroclix game. It's fun, the ships look good, and it's as close to a miniatures game as I want to get ever again.
Citizen's Fire Academy continues, and I like this course a lot. This week's class was on EMS activity, and included hands-on training with intubation and intraosseal (sp?) fluid delivery. I did not know that fluids and medications can be delivered straight into the marrow of the long bones if an intravenous feed can't be established.
Tomorrow night is the finale of the first adventure in my All For One game. I think this one's going to continue on for a while; my players and I are having a great time with it. Honestly, I don't see how a person couldn't enjoy this - Musketeers hunting monsters and witches and other bad things in 17th Century France. Heck yeah.