Thursday, March 28, 2024

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Irene & Storm Potpurri

By Art Hall

We all had a very exciting week here in Cape May County; Irene was good to us, as storms go. The discussions that followed this storm are all over the map, with most of them, which I heard focusing on the question: Did you stay, or did you leave? And if you went, where did you go?
I was surprised at the number of people who said they stayed. Those who stayed said they are glad they did. Those who left, for the most part, say they are glad they left, as it was the safe thing to do.
Bob Grace of Dennisville told me that when people ignore a call to evacuate, they are playing Russian roulette. He probably knows what he is talking about because he has training in emergency management. He said that when the word goes out to leave, his car is already full of gas, loaded with clothes, food and water, and his insurance policies.
Others who stayed said, we have lived here for decades and the most we ever face is no power, high winds, and some flooding.
They add, they make sure they have plenty of water and food, which does not need refrigeration. They did not want to face hours of bumper-to-bumper traffic, with the potential for accidents and flooded highways. Some people had trouble getting gasoline (The Wawas closed early all over the county).
Some asked, when are we ever going to complete Route 5
5? Even people who left early faced a mountain of traffic? This does beg the question, when indeed are we ever going to finish that road? We torture our guests with our winding cow path under normal circumstances, which is compounded in an emergency. (And heaven help us if the earthquake, which hit south of here were in the ocean and created a tsunami – days of advanced warning could go to hours)
***
Covering the storm created interesting challenges for your Herald team. Maintenance of the website was particularly challenging, demanding and fun. Without knowing that we would have a reliable Internet connection and electricity, Jack Fichter established a remote office in Vineland for several days.
We knew from previous storms that our website traffic increases tremendously so we had to take every precaution to keep it live. Fortunately, we recently increased the site bandwidth significantly, which enabled the site to handle the deluge of web traffic without interrupting access.
Our website architect reported that demand averages 13 requests per second, but during the storm was hitting 150. Bandwidth, which averages 80K per second was spiking between 700K to 1200K. (Our site will become mobile-friendly shortly.)
New subscribers for Herald mobile alerts for news, weather and traffic shot up as well.
Of course it goes without being said that the loss of several production days and with a number evacuated staff members, it was touch-and-go to meet our deadlines for print. I want to publicly express my gratitude to the dedicated and talented Herald team.
Art Hall, publisher

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