Sandy

Really lucky here. About 8" of rain and lots of wind, but I never lost power, which had been my greatest concern.

Phil Marti VITA/TCE Volunteer Clarksburg, MD

Phil is about 30 miles west of me. I'm about 8 miles west of the Baltimore City limits and no where near the Chesapeake. So I too got a lot of wind driven rain, but no downed trees and no power outage.

The eastern shore of Maryland and Delaware got much heavier wind and rain. I have read that Sandy made landfall at Atlantic City, NJ. The people there and north of there are in a world of hurt. Some major businesses in NYC are still closed due to flooding and power outages.

Dick

Thanks for thinking of us. I'm in northern New Jersey near New York City. We didn't have much rain, but we had very strong winds. For most of us in this area the power outages and fallen trees are the main problems. I didn't have any property damage or trees down, but my power was out for 5 days. A lot of people still don't have power back. There are lines for gasoline, and odd-even rationing, because a lot of gas stations don't have power.

Ira Smilovitz is in a nearby town, but I'm not in touch with him. He hasn't posted in a few weeks, but he doesn't post very frequently.

Bob Sandler

My situation is about the same as Bob's. Lost power Monday evening and got it back Sunday evening. No physical property damage here because we lost the largest trees last year in a microburst at the end of September and/or the Halloween snowstorm.

By Thursday morning we had had enough of the cold and dark, so we relocated to Boston until Monday. My brother's family is there and I gained a new nephew during Sandy's onslaught.

Ira Smilovitz

I didn't have any

got it back Sunday evening.

Wow, five days or more without power, that's something we all need to plan for if we live in storm country or earthquake country, or tsunami country, or heat wave country, or power plant failure country, or ... the list goes on.

I keep extra gasoline and water on site, but no generator (other than cars, which can serve as generators if you have the right adapters, but probably inefficient).

Did disaster planning help at all in the area affected by Sandy? In other words, did people actually store up essential supplies in advance in a way that they could use them?

And, for tax purposes, are business-related disaster supplies and preparation ordinary and necessary expenses? Probably so, nowadays.

Sounds like it, but make sure it is not personal. An extra can of gasoline or a generator for personal use sounds like a personal expense. A generator to power your business computer sounds valid. Otherwise you have to allocate between personal and business.

That's why I said "business-related".