Hurricane Derecho Remembered Traditional Cache
Brother Zeke: Brother Zeke says thanks to everyone who found this cache. This was a fun series, but it's time to retire it.
Hurricane Derecho Remembered
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Difficulty:
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Terrain:
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Size: 
(small)
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Bring your own pen. 20 foot accuracy when hidden. Like all caches all in this series, you are looking for a necessity when the power goes out. The trails will take you where you want to go.
June 29, 2012 Derecho hits Virginia. Where was Brother Zeke? Well, by late Saturday morning, I was back at work as the long restoration effort was cranking up. Days later, I saw fireworks from the freeway as I drove home late from work on the 4th of July. The power restoration efforts pushed right through July 4th with the majority of power was restored around July 6th.
First, you may remember Derecho was not a hurricane. A Derecho is defined as a widespread and long-lived wind storm that accompanies rapidly moving showers or thunderstorms. The damage typically is directed in one direction along a relatively straight swath. As a result, the term "straight-line wind damage" sometimes is used to describe Derecho damage. The 2012 Derecho took roughly 12 hours to race from northern Indiana to the southern mid-Atlantic coast.
When Richmond awoke Saturday, we knew we had been slammed by Derecho. Trees snapped and splintered. For all of Virginia, it was reported 2.5 million were in the dark. Gov. Bob McDonnell stated that Virginia experienced its largest non-hurricane power outage in history. Outages existed at critical facilities such as hospitals, shelters and businesses, and 911 facilities. Hardest hit was Northern Virginia with approximately 63 percent without power. A Dominion spokesperson said, “we lost entire circuits, lengths of lines between poles that carry electricity … utility poles cut in half, hundreds of transformers, protective devices, fuses, all destroyed and all had to be replaced.”
Mutual assistance from power companies across 18 states and Canada arrived less than 24 hours after the storm. This storm didn’t discriminate, and hit areas throughout the Commonwealth. Restoration crews were taxed as big IOU’s like Dominion and Appalachian were not the only power company’s affected by the disaster. Numerous electric cooperatives suffered major outages too. Coops like Shenandoah Valley, Southside, Rappahannock, Central Virginia, Northern VA, A&N, BARC, Community, Mecklenburg, Northern Neck, and Prince George all worked around the clock to get power restored to their customers.
Additional Hints
(Decrypt)
qbjarq gerr, zvq jnl haqre shaary