@MtnMan
Hang in there brother. Potable water is the worst thing to be without. Decades of hurricane after hurricane have given our local city and county workers the experience to harden things as much as possible. And of course previous storms have removed so many of the trees and old power poles that caused outages. The lines are underground at my house and in most of my neighborhood.
I have decided to have my big oak removed this winter. It is simply too close to the house, trimmed back or not. 2 people a county over were killed by trees falling on their homes.
Good news: Mongo showed up for canned food last night. Mongo only pawn in game of life.
In 2004, we went through an almost identical problem when Hurricane Ivan hit this area. The powers that be, decided to prevent a reoccurrence by installing a hardened backup line, and they buried it 25' deep, far more protection than required to deal with another Ivan. Helene said, 'hold my beer and watch this'.
Underground lines would be nice, but on steep mountain sides, often very rocky, that's not happening.
Oaks and pines are probably the majority of tree species that came down, followed by maples. Popular trees, often as massive, almost never fall. 30+ years as a volunteer firefighter responding to numerous tree on house calls, it has never been a popular.
A neighbor down the street with a spring on their property rigged up a catch method and ran a hose down to the bottom of their driveway. I hauled probably 50 gallons of spring water home today for flushing, and even washing. Using the 90 gal rolling trash can for storage.
Pets no longer have the "song of my people" (the electric can opener), since it all pull tab now. Glad Mongo's home.