Hanna, Ike, Josephine are unfriendly visitors

If the weather-heads and their end-of-week predications are correct, Hanna is pouring on your personal, private parade even as you read this.

In that case, consider this a very wet dry run.

“It appears as though we’ll have maybe 4 inches of rain with winds and a chance of flash flooding,” said Marge Thomas, before the rain started. Ms. Thomas is the emergency management director for the immediate vicinity, including Albemarle County, Charlottesville and the University of Virginia.

“Hanna could be trouble,” she said, “but Ike appears to really bear watching.”

He’s not fooling around

Ike is a serious hurricane, packing precipitation and wild winds, blowing the ocean at more than 100 miles an hour. He appears likely to follow Hanna’s path up the East Coast, according to current computer models. Not far behind is his other girlfriend, Josephine, whirling at 60 miles per hour in his wake.

That could be an unhappy string of events.

“A strong hurricane, even if it hits us as a tropical storm, can cause a lot of problems, especially downed trees and power outages,” Ms. Thomas said. “In some cases, power could be out for days.”

Days? When Hurricane Isabel hit, lo these many years ago, she came into town as a tropical depression and left areas powerless for weeks. With the thought of a 1-2-3 punch of wind and rain looming in the coming week, local officials are asking We, The People, to get Our Act together.

“It is never too early to start preparing for any weather-related emergency,” said Ric Barrick, Charlottesville spokesman. “There are several other storms brewing in the Atlantic that may pose a risk to the East Coast.”

So be prepared

That’s one reason why the city, county, UVa and their combined Emergency Communications Center have added a Web site, http://www.communityemergency.org.

“There’s a lot of information on the site that includes things people can do to prepare themselves for an emergency, any emergency situation,” Ms. Thomas said.

The advice includes stashing water, food and medicine for everyone in the house for three days. Like good whiskey and church services, more is better and, if you store canned food, make sure you have a manually operated can opener. If you store really good micro-brews, keep a real bottle opener.

Check out “get a kit” at the Web site.

“Make sure you fill up your gas tanks, because pumps don’t run if the power’s not on,” Ms. Thomas said. “We’re doing pretty much the same thing that we’re asking others to do. We’re making sure we have water supplies and ice suppliers in case the power goes out and people need to stay in shelters. We want to make sure we have what we need.”

In other words, keep yours eyes on the skies and the basement stocked with supplies.

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