r/TikTokCringe • u/Girl-Understood • Aug 22 '26

Discussion This mother has gone viral vlogging her experience during the ongoing Gary, Indiana Blackout, people angered by the GoFundMe support she's attracted decided to report it and doxxed her.

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11

u/TheCharalampos Aug 22 '26

Ten days without power is insane.

4

u/ThillyGooths Aug 22 '26

After Helene we didn’t have cell service for a week, no power for almost 2 weeks, and no water for over a month. And once the water was restored it wasn’t safe to drink for I don’t even know how long. It was a fucking nightmare to deal with as a single person, I can’t imagine being a parent and having to deal with that.

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u/TheCharalampos Aug 22 '26

I don't know how y'all are coping.

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u/ThillyGooths Aug 23 '26

It really sucked, I waited in line for 5 hours to get gas at one point because the only way we could charge our phones or cool off was in the car lol. Things are mostly back to normal now almost 2 years later. They are still rebuilding businesses that got damaged or washed away though.

After all that I bought a propane generator and have a big battery bank that is connected to solar panels. I keep a stock of water for drinking and have rain barrels catching water from my gutters that can be used for flushing toilets. But now that I’m more prepared nothing like that will ever happen again probably lmao.

1

u/TheCharalampos Aug 24 '26

Was it a freak storm? I'd be paranoid it would happen again, preparing like you did sounds veeeery wise.

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u/ThillyGooths Aug 24 '26

I’m in the western part of NC and the state in general is used to getting some hurricanes and tropical storms. Hurricane Helene was technically a tropical storm when it reached us but it had already been raining for 3 days prior and then we got over 2 feet of rain in a very short period of time which caused flash floods (and flooding in general because the ground was already heavily saturated). In my area we had 100mph wind gusts which took down power lines, etc etc. The state doesn’t have the infrastructure to deal with hurricanes the way that a state like Florida would have, so that delayed a lot of repairs because help had to come from other states.

The rivers that run through Asheville flooded, one of the big rivers quadrupled in width and stayed that way for multiple days, and lower lying areas in the city had buildings completely underwater. Entire neighborhoods that were close to the river were washed away.

Western NC gets tropical storm remnants all the time just because of the proximity to the east coast, but they’re usually not that intense by the time it gets here so I think people didn’t take preparing seriously, and there wasn’t a ton of “hey this may be serious” in the news.

Helene was the worst natural disaster in NC’s history. It was scary to not be able to get in touch with anyone because they cut off cell service (I can’t remember the reason they did that, but there was a legit reason). I couldn’t get to my mom’s house 15 mins away because of flooding and sooo many downed trees and power line poles. Astoundingly only 100ish people died in NC, which is horrible obviously, but considering the amount of damage we took it could have been so much worse.

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u/TheCharalampos Aug 25 '26

Thanks so much for going into detail. Sounds like a lot of different issues all lined up.

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u/Birddash Aug 23 '26

57 days after Hurricane Ida in Chauvin,La

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u/TheCharalampos Aug 23 '26

How are you 1) alive 2) not in active rebellion

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u/Birddash Aug 24 '26

We ran a generator only at night for a small window unit & deep freezer and we all slept in one of the only rooms in the house that wasn’t destroyed/messed up. Ida completely devastated our area, I believe they had to rebuild the whole power grid. But before the crews could start working, the roads had to be cleared of debris, downed trees, broken power lines, houses that were literally moved in the middle of the road from the storm. There was a whole trailer that was in the middle of the bayou for months. Someone’s whole life just sitting in the water, they had to get with the army of engineers to figure out how to remove it from the bayou without it falling apart, because a lot of shrimp boats go up and down the area. Cell service was non existent for a few weeks, there was no way to get in touch with anyone unless you drove up out of terrebonne parish. I’ve been through many many hurricanes in my life, and Ida scarred me. It’s scarred a lot of people down here, I wouldn’t stay for anything above a category 3. People waited HOURS AND HOURS for gas, food, and supplies at times.

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u/TheCharalampos Aug 24 '26

Wooow. That sounds truly apocalyptic, wonder how on earth it caused so much damage to the grid. Hopefully the rebuilt version is more protected?

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u/Southside_john Aug 23 '26

The best part is they jacked our electric rates last year. My electric bill is $500 a month and I had no power for 6 days