Welcome to General Chat - GAW Community Area
This General Chat area started off as a place for people to talk about things that are off topic, however it has quickly evolved into a community and has become an integral part of the GAW experience for many of us.
Based on its evolving needs and plenty of user feedback, we are trying to bring some order and institute some rules. Please make sure you read these rules and participate in the spirit of this community.
Rules for General Chat
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Be respectful to each other. This is of utmost importance, and comments may be removed if deemed not respectful.
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Avoid long drawn out arguments. This should be a place to relax, not to waste your time needlessly.
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Personal anecdotes, puzzles, cute pics/clips - everything welcome
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Please do not spam at the top level. If you have a lot to post each day, try and post them all together in one top level comment
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Try keep things light. If you are bringing in deep stuff, try not to go overboard.
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Things that are clearly on-topic for this board should be posted as a separate post and not here (except if you are new and still getting the feel of this place)
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If you find people violating these rules, deport them rather than start a argument here.
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Feel free to give feedback as these rules are expected to keep evolving
In short, imagine this thread to be a local community hall where we all gather and chat daily. Please be respectful to others in the same way
Hey all, hope everyone is doing well. I just wanted to say this- I’m in Tampa and we got hit pretty hard by Milton. A couple observations- the most important one is wow, early morning after it hit all the neighbors were out checking out the damage and cleaning up. It was incredible. Kids, adults, anyone with a chainsaw and rake. By about noon, it’s like it happened days ago. Trees and branches all stacked neatly by the road and grills and generators humming. The community really came together and it was fantastic. “You need anything?” Was the phrase of the day.
Another thing is- if you have a generator, it’s going to be difficult to get gas in any emergency like this. It’s extremely hard after a day or two. Lines were two hours long yesterday at Sams and Walmart and The Port of Tampa had supply but trucks couldn’t get through so.. nobody has fuel. So consider diesel gens and have a plentiful supply but most I’ve talked to didn’t and ran out quickly.
Another observation was that power went out almost as soon as it got bad and obviously so did internet- and then right away nothing was loading on anyone’s phones using their data. We could barely text much less see what was going on online. I still have no idea how bad it was anywhere besides my local area. So communication is word of mouth, basically. It’s still slow and annoying. It feels very old school- like I wish I had a newspaper.
We still don’t have power and probably won’t for a while. Hope everyone is doing alright in the areas hit.
Praying for you and everyone there
Thanks for communicating with us with your life so crazy. We Frens are honored that you thought of us.
That's is how it always is in our neighborhood...everyone working together to help each other! 🤍
Glad you came through safe. As bad as things seem to be, it makes me smile to see people coming together and taking care of one another. This is what it means to love one another. I’m sure it makes our Heavenly Father smile too. When these things happen, nothing else matters. Love is put into action, and doesn’t see a bank account. I pray that God will restore your family with more than what you had. Take care Fren 🙏🏻