This good Samaritan made rounds with flushing water

Talk about a good neighbor!

Chris Tacci put his children's kiddie pool full of water on the back of his truck and drove around our neighborhood flushing our toilets! Our area, Dogwood Lane Homeowners Association, East 104 Avenue and tributaries, between Our Road and Birch Road, was out of power and water for four days. It's people like Chris and his family who make neighbors good neighbors. Thank you Chris.

-- John and Suzanne Tsoutsouvas

Anchorage

Sept. 11 is the right day to prepare for an emergency I disagree with Rebecca Romine's letter of Sept. 15 ("Zombie photos insensitive"). Sept. 11 is exactly the right day to remember disaster preparedness. How many people survived the 9/11 attack because they were prepared and had thought out what to do in an emergency? How many others could have survived if they had done so?

Sixty wonderful Alaskans donated an entire Sunday -- 10 hours of their day off, providing all their own costumes, makeup, food, etc. -- to assist the Municipality of Anchorage's hard-working Emergency Operations Center shoot three public service commercials warning people to plan ahead for disaster. Zombies were a metaphoric example -- in Alaska we have to plan for a variety of different situations: earthquakes, volcanoes, windstorms, power failures, blizzards, pandemics, even war.

Alaskans cry for less "big government." Take responsibility for your own protection during disasters. Think ahead. Know what to do for in all situations. And be grateful there are others out there who are putting their money and time where their mouths are to help others.

Yes, I was one of those people.

-- Denise K. Yancey

Anchorage

State needs to buckle down and maintain Glenn Highway

The Glenn Highway continues to lack proper lighting, painted lane markings and timely road maintenance. Ruts that keep your vehicle on the road or the grooves on the right-hand lane that let you know when you're over too far are simply inadequate. A well-maintained highway with safe and proper lighting would increase driver visibility, potentially reducing the amount of accidents and moose kills on the highway.

I would like to think that the state would consider safe highways paramount over some ulterior motive to keep the drive as treacherous as possible so that they keep the citizen dollars and population in Anchorage.

-- Donna Faeo

Wasilla

Utility worker's job is hard, unforgiving and dangerous

Re: Deborah Richardson's letter ("Utility workers paid to do job").

First, she showed little knowledge of how utility infrastructure works. Electricity is very unforgiving so it takes time to approach each site and make sure there are no energized lines. Chugach had many lines down and thousands of trees to cut away. They had to coordinate with other utilities so they did not hurt anyone. Chugach restored power to more than 31,000 people in four days. Not bad.

Second, she is correct that this is what they get great pay for -- and because it is so very dangerous to do. It takes years to learn this trade.

Third, basic understanding of economics would show her that most of us do not want to pay Chugach to have extra personnel on standby 350 days a year waiting for the next mass outage. Those costs get passed on to us consumers.

If she doesn't like their service, then I suggest she disconnect from Chugach, buy a generator and, when her power fails, deal with it herself. No thank you needed.

-- Mark Elliott

Anchorage