14th Dec 2006, a storm hit the north west of Seattle by the evening at about 90 miles/hour. And it really hit hard. Rained randomly, very windy. A mail circulated to leave early. I left office by 9 pm. Then 1 am that night suddenly the lights went off. Yes it blinked twice before as a warning. And thats it, the whole Seattle area with no power. And most modern society came to a stop. Haha, everything runs on power, from petrol pump to restaurants, grocery shops, banks i.e. all the things to lead a daily life. All Microsoft's office buildings are empty. Never been prepared for such a situation. And it is seen there is no disaster recovery here. People are so dependent on electric. Your cooking burners run on electric. So you have no way to cook food, thats the least expected. No heating system so chill in near freezing temperature outside. A total 24 hours without power in severe cold and junk food.
Well never mind the power outage in the night, went to sleep by 2 as usual waiting for power to return. Didn't wake up at the first alarm at 9 am. Got up from bed when the second alarm went ringing at 9:30. Well heading for the bathroom, felt the heater is not on, its very cold inside the house. Went out my room and my roomies are all talking about no power, no gas, nothing. Never been in such a situation, never had a nightmare that someday we will not have power in our houses, least expected when you are in USA. So tried to adapt to the morning with chilling temperature, laptop discharged. Quickly had a bath with the remaining hot water and got ready to fetch some food from outside restaurants as we cannot cook. And our car have 1/4th of its gas left. So do postpone grocery, gas filling for the weekend. went out for gas, food. And then what I see, hey the traffic lights are off ... oh my god ... how will the American's who drive with help of traffic lights, signs will drive like third world countries like India. The never used human instincts before, actually didn't had to, driving is so easy with traffic control. Yep all the roads are total mess, crossing are crowded, driving at 10-15 mph ... so boring. Next surprise, the gas stations are closed ... too surprised. So lets have breakfast ... nope all the restaurants are closed because they have no power ... ha ha ... shops ... no no they are also closed. so you are on your own now. Fortunately got a Safeway open and saw people are buying everything they can. This blackout can go for days. So we also joined the panicked line and bout some bananas, wafers, wine, firewood, lighters ... came back home as the gas is going less ... we have to save some for emergency ...
We don't know what we will do whole day without power ... IT life has a curse, we are bound to miss our laptop, network, mails, blogs first. So we really freak out when we have deal with this type of blackouts. So nothing to do, eat some dry food and go to sleep. Slept for another 4-5 hours, chilling temp is good for sleep but not for much long. So wake up at 6:30. In the day there was light so you feel something is there. But after evening it is dark, horrible. Dark and cold, really horrible. But we had some battery operated emergency lights, which came of good use. But still we are very unsure about tomorrow or the day after tomorrow ... our batteries will not live that longer. Only thing is working is the phone but it will also discharge in time. We roomies tried to have some fun with the wine, but what 12% alcohol will do to starving cold people :) ... well then we started to light a fire with the firewoods. After 15-20 minutes of rigorous labor we got it burning ... ooohh its pleasant to be near the fire ... the fire saved us. Now one of my roomie got some chicken soup and we put them near the fire to get hot. The next thing we started a movie to watch and totally forgot about the soup cans. After 30 minutes of watching Clerks II ... booom ... yeah our fireplace burst i.e. the soup can ... that really scared us ... hehe soup all over the place ... fortunately rescued the other can ... that is our dinner ... called home with last phone battery and told that it might not call for next 2-3 days, situation can be worse
by 11:45 pm the power came back ... uff its a relief ... never know what would have happened if the same situation gone for another day or two. In modern life I never realized so much dependency on power. In India power cuts are normal in life so people have alternate power source like generators. A power cut never takes the normal life down. Everything will be open and working with alternate power. And also many daily amenities does not run on power, they are manual. Here in USA, with power life is very sophisticated but if anyway (may it has a probability of .00001%) power goes off the life stops because everything is automated and it needs power. A single bottleneck in most modern society. It is very surprising to think of gas pump, water supply, cooking are handicapped without power. There should be some plan B.
Whatever, this really been a different experience. Because it is a day, I can say its fun to be disconnected :P
posted by foobar @ 12:00:00 AM
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