nixtress's Diaryland Diary

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When the lights go down in the city...

There is a god..or maybe three.

Right after I got to work this afternoon, the NE U.S. got slammed with a power outage. Picture, if you will, one blonde girl sitting at her computer, doing her work like a nice little employee when the lights go out. Pitch black, not a sound. And in about 2 seconds it all starts to flicker back to life, courtesy of a generator. Blonde girl and coworker begin setting everything back to rights--security cameras, computers, lock systems, you name it. Two minutes later it all goes down again, only to immediately come back up. It was like some demented joke!

After several repetitions of this, our generator stayed on, whilst the rest of the city did not. And then the phone began. Literally every line we had was ringing in with people wanting to know why the power was down and when it would be back up and if it was just in A-town, and what should they do if they had oxygen, and did we have the number for a reputable company that rented out refrigerated trucks?? Really, you name and we were asked it tonight. Is there something about a situation such as this that makes people lose their common sense? And while I'll admit that my heart beat a little faster as my imagination wondered about further terrorist activity, I'm proud to say I'm not one to panic. Char and I waded through the multitudes of panic-stricken callers, through hours of back and forth calls with the street department on-call guy reference traffic lights, and miscellaneous other crap. Of course Joe Public decided to run out and buy every piece of ice, every bottle of water, every gallon of gas and every battery they could get their hands on. The streets were flooded with imbeciles who didn't have the sense to just stay HOME! Miraculously, we had not one accident reported because of this power loss. And just before getting off work, a little more than an hour ago, it all came back up. My sons supper consisted of p.b. and j, and some chips. And they went to bed without baths. I suppose that's not the end of the world, considering.

At this point in time, there are still lots of areas without power and I count us lucky to have it. It's abominably hot and muggy right now and I can't imagine what sleeping minus fans tonight would have been like. I've heard differing reports as to the cause and I'm guessing I'll have to wait till tomorrow to get a better idea as to what happened. I know that Cleveland has declared a curfew tonight and our local post of the Ohio State Patrol sent up 25 troopers to help with law enforcement. They shut down several nuclear plants up along Lake Erie, and there seem to be concerns about the water supply without power. Something about the pumps. I can't imagine how the people trapped in elevators and subways and tunnels today felt. Good lord.

I'm going to go take a lukewarm shower and be thankful I have my fans. I'm going to crawl between sheets with the option of an alarm to wake me in the morning and be glad of it (at least tonight :P)

G'nite.

N.

11:36 p.m. - 2003-08-14

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