Powerless
To the City Light trucks outside our house: Good luck guys!
Tonight, coming home after work, we turned the corner to our block and realized something was odd: There were no lights!
We walked in the house, flicked a few switches and confirmed what we already knew: The power is out! And dammit, I was planning to cook a good dinner tonight! Our lucky neighbor, kitty-corner and across the street from us must be on a different power line, cuz she’s got lights.
In the six years that I’ve lived in my house, I’ve never been completely without power. Power has flickered and I’ve had to reset my clocks every once in awhile, but I’ve never experienced a power outage that interrupts my life. Someone who’s lived on my block for the over 50 years told me that we’re situated at a perfect intersection within the grid. In all his years, he can only remember a handful of times without electricity. So you can imagine my surprise at seeing our block as the only one without lights. Plus, when we pulled up to the house, I was thinking of one thing: FOOD! Oh man, I was hungry!
Nate was preparing to knock on our neighbors door (the one with the lights), but I was anxious to find a restaurant and get some food in my tummy. Plus, it started to rain… again. So we headed off to find dinner, heat and light.
Now we’re back at home, tummies full and sitting next to a burning fire, surrounded by candles. How am I online? We’re working off the battery and the Internet phone card. I love being wired. The iPhone is charging as I type, and [THANK GOD] the work crews have arrived. I looked up our neighborhood on the city light website. Lightning struck and we’ve been without power since 12:30 this afternoon. I’m glad this didn’t happen on a Saturday.
Instead, I’ll sit here and tell my tale of a Friday evening in front of the fire. It’s quite nice. But I hope to have power again very soon.
Description: Lightning storms typically cause scattered outages by striking poles and tripping the protective relay (”fuse”) to pole-top transformers and sectionalizers. The typical pattern for a lightning storm is small outage pockets of between 1 and 50 customers. However, severe lightning storms have caused widespread feeder-level outages affecting tens of thousands of customers.
Approximately customers affected: 73
Cause: LIGHTNING