72 hours and counting...
since we had power to our house. There was a big storm on Friday that knocked out power to >1Million people, including us. We've been in the dark since. 72 hours so far. Put another way, we've been out of power for nearly half of 2008.
The power went out shortly after 10am on Friday - Mona said there was a bang outside and the lights went out. She called the PG&E outage reporting line. You can also call this line to get status updates... which we've done a lot since. The outage was quite local - our small street and a couple of smaller nearby streets; a total of 30-40 houses.
Friday night, when we went to bed (in the dark), the status line said there would be an update at 6am Saturday.
At 7am Saturday, it said there would be an update at 10am Saturday.
At 10am Saturday, it said that there were crews onsite and power should be restored by 11am. Mona took Iain out to watch the PG&E crews working, which Iain thoroughly enjoyed - he's been playing "PG&E crew" a lot since then.
The lineman said that a transformer had been damaged, probably by lightning, but simply fixing that transformer hadn't restored power - there was more damage down the circuit. He was going to isolate some of the subcircuits and try to bring power back. He told us that in a few minutes, either the lights would go on or we'd hear an explosion.
One explosion later, we were still in the dark.
Sometime Saturday afternoon, about half the houses on our street got power back. Not us. The status line now said that power should be restored 4-6pm Sunday. We heard that there had been 6 transformers damaged in our area, and they'd managed to fix 3 of them.
At 6pm on Sunday, the message changed: it now said that a further update would come at 12am January 8 - i.e., midnight Monday night. I called the "speak to a human" line and was told that the best guess for our area being cleared of outages was Monday afternoon. This was from the general bulletin for all PG&E - these estimates are probably based on just dividing the number of remaining outages by the number of crews. Incidentally, the automated line usually says "if you've been without power for 24 hours, here's the number to speak to a human". They've changed that to "If you've been without power for 48 hours..."
They're saying that some areas, mostly the mountainous areas with poor access, might not get power back until Thursday.
As of right now, the status line says our power should be restored 4-6pm today. We'll see. I'm not pointing fingers at PG&E - their repair crews have been working 16-hours on, 8 hours off shifts since Friday morning, and once you've burned through your supply of replacement transformers you simply have to wait for more. There was simply too much damage to be fixed quickly.
We've been getting by OK with a little help from our friends. Some neighbours have a portable generator (we think it's part of their Burning Man kit) which they've been sharing around: hook it up to run your fridge for a few hours, then pass it on. We've had some takeout food, and our friends Rick and Martha had us over to dinner on Saturday, and brought by a hot quiche on Sunday. Our friends Becky and Chris let us hang out most of the day Sunday and fed us lunch.
Things I've learned, or already knew but have been reminded of:
The power went out shortly after 10am on Friday - Mona said there was a bang outside and the lights went out. She called the PG&E outage reporting line. You can also call this line to get status updates... which we've done a lot since. The outage was quite local - our small street and a couple of smaller nearby streets; a total of 30-40 houses.
Friday night, when we went to bed (in the dark), the status line said there would be an update at 6am Saturday.
At 7am Saturday, it said there would be an update at 10am Saturday.
At 10am Saturday, it said that there were crews onsite and power should be restored by 11am. Mona took Iain out to watch the PG&E crews working, which Iain thoroughly enjoyed - he's been playing "PG&E crew" a lot since then.
The lineman said that a transformer had been damaged, probably by lightning, but simply fixing that transformer hadn't restored power - there was more damage down the circuit. He was going to isolate some of the subcircuits and try to bring power back. He told us that in a few minutes, either the lights would go on or we'd hear an explosion.
One explosion later, we were still in the dark.
Sometime Saturday afternoon, about half the houses on our street got power back. Not us. The status line now said that power should be restored 4-6pm Sunday. We heard that there had been 6 transformers damaged in our area, and they'd managed to fix 3 of them.
At 6pm on Sunday, the message changed: it now said that a further update would come at 12am January 8 - i.e., midnight Monday night. I called the "speak to a human" line and was told that the best guess for our area being cleared of outages was Monday afternoon. This was from the general bulletin for all PG&E - these estimates are probably based on just dividing the number of remaining outages by the number of crews. Incidentally, the automated line usually says "if you've been without power for 24 hours, here's the number to speak to a human". They've changed that to "If you've been without power for 48 hours..."
They're saying that some areas, mostly the mountainous areas with poor access, might not get power back until Thursday.
As of right now, the status line says our power should be restored 4-6pm today. We'll see. I'm not pointing fingers at PG&E - their repair crews have been working 16-hours on, 8 hours off shifts since Friday morning, and once you've burned through your supply of replacement transformers you simply have to wait for more. There was simply too much damage to be fixed quickly.
We've been getting by OK with a little help from our friends. Some neighbours have a portable generator (we think it's part of their Burning Man kit) which they've been sharing around: hook it up to run your fridge for a few hours, then pass it on. We've had some takeout food, and our friends Rick and Martha had us over to dinner on Saturday, and brought by a hot quiche on Sunday. Our friends Becky and Chris let us hang out most of the day Sunday and fed us lunch.
Things I've learned, or already knew but have been reminded of:
- Gas furnace plus electronic lighting plus forced-air blower minus electricity equals no heat.
- Gas stove plus matches equals hot food.
- Gas water heater plus pilot light equals hot water (without this one, we'd have been in a hotel by Saturday night).
- When the outside temperature is in the 5-10C range, our house will stay in the 12-15C range, mostly around 13C.
- 13C is not a comfortable indoor temperature.
- The sweaters at the bottom of the drawers still work.
- One candle isn't enough to read by.
- Three candles is.
- A 20-pack of Ikea candles is a very good value.
- A wind-up radio is a good thing to have around.
- A little music lightens everyone's mood.
- Most household fireplaces don't give out much heat to the rest of the house.
- Four-year-old boys love watching fires in the fireplace, whether or not they're giving out heat.
- One-year-old girls also love fires.
- One-year-old girls should be watched like hawks lest they become too intimate with their new love.
- We have good friends.