Last night around 9:30, the lights got bright for a bit. PG&E had been in a habit of feeding us 140-volt surges, so I didn’t think anything of it until very bright light was suddenly replaced with very dim, then off.
The UPS for my computer starts honking… the UPS for the entertainment system starts beeping… The dog is barking at the beeping… Out come the candles and oil lamps.
I call PG&E, and they were unaware of the outage. Turns out, a transformer at a nearby substation blew up and started a fire.
We had an impromptu block party - about 20 of us are out on the street chatting. Some were wondering how we still had power - my computer was still on at the time, just waiting for the UPS to shut it down. Two different neighbors were moaning about how they were at their computer when the power went out. I think they’re both going to buy a UPS this weekend. Eventually, we head back in and try to remember what was on so we can turn it off and go to sleep.
Amazingly, power was restored in just about two hours. Pretty good, assuming the report we heard of the explosion and fire were correct. They probably were, since we could smell smoke.
I get blips, enough to reset my computer, every week. I will sort out proper UPS stuff soon!
Blackouts…oooh, the last one was a long time ago. Excluding fuses blowing, which happens with regularity because my landlady installed fancy kitchen lighting that takes that circuit to the limit, a single dying bulb kills the lot. But the worst we had was about three days…a neighbour was out for over two weeks, because the pole holding their power line had been broken.
I used to live in a house where the owner would frequently forget to pay the electric bill so we went with out power several times. Our emergency kit was as follows,
Candles
Matches and Lighters
Orange juice
Vodka
Trivial Pursuit
I like that you have a UPS for your entertainment system.
Freshman year of college we were mostly without power for about a week. Our school had traditionally gotten a good rate for power with the caveat that we would be the first to go when it got to crunch time. It had never happened for decades, but then all of a sudden, with the wonkiness in California’s energy markets, it crunched a lot.
The dining halls were running on sterno. We had big bonfire parties every night. And my little battery-operated 3" TV drew a crowd of about 20 when The Simpsons came on.
I was wondering . . . okay, I’ll ask my stupid question. I live in a one bedroom condo, in a high rise building. Would I be able to get a generator and use it in my living space? Would it be unsafe to the point of a fire hazard?
The longest power loss I think I’ve ever personally been subjected to has been four or five hours. My ex’s uncle in Zimbabwe, on the other hand, has lived on a farm without regular electric power for most of his life. He’s got a little Honda generator so he can run the lights and watch SA rugby on TV for a couple hours each night. He impresses the shit out of me.
Should the big one ever drop, I’ve got two flashlights, a battery-powered radio, a couple of candles, a little bottled water and a few items of canned goods. Longer than two days, and I’ll be out fighting baying mobs for scraps of of rat tenderloin, I guess.
Conventional generators are powered by gasoline engines, like a lawn mower engine only bigger. They have warnings advising not to use them inside, due to carbon monoxide poisoning, as jrfranchi pointed out above. Also, the noise level of operating a small motor inside an apartment would be unbearable.
If you just HAD to have one, I suppose you could operate it outside on the ground and run an extension cord up to your room. Or if you have an outside balcony and tolerant neighbors…
I’ve got candles and flashlights, the stove is gas and will light with a match. The neighbor has a generator, so with 500’ of extention cord to run my sump pump I’d be happy.
Two summers ago when there was that odd blackout in Ohio-PA-NY-Southern Ontario we were concerned enough to try to drink all the beer before it got warm. Oh the humanity.
When the power goes out everyone goes out onto the porches. Usually with a drink.
Of course, I spend a lot of time on my porch with a drink anyway, so that’s no big change, but it’s a change to see everyone else.
Sometimes, we have impromptu parties. Before Isabell, it seemed like everyone stocked up on alcohol and we had a rocker across the street that night when the power went out. It had been planned before the power went out and I think people were kind of looking forward to it. The neighborhood also has big bashes if we ever get massively snowed in like that one a couple years ago.
I’ve got a generator that can pull the fridge, a small freezer, a TV, a fan, and a lamp. I have a camp stove with plenty of small propane tanks, a propane heater that uses the same tanks as the camp stove (but can also be hooked to a larger cylinder via a hose), and a gas grill (along with two spare cylinders). I have a fireplace; it heats the room fairly well if you close off all the other rooms in the building. I have three flashlight/lanterns designed for utility work, various smaller Maglites, and two battery-powered radios (each capable of picking up TV and weather bands). I have lots of candles, but they’re not really for power outages.
My dad had pretty much the same setup at home, except that he had a second generator for running a window air conditioner. He also had two Suburbans; he would top off both tanks prior to a hurricane, then siphon the fuel as needed.
It’s not enough to run the TV, but it will let the VCR, satellite receiver / Tivo and a LAN-connected MP3 player ride out the dark for about ten minutes. I simply got tired of resetting the VCR clock every time PG&E had a half-second hiccup.
The longest I have been without power (besides camping) is 4 days during an ice storm. We still have water without power or we would have gone somewhere else. The worst was having no heat in the middle of Michigan winter. The temps in the house were down to the 40’s by the time power came back. The last day we were finally getting ready to leave as we were afraid the pipes would freeze and we needed to turn the water off.
We did ok because we have a wood burning fireplace in a finished basement so we bought a cord of firewood and lived down there. It actually wasn’t too bad because we could still leave to go out to eat in areas that had power, and we are used to camping so we cooked over our fire too. That was before our son was born though, if it happened again I would probably go stay with someone or to a hotel. With 2 adults it is an adventure, with babies not so much. During the summer it wouldn’t be a big deal.
We just used the camping equipment and got along pretty well.
