[Speed Gibson,
Thursday September 22, 2005 at 6:07pm]
Dark Blogging for now
We're in hour 22 of our storm power outage, so I'm blogging briefly here from an undisclosed location. Thankfully, we escaped without lost trees, shingles, etc, even though there were at least six trees down on our street alone.
Update Sat 8:30 AM: Make that hour 61 of the outage. There is power 2 blocks away in every direction, and that seems to be a common pattern here in the northwest suburbs. Xcel says "11:59 PM Sunday night" which even if true would effectively make this a 4.5 day outage, the longest I've ever known. Another neighborhood is being told Monday at the earliest.
Dry ice has held the freezer for the last 24 hours, but now we've moved the meat therein to a relative's freezer, since there is no predictable end to this outage. I may go out generator shopping...
Update Sun 10:20 AM We have been out over 87 hours now. Xcel finally was spotted late Saturday morning, finally appeared in our neighboorhood around 7 pm. They got most of a block up, so now we have power 2 blocks East, West, and South of us, and 1 block North of us. No sign of Xcel yet this morning. Qwest and Comcast, however, have been everywhere, every day. We did use a borrowed generator last night to watch a couple hours of TV, and I was happy to see that cable was OK.
In fact, that's what's puzzling. Our phone service never went out, the cable still works, and there is no sign of damage to the lines that link our houses to a feeder line that is powering other houses. Xcel has moved up the estimated repair to 10 pm tonight instead of midnight, a level of precision that seems totally unsupportable. But 10 pm might as well be 6 am. We'll fire up the generator to watch Desperate Housewives, then go to bed way early - again.
Update Sun 9:30 PM The shroud has been lifted; power was restored at 5:05 pm tonight. The total outage was 93.5 hours, spanning 5 days. The actual repair was done by a one man crew, clearing an individual home's line that had been ripped out and flopped on our circuit, then reconnecting it to the feeder, about one hour. There are four such circuits in our "grid" and I'd say the total man-hours was six to put 70 homes back on line, less the individual pole to home connections needing repair. There are many other areas still out nearby, however, most needing new utility poles, not just wires.
Update Sat 8:30 AM: Make that hour 61 of the outage. There is power 2 blocks away in every direction, and that seems to be a common pattern here in the northwest suburbs. Xcel says "11:59 PM Sunday night" which even if true would effectively make this a 4.5 day outage, the longest I've ever known. Another neighborhood is being told Monday at the earliest.
Dry ice has held the freezer for the last 24 hours, but now we've moved the meat therein to a relative's freezer, since there is no predictable end to this outage. I may go out generator shopping...
Update Sun 10:20 AM We have been out over 87 hours now. Xcel finally was spotted late Saturday morning, finally appeared in our neighboorhood around 7 pm. They got most of a block up, so now we have power 2 blocks East, West, and South of us, and 1 block North of us. No sign of Xcel yet this morning. Qwest and Comcast, however, have been everywhere, every day. We did use a borrowed generator last night to watch a couple hours of TV, and I was happy to see that cable was OK.
In fact, that's what's puzzling. Our phone service never went out, the cable still works, and there is no sign of damage to the lines that link our houses to a feeder line that is powering other houses. Xcel has moved up the estimated repair to 10 pm tonight instead of midnight, a level of precision that seems totally unsupportable. But 10 pm might as well be 6 am. We'll fire up the generator to watch Desperate Housewives, then go to bed way early - again.
Update Sun 9:30 PM The shroud has been lifted; power was restored at 5:05 pm tonight. The total outage was 93.5 hours, spanning 5 days. The actual repair was done by a one man crew, clearing an individual home's line that had been ripped out and flopped on our circuit, then reconnecting it to the feeder, about one hour. There are four such circuits in our "grid" and I'd say the total man-hours was six to put 70 homes back on line, less the individual pole to home connections needing repair. There are many other areas still out nearby, however, most needing new utility poles, not just wires.