... what were you doing late in the afternoon when the power went out for about 50 million people?
I was in the car in the city, so heard of the outage, covering an increasing area as the minutes slipped by.
I travelled to the office of the local Member of Provincial Legislature (Hydro is a public utility in this province). I told them that we should have learned something as we'd had a major outage for most of a week in Quebec a few years ago when many of their major towers were toppled in a large ice storm, at which time I borrowed a generator and travelled down there to generate power for a number of people who needed it - largely to operate freezers. I told our local politician's office that we should have learned some lessons and upgraded our grids and switches so that such a pushing over of a long line of dominoes due to the breakdown of a small situation in one location shouldn't happen.
Furthermore, as we hadn't built a new generating system in about 35 years, that there should be money in the capital till to take care of such an issue - and to pay for building new generators, when the need appeared.
But, instead of that, Hydro has been deep in debt for several years, so we have an additional charge on our monthly bills to pay off that debt, largely due to their customers having received power at too cheap rates in earlier years.
On the way home, there's a crossing of two major roads on the edge of what used to be a village, now a suburb, and cars were moving through alternately, one at a time ... which is what drivers are supposed to do when the lights aren't operating. I drove up a couple of hundred feet, parked in the lot af my insurance company, and went back to direct traffic for a while ... as it makes more sense to have a dozen cars go through at a time, then a dozen on the alternate road. Several waved, some thanked me out an open window ... and one gave rather a low shout that I should get off the street!
I don't remember what I was doing later in the evening, but was listening to my battery-operated radio, when our provincial section of our national radio broadcaster was accepting phone calls from people with needs related to the power outage.
About 10 p.m. one man called in to say that he was in trouble ... that he had 400 lbs. of meat and was afraid that it would spoil: I don't recall whether he specified that it was fresh or frozen.
I tried for hours to get through, would often get a busy signal, sometimes the phone would ring, but after about twenty rings the system would shift to give me the busy signal.
After several hours - about 4 a.m., I think, I got through. My suggestion was that he find a truck or van, load his freezer into the back, then load the meat into the freezer and drive out to the nearest place where there were farmers operating.
To drive down the road, visitng farmhouses, maybe especially ones where there was evidence of electricity being in use, asking whether they'd let him plug in his freezer for a couple of hours.
If half a dozen turned him down, which I doubt whether would happen, quite likely the seventh would let him freeze his meat.
I don't remember when the power came back on, in our area - about breakfast time, I think.
They were talking of this issue on the radio today, and today our provincial power operator is conducting a contest to see which municipality can cut power usage the most.
Toronto isn't participating - they have their own system in operation, largely subsidizing people to discard old, power-hungry appliances.
We really do depend on our electrical system, don't we?
I've been wondering about buying a generator - landlord doesn't have one, which surprises me, as he has a large variety of equipment. Son and his carnie friend have a couple of small ones that are usually parked in the barn - enough to run the freezer, I think. And run the radio and a light, part time (freezer doesn't need long term hook-up: just an hour or so, three or four times in 24 hours).
ole joyful
bluejeans4ever
susan_on
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joyfulguyOriginal Author