belhoste

After what seems like an eternity of cold, the power has been restored to my house. The power went out Sunday night and did not return until Saturday evening sometime. I have lived at my current residence since the year 2000 and this is the first time that power has ever been out for more than 8 hours - the short version of this story is that it sucked. And now for the long version…

Sunday evening came around as just another day. We had heard all the weather reports during the previous week that indicated an ice storm was coming. Which of course meant we had already been to the grocery store to stock up on supplies (food, bottled water, batteries, and ice melt). And we had washed all the blankets and found all our warm wearable gear. We thought we were ready - we were so wrong. Sunday evening we were watching television when the lights began to flicker in the house. We didn’t really think much of the flickering as it has happened before during storms as we have power lines running above ground all over the neighborhood (we did go ahead and put in a call to our electric company, OG&E, to make sure they were aware of it. At 11:36 pm the power went out completely. We notified the electric company and went to sleep, believing the power would be restored by the time we awakened the next morning - no such luck.

Monday I called in to the office to let them know I would not be making the drive in the ice to work. The house temperature had dropped to 53 degrees. We spent Monday listening to the world crash down around our heads. The weight of the ice on the tree limbs was too much for those old trees to take and they crumbled. The sound of it is something I won’t soon forget. I remember going to my grandparents property when I was young when they were logging. The sound of these trees cracking and crashing around you was infinitely more disturbing than the sound of chainsaws and caterpillars. Of course we took our lives in our own hands and went outside in all the mayhem to clear the tree branches from the yard, roof and power lines. I did take the time to stop and call my mother since the news that she would get about Oklahoma would be blown completely out of proportion by the time it arrived in Utah. And since the power did not come back on and all the hotels were now booked solid - we spent the night with friends.

Tuesday was spent clearing more of the limbs from the front and back yards - we couldn’t really even get into the back yard for all the tree limbs that had fallen. And since we were getting very close to the 48 hour mark, we threw away the entire contents of the refrigerator and freezer. After that was all finished we went in search of a free WiFi hotspot. There are actually quite a few of these spots in Norman. The trick ended up being fighting the students (who were in the throws of finals week) for bandwidth. Overall we decided it wasn’t worth it and went back home. For the record, the house temperature was 55 degrees and one generator was in use on our block.

Wednesday we unplugged everything in the house since the power had been out for so long. This was to prevent the inevitable power surge that would occur after such a long time without power (and by now we could no longer remember what items were actually off and which ones were left in standby mode).  House temperature was about 54 degrees and four generators were in use on our block.

Thursday is a bit of a blur - I know I had a bit of a meltdown from not being able to be in my own house (okay, I could be there, but it was not comfortable). I was having withdrawals from not being able use my cornucopia of electronic gadgets and gizmos that are a part of my normal, everyday routine. I was not sleeping well in a strange bed and the stress of everything was definitely starting to wear on me. And to make things worse all the electrical crews had decided that their command post was a defunct restaurant not two blocks from my house. The house temperature was about 57 degrees and there were six generators in use on our block.

Friday we ran some errands and spent the evening watching movies with our friends. We had pretty much decided that the power wasn’t coming back on any time soon and that we just needed to get used to it. House temperature was 61 degrees and seven generators were in use on our block.

Saturday morning and up to 3:30 pm we still did not have electricity (the house temperature was at 63 degrees). The tree crews were in our neighborhood though and managed to refill our back yard with tree limbs. So we spent the day removing all the new tree limbs from the yard. We then went back to our friends’ house and had dinner and watched another movie. Around 10 pm we decided to go check on the house and pick up a couple of things we needed for the next day and we saw the most beautiful sight - our porch light was on. Which meant we spent the rest of the evening plugging everything back in and picking up our stuff from our temporary home.

While overall we faired fairly well in all this - it does truly make me appreciate having electricity. In hindsight we now know that we were not prepared for a long-term run without any electricity. We own a generator, but it doesn’t have enough juice to run anything more than a space heater and/or a heat lamp. We have a fireplace, but it smokes more than it generates heat. We have gas heat, but an electric blower unit. We have a gas stove/oven, but no way to keep the refrigerator powered - so it is canned food or nothing. We did learn that our insulation in the house must be pretty good because our house temperature never seemed to drop below 50 even when it got below freezing outside. I did learn that I really love my iPhone which allowed me to keep up on my email and keep up with the news on the Internet.