Sitting in the Dark
Posted by Doug Fri, 15 Aug 2003 04:58:00 GMT
This afternoon’s been more than a little exciting. I’m sure I’m not the one to break the news to you that most of the Northeast United States has been without power. I know I haven’t blogged anything in a long time. That’s another story all on its own that I’ll probably get into this weekend or next week. I wanted to blog tonight though because it’s been so strange. If I wait until later I’m sure I won’t do as good a job as I will tonight. So, at about 4:00pm EST I was at work in Cleveland, OH. I saw the lights flicker but come back on. No computers crashed; the UPSes didn’t start beeping; just the lights flickered. About five minutes later, everything went down. Our phone system at work is power-based, so we lost all communications. There were only three of us in the office and I was the only one with a cell phone. I tried making some calls (our Florida main office and my wife), but couldn’t get a line on my cell phone. I finally got through to the office in FL to let them know we were without power and couldn’t be reached by phone or email. Even though it was pretty close to quiting time, we all stayed there at work waiting to see if power came back up. We were able to determine that the whole building was without power, but couldn’t tell if anyone else was down too. After a bit, a couple of guys that were out setting up a demo of our system came back to the office. They were the ones that told us power was out all over Cleveland. We were able to get ahold of someone’s spouse who told us (at around 4:45) that multiple large cities were black. Of course, the first thing that crossed all of our minds was a terrorist attack. Once it was confirmed for us that NYC, Toronto, Detroit and other cities were without power I started getting more than a little nervous. The word that I had at that time was that “Ohio was without power”. Immediately I started thinking of my family in Cincinnati. I was pretty certain that I was leaving Cleveland to go back to Cincinnati. When I finally got ahold of Carla I learned they still had power (as did Columbus) and that only Cleveland was without power. Knowing they weren’t affected by all this set me a little more at ease. Since our coworkers had said traffic was getting ugly out there we all just pretty much stayed at work waiting for a while. Eventually everyone was ready to go home and did. I was left to head back to the hotel. Yes, traffic was bad; but not too bad. What usually takes me about 10 or 15 minutes to drive from downtown to my standard hotel took me about 45 minutes. On the way I listened to NPR talking mainly about NYC. Things seemed OK. It didn’t sound like the pandemonium I was expecting if roughly 1/5 of the US population was without power. I was picturing a cataclism of Biblical proportions; cats and dogs living together; mayhem in the streets. Of course, by this time I had heard that “there was no evidence of a terrorist attack”. By the same token they didn’t (and I presume still don’t at the time of this writing) know what was the cause. They just knew it wasn’t terrorist. I got to hear the NYC mayor’s press conference. He was reassuring, upbeat, and confident. The phrase I (and I’m sure everyone else) picked up on was “hours not minutes”. I still don’t know what that means. Anyway, it sounded like we would get power back sometime tonight. As such, I decided not to head back to Cincinnati; but ride it out and go to work in the morning. I got to the hotel to find that the door locks were on some type of battery backup. I guess that’s really the moral to this whole story. What seems apparent is that the people who need emergency power have it. The hotel bar had lots of people in it. I didn’t really feel like sitting alone in my hotel room, so I went to the bar where the people were. The general attitude was light hearted. The wait staff were the most stressed by the whole thing. The lack of power just make their job harder. As a kind gesture, the hotel offered a small buffet of cold-cuts and salad to their guests for free. The chef who was there told me it was the food they had prepaired for their banquets the next day. He said they’d really be scrambling tomorrow to handle their engagements. At around 7:45 the bar started thinning out. It was still light outside, but the bar was pretty dark. I decided I had gotten as much comfort as I could from that company and went back to my hotel room. I have a nice, large window and my room was still bright. I layed down on my bed for a while. I tried to make some cell phone calls. Only some of them got through. Some just never made a connection even though the phone said it had signal. Some said there were network problems. However you slice it, it was hard to sit by myself in a quiet room and do nothing. I had left about 45 minutes on my computer’s battery, but didn’t know how to best use it (as it turns out, I’m glad I decided to wait and use it now). After a while I was pretty much able to make cell phone calls at will. I talked to my wife a while. I talked to my best friend, Dave a while. I even talked with my parents a while. The feeling of being cut off was tremendous. Here was this national emergency even that I was part of and had no way of knowing what was going on. I felt like we were this vast sea of islands sitting alone in our hotel rooms. At about 10:45 I noticed a light out in the hall. I opened the door to find the hallway lights were on. Not the battery powered emergency lights; the normal hallway lights. Still no power in my room. I turned on the bathroom lights: nothing. I turned on the bedside lights: nothing. I could see lights across the street. There are quite a few large office buildings with all their lights on. It seems like people who left work didn’t turn anything off. I can see street lights on. After all this time sitting in my dark hotel room all I can do now is look out the window at the lights across the street. Every once and a while I’ll try the bedside lights. The lights in the hall have gone out. After a while they come back on. Right now they are out again. It’s all very freaky. I don’t think I’m truely freaked out. Maybe as you read this you’ll disagree. Most everyday things in the world I have some understanding of how it all works. I certainly understand the priciples of electricity. I understand how power plants generate it. What impresses me about this whole incident is how little understanding I have of how our whole power grid works. It just doesn’t make any sense to me. The lights across the street have been on for at least 30 or 40 mintues. Why haven’t mine come on? Well, I don’t have much more time to talk about all this. I just heard some weird alarm sound out in the hallway and my laptop battery is dieing. I’ll update tomorrow.
