A 40 HOUR BLACK OUT!

There was no warning, there was no proper weather forecast, it happened quickly. It happened so devastatingly. If it was hurricane there could have been some warning, but it was just a storm, a severe storm, a very wicked storm that caused us a 40 hour long power outage. Unbelievably suffocative.

It was friday June 29 2012, I remembered it was 10. 30 pm, our only inleng that  night Tv. Mawitea realizing that we were working the next day left us all of a sudden. He had had not made it far, the rain started pouring down, thunder and lightning came blasting. Our respected house guest Rev. Vanlal Bela of Aizawl Bawngkawn, had just turned off his window unit AC in his room, and immediately went to bed. Lucky him, he did not have to go thru all the turmoil. Then I saw our house light got flickering, therefore, I warned my family that there could be power outages. Nobody seemed to heed, they continued whatever each one doing. I couldn't blame them as it rarely happened. The storm did come, I could hear it, I also felt it,  and immediately followed by the black out! And then blazing lightning, flashing thru the windows, a long with loudest ever thunder, a very unpleasant sight, a very unpleasant sound!

For more than ten years in the US, we have never had any power outages longer than  1 minute. There may have been a couple of times we had black out, but each time it lasted less than a minute. That night nobody really prepared for what to happen. We just  hoped that  everything would be back to normal in a matter of a minute. But  it didn't. After a minute or so we started to get panicked, rummaging for the flashlights, candles, lighters etc. You could imagine how frustrating it might have been, we were not prepared. There were no reason to stock candles, flashlight nor any kind of lamps.

It was a record breaking hot day that FRIDAY day time. The temperature read 104 f. which was somewhat equivalent to 40 degree cc. Washington DC metropolitan area experienced the hottest day in 138 years. This was the time we need AC the most. With the power outage, needless to say, the AC stopped running, the fans stopped spinning and all kinds of blowing machines ceased to work. Due to severe climate, apparently, houses are designed to withstand  extreme temperature, totally air and watertight, impermeable, there was no chance at all for outside cool breeze to sneak in  once  doors were closed. Therefore in the absence of AC, cozy rooms have become a hot furnaces in a weather like this.

Aside from cooling absence, what looks so simple but so hard to cope with was smelly bathroom. In every bathroom, somewhere above the toilet they install an exhaust fan in the ceiling. This is meant to blow the smelly stuff out of the room. Once the blowing thing does not work, unless people cease using the toilet, the smelly thing comes to life!

Bathroom can also get smelly for some guys miss their target because of darkness.  Many bathroom do not have windows for natural light to get in. In this case, in the absence of enough light, especially when there was no power, you know, some incompetent men tend to miss the bulls eye and spray to the floor instead. This is not only stingy but also yucky.

As many  traffic lights went dark, driving out in the street was really chaotic. Drivers especially new drivers got panic  more and therefore caused more car  accidents. At every intersection where traffic lights went dark, drivers carefully had to yield all directions before crossing the street. And its a moral duty for drivers to stop and go and to drive defensively. This hampered the traffic flow and took much longer than it usually did.  Another problem this storm brought about was road closed. Many streets and parkways were closed due to falling and uprooting trees.

The next day, saturday was as hot as the previous day. On this day four states, Virginia, West Virginia, Ohio, Maryland and District of Columbia declared state of emergency. Many offices, shops, businesses were closed. Government made some preparation in setting up cooling stations in many places. They opened schools, libraries, malls and public places longer for people to come and cool themselves off. This arrangement helped the needy a great deal. Greater Washington metropolitan area practically came to a stand still. It was recorded that  more than 1,000,000 houses did not have electricity, many houses were down, and about nine people were dead in connection with this storm.

It was said that all the generators in the shops were sold out almost instantly. And for the first time candles were set up and lighted not because we wanted to make the occasion romantic nor because any birthday celebration was taking place! It was just because we needed some light, any light. From a car radio we learnt that utilities companies worked round the clock to repair the broken lines. However they kept on saying that the restoration work might take weeks to complete the job. We didn't know when would our house be fixed, and we just waited... with fingers crossed!

On saturday, I came home early from work and there were not much to do. Since it was so hot and messy, there was no point in going out. At the same time, there were none to do at home either. There were no TV, no internet, no telephones, no cooking possible, no refrigerator useable. The only thing we did was spreading bed sheets on the first floor and lay there, reading books; doing yoga, and took nap in between. That was the only thing we could do, and the only thing worth doing,  the only cool thing at this point!

The floor, where we relaxed whole day.

Then came sunday. We got invitations from friends to go over their houses to eat and possibly to sleep over. My kids naturally wanted to take advantage of our mishap by suggesting us to go to a nice restaurant. However, as friends were so insistent in having us to have food with them, to my kids dismay, we went to their house and spent our sunday free time in an AC  house.

While we were at friends house, my kids called our home phone to check if we already had power. As long as the call went straight to voice recording mode, we knew that we  still didn't have the power. They kept on calling and calling until the phone kept on ringing. Once the phone ring non stop, then we knew that our power had been restored. It had been a 40 long hour black out, an experience we would never ever want to repeat...but it was over ..yay.

Our area has alway been lucky in regards to natural calamities, we were grateful about that. In other states; land slide, land sinking, mud slide, wild fire, flood, drought, tornado, earthquake etc. were pretty common. We believed that we were free and would never be affected with all these adversity, we always thought these were only for other states; but now we realized that we were wrong. We now admit that our area is as vulnerable as the rest of the country when it comes to natural calamities.