Sunday, September 14, 2008

Hurricane Ike Update

No injuries reported in the Longview area, but there are tens of thousands here without power including your humble correspondant. We lost power at about 4:30 p.m., and what makes it all the more annoying is that our neighbors 30 feet away have power. We are apparently on different transformers.

Lots of little limbs down, but we didn't lose any trees. The loss of power makes getting in and out of garage a bit of a booger, our doors are electrically operated. Just as an interesting exercise it's a little alarming to see how much of our stuff in the house is power-dependant, how our use of resources over past decade and the ways we normally fill our days disappear when the lights go out. Books still work by candlelight though, and my Amazon Kindle is still good for several days. I'm reading Amity Shlaes' retelling of the Great Depression, The Forgotten Man, the first part of which deals with rural electrification. Irony is, as I have always believed, an elemental force that has no electrical requirements.

Updates as power is available. This one is from my iPhone, which is a pretty handy tool.

1 comment:

Sarah said...

We lost power for at least 16 hours when tropical storm Hannah rolled through Baltimore. It was just enough time for all of our ice cream to melt :-(....also set-off a heated debate between my husband and I over weather or not we need to buy a generator.