response 25 of 99:

Aug 17 03:40 UTC 2003

I live in Tecumseh.  I got my power back around midnight on Thursday 
night.  Friday morning, I was just finishing breakfast when the power 
went out again.  There was nowhere to get gas; my Taurus was about 
out, so I drove my pickup to work.

There was no power at work, but a few of us went to Pinckney on Friday 
and worked for a while from my manager's house.  When I got home, 
around noon, the power had been back on for less than an hour.

I was able to fill up with gas without waiting in line around 4:00 
Friday.

response 27 of 99:

Aug 17 06:48 UTC 2003

Waaah. Memphis had its power out for over a week from the straight line
winds storm. 

response 29 of 99:

Aug 17 09:42 UTC 2003

Damn straight, you ragheads!  And whats more, we don't have to have a
big fucking super-power with big phucking military to do the regime
change for you too stoopid or lazy.  We do it ourselves in the ballot
box with little or no casualties every couple years.

response 31 of 99:

Aug 17 13:16 UTC 2003

Which is WAY more convenient for keeping food cold!

response 33 of 99:

Aug 17 20:33 UTC 2003

Yeah but when there is a power outage in the winter, I have no heat :(. 
I dont even care about the no heat too much because I can always pack 
up all the animals and head up to my parent's house but if the heat 
goes, then the pipes might freeze. Luckily for me, the one time I lost 
power for any significant length of time in the winter, it was during 
an ice storm and the temp had risen to just above freezing. 

On Thursday, I was  at work trying to fix some problems related to a 
virus we got earlier in the week when the power went down. It didnt 
take us long to figure out that it was a big outage because some of our 
stores are required to call in if their power goes out. Our phone 
system has around 1/2 hour of battery backup. 

Around 4:30p, the company decided to close the building. So everyone 
left at once. That sucked. Even if the light at the one exit from this 
office park was working, there would be a traffic jam. However, it 
wasnt working so the traffic got *really* backed up. Some co-workers 
and I took some popsicles out of the freezer and sat in the shade 
eating them. We waited for about an hour. The roads had cleared 
somewhat by 5:30 but it still took me 45 minutes to drive to Ypsi. I 
was a little worried about the dogs because I knew they would be doing 
a pee pee dance by the time I got home. Luckily, I ended up getting 
home only about 1/2 hour later than I normally would get home and they 
seemed fine with that. 

I had about a 1/4 tank of gas so I had no trouble getting home. I 
thought about going up to my parent's house because they have a 
generator and also a lake which means it is cooler there. It was really 
muggy and hot on Thursday night. But then, I figured that people get 
crazy when the power is off and I didnt want to risk having someone 
break into my house so I got out all my millions of candles and lit up 
the joint! I read a book. I only had pasta for dinner but that is ok 
because I like pasta. 

On friday, a couple of gas stations in Ypsi opened up and the lines 
were LONG. I thought about going to get gasoline but decided it wasnt 
worth it to wait in line. When I went to go get gasoline on Saturday 
morning, those gas stations had sold out of gas! 

My power came back on at around 8:30a on friday. Nothing spoiled from 
my freezer. When I checked on things at 8:30a, everything was still 
frozen. I still had ice cubes. I didnt open the door until 
the power came back on so it held all the coldness inside. 

response 35 of 99:

Aug 17 23:35 UTC 2003

Of course now that I'm living in a house with a woodstove the power failure
is during hot, muggy weather.  I did hole up here for a 3-day failure a few
years back, though.  Brought the cats over and everything.

response 37 of 99:

Aug 18 01:04 UTC 2003

re #5:#6:  (Chicago.  beady probably has a more accurate recollection of
      this:  a couple of years back, during some pretty hot summer days,
      there were a number of blackouts, including at least one that affected
      the downtown area.  the situation left Mayor Daley Jr. none too 
      pleased and he made a number of public statements to the effect of
      "this isn't going to happen again."  so far, his word has held up.)

response 39 of 99:

Aug 18 03:17 UTC 2003

Staci went off to a sleep over birthday party.  I can only imagine a sleep
over party with 8-10 teens with no power.  Damon and I sat on the porch,
reading, stitching and talking.  We grilled sausages and eggs for dinner.
STeve was at work at MSU which is self contained and had power even though
the rest of the Lansing area didn't.  After it got too dark to read outside
I lit candles and continued reading (homework, with a final on Wednesday)
until STeve got home around midnight.  I listened to STeve struggle to breath
while I scratched at mosquito bites.  We are going to be setting up a battery
backup for his CPAP very, very soon, he did call about checking into the
hospital for the night, but decided that he would try sleeping at home since
they had people that needed the machine more than he did.  Spent Friday
reading and stitching on the porch until power came on at 14:00.  

We lost milk and cream type stuff from the refrigerator and one fudgecicle
from the freezer. Everything else was ok.

response 41 of 99:

Aug 18 20:59 UTC 2003

re resp:38: That's a very good idea!  No, I never thought of it.

response 43 of 99:

Aug 19 03:21 UTC 2003

Maybe.  Maybe not.  You can put solar panels on the roof.  Mostly how they
work is they feed power into the grid and you draw power off the grid.  So
maybe you sell power to the utility during the day, and buy it back at night.
What does this buy you when the grid is down?  Not too much.  If you actually
want this to provide power for you when the grid is down, then you'll need
to have your own energy storage - batteries maybe.  The system just got a lot
more expensive.  And you need capacity to satisfy your peak need, so the solar
panel just got a lot bigger.  Really getting off grid costs a lot of money.

I was interested in the behavior of the two phone networks during the
blackout - landlines stayed up and worked without a hitch, while the cell
phone network disintegrated.  The cell phone network problems weren't because
they lost power - it was because of excess demand.  There isn't anything
intrinsic to the technologies that says the land network should be more
robust.  I think it has to do with history - the land network was built by
a regulated monopoly, the cell phone network was built by a free market.

In a competitive marketplace, it doesn't make sense to design a communications
network with a lot of excess capacity.  It costs money and earns you no
reliablity.  If you over build like that, other companies will undercut your
price and put you out of business.  A free market cannot build a phone network
as reliable as the old Bell Network.

I think this is the issue with deregulation of the energy companies as well.
You cannot simultaneously maximize reliability and and profit in a competitive
market, so deregulation will get us flakier power grids.

response 45 of 99:

Aug 19 06:12 UTC 2003

Our AT&T phone cards could not be used last Thursday and Friday (at
least):  busy signals on the 1-800 numbers. Even landlines don't work if
an intermediate facility is down or jammed. 

response 47 of 99:

Aug 19 12:03 UTC 2003

Our landlines were out, but we're in Verizon (formerly GTE) territory.  I had
some problems with system overload on the cell phones (AT&T), but as the
outage progressed it became harder and harder to get a signal at all.  I'm
wondering if towers were dropping off as their battery backups ran out or
something.

response 49 of 99:

Aug 19 13:03 UTC 2003

My AAT phone card worked like a breeze Thursday afternoon/evening, and all
day Friday.  Got almost all my "big-picture" information by calling a cousin
and having him give me the latest update.  Never got a busy signal.