The utility company that stole Christmas
| Submitted by kathycf on Sun, 2008-12-28 10:58 | ||
When I woke up in the morning of Thursday, December 11, I had no idea how much the next 11 1/2 days were going to suck. The day was mild and overcast, with rain for most of the afternoon. Thursday evening brought colder temperatures and more rain...now freezing rain and sleet. I knew we would probably lose power as the bad weather had truly progressed into an ice storm but I had no idea of the severity. Transformers began blowing across the street on the lines and I could hear fire trucks coming out. I finally decided just to go to bed. I awoke Friday morning to a cold house, but the day itself was sunny and bright. Looking out the window was like looking at an alien landscape, one where trees and shrubs were made of white glass and crystal. It really was pretty spectacular and the beauty was the sole bright spot (like, really bright :)) of the storm. We went out for a drive and our jaws dropped. New England does have some chilly weather and of course this wasn't the first ice storm I had ever seen...but I had *never* seen damage like this. Streetlights and telephone poles snapped in half and trees laying across yards. We had to make several detours as streets were blocked off due to trees laying in the road. We decided it would be safer to just be home and assumed the city and power company would be around at some point to clean up...because that's what they are supposed to do, right? Right? Wrong! Crews didn't come out until several days later and one road was blocked off until the following Tuesday when National Guard crews began cleaning up some of the trees. It was difficult to get news as no stores were open to buy newspapers or even batteries for my radio, but we just kept hoping the power would be back soon. By the time a week had passed I was pretty fed up. The weather had warmed up for a bit, but gotten colder again and the nights were just horrible. Sitting in a dark room with just a few candles and wrapped in sweaters and blankets because the indoor temperature was just about 38 degrees. I was terrified the pipes would freeze and left a trickle of water running in both the bathroom and the kitchen. Luckily, we have a gas stove, so even though the pilot light was out, we could light the stove top burners with matches and were able to heat up water to wash our hands and stuff, make tea and coffee and heat up soup. With the temperature fluctuations, of course everything in the refrigerator and freezer spoiled, including the food I had planned to cook on Christmas. The funny part is that I am kind of a Scrooge regarding holidays, bu this year I was looking forward to having a tree and a nice holiday dinner, but after this crap I just didn't have the heart to get a tree. While I could decorate it, a big part of the appeal of a Christmas tree (for me) is all the festive lights. Mark insisted that I stay in a motel for a few days because even with Motrin, the pain in my joints was getting really bad. Plus, I was crabby because there wasn't any hot water to bathe with. My hair was looking pretty funknasty. The motel was ok, but I felt really bad about leaving Mark at the house. He stayed because we have 3 cats and a dog and someone needed to be there to take care of them. My cat Murray is diabetic now and needs insulin shots twice a day, plus poor old Dillon just can't be left alone. After a few days at the motel (I brought my laptop and made a bunch of armor and a few spells for DS1) I just couldn't stay any longer. It was just too expensive and I simply needed to be home. This was on Monday, December 22...ELEVEN days after this storm hit. That evening they finally got our power turned on. The governor called for an investigation into the utility company and everyone from the customers to state and city representatives was bitching at them. Ironically enough, the company that got my town up and running again wasn't even our own utility company but one called National Grid. They service people in the neighboring town and *they* had power back after two or three days ... some never even lost it at all. There aren't a lot of choices in utility companies around here, but I am looking into changing over to them. *shrug* Well, that's my tale of woe. While the company didn't really steal my Christmas, events really put a damper on things. I sat around in my pajamas most of the day on Christmas and drank tons of coffee. Bah Humbug. Happy jittery New Year! blogs: |
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Comments
I have never understood why power is always strung up on utility poles, so every wind, ice or snow storm can bring it down again. The condo development I live in has all the cables buried, but we still regularly get cut off because a tree took out the line somewhere else in town.
When I lived in Europe, power was always buried (except for the really high-voltage lines that are strung along reservations without trees) and I can't recall any power cuts that weren't caused by generation problems (like the coal miners going on strike!)
Was the motel in an area that got power back early, or did they have their own generator? I've noticed that quite a few places - including the kennels that my cats stay in when I'm away on business - have generators because they don't trust the power companies. And I don't think that's an East-coast phenomenon, I've heard similar tales from the other side.
It's a crazy country, even without excess coffee!
I saw stories on the news about your ice storm... From what I heard, Quebec sent some utility crews to help with some power problems in the States. They are well experienced because there was a massive ice storm in Quebec and eastern Ontario a few years ago (1998).
Here in Toronto we've had a few really significant snow storms instead of freezing rain (a month's worth of snow in less than a week). But now, it's been quite warm for the last couple days with non-stop rain so most of the snow has disappeared. Weird weather all around I guess... I certainly didn't ask Santa for this.
No, I don't think that motel has it's own generator. It's a pretty cheap motel and my room smelled like dirty socks...(and no, they were not MY socks). The town it's in is about a half hour drive from me, and most of the residents there never lost power at all. Mark's friend lives about a five minute drive from the motel, and he was surprised we were going through so much.
Yes, yes it is.
Yep, we had crews working here from all over the place. As far north as Canada all the way to Tennesee. Not just in my area, but one of the excuses Unitil (the utility company I am stuck with) was coming up with was how North Central Massachusetts was just hit harder than anybody else. Of course, the fact that they let maintaining their lines go to pot has nothing whatsoever to do with this fiasco... ^^ Not to mention, they knew the storm was coming for days and took no proactive action. My town isn't exactly blameless in this either, though. They simply can't be arsed to take care of dead trees and the like, which led to so much damage in town. Ugh.
We are having similar weather here, also. Getting all the lines repaired had to take a back seat last weekend....it started snowing Friday afternoon and didn't stop until late last Sunday night. Almost all that is gone now, and it got to close to 55 F today. Lots of rain yesterday, I was cringing thinking it might get cold and ice up.
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Total absence of humor renders life impossible.
Colette
yeah and it seems the closer to holidays it is the less the utility companies want to send people to fix the problems, i think government needs to start making the utility companies give people refunds on their bill for every hour the electricity is out. the companies dont realize how much money they are losing when the electricity is out and how much money the customers are loosing for food items and what if someone dies cause they dont have heat or food or water?
Around here we only have really one choice for electricity, the electric company has changed names like 3 times, use to be a state company then it went to next state, now it swallowed up a bunch of states to make one big company, its getting to be like the utility company is getting a monopoly again.
I too dont understand why the lines are in the air so high, here they have trees in them, and the electricity is always going out cause of the trees, i dont understand why they dont cut the trees down. also i was thinking why not under ground too like telephone cables are, but then i got thinking, if someone cut the line they have hard time finding it and 2 if it on ground and water and ice froze it, could be alot of ground diging all the time. so maybe it better in air.
but again i think its a crock how they put people off for days. they should be working 24 hours 7 days a week with a service they provide, and if they dont got help, thats their fault, they should be more on the local level instead of states away. perhaps the electric companies need to put transformers on each house that way if one goes down the others dont, i dunno, wishful thinking i guess. but i too know about having no electricity for a few days.