Power Outage
By Amber
@AmbiePam (120757)
United States
December 13, 2007 6:49pm CST
I really don't know much about what has been going on lately, but I sure do look forward to catching up. Sunday night my power went out. Around 3:30am I headed over to my parent's house to stay with them. Later that day their power went out as well, but it was restored a little over a day later. I just got my power back a few hours ago. My parents still don't have cable or internet, so the paper is how we've TRIED to stay up to date.
People who live or have lived in tornado alley might understand what I'm trying to describe. It was like a tornado had hit all the trees in the area, except the damage done, was frozen. Most buildings were fine, if without power, but trees had fallen over, had split down the middle, just from the ice. In the middle of the night I'd hear 'whoosh', and I'd know another limb bought the dust.
My sister got her power back last night, but she has pneumonia now. Her husband is working from home to take care of her. My poor grandparents still don't have power! They live 2 and a half hours away from us, or we'd go get them. They don't seem to mind though. They say they are warm enough, they just hate having no light. They have gone to my grandpa's doctor appointments with glee, they just want to get out of the house! : ) They have a cell phone so we keep in touch.
Anyway, the first thing 'the people' went to work on was to restore power back to the hospitals. The hospital nearest us has a back up generator, but only for ICU. So those were the priority. The second priority was the nursing homes. We have one near us and they had people out there working all hours trying to help them.
So my mom said she thought schools would be the next priority. And I disagreed. I thought the jails would be the next priority. Back up generators can only do so much and last so long. And there are still hundreds of thousands here without power. Since school can always be made up, and a lot of parents can't even go into work, I figured jail was next in line.
What do you think? After hospitals and nursing homes (which we were told were the top priorities), what place would you think would be the next place to restore power? Police station, fire station, pharmacies?
Oh, and if any of you were affected by this ice storm (snow storm coming up this weekend), I'd like to know how your experience was. : )
5 people like this
6 responses
@twoey68 (13627)
• United States
14 Dec 07
I had heard there was an icestorm that shut down power to alot of places. We had one here about 7 years ago that ripped the electrical lines coming into the house right out b/c they were so heavy with ice. I'd have to say after hospitals and nursing homes they would probably be working on police stations and fire stations...fire stations being first simply b/c more ppl will be trying to burn things to keep warm and it tends to lead to more out of control fires.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!!
**AT PEACE WITHIN**
~~STAND STRONG IN YOUR BELIEFS~~
3 people like this
@GardenGerty (169477)
• United States
14 Dec 07
I had not thought of that, you are so right about people burning stuff to stay warm.
1 person likes this
@foxyfire33 (10005)
• United States
14 Dec 07
I was thinking jails for the fact that you don't want limited security because of a power outage but chances are all the inmates were locked in their cells with the generator power and they probably have an emergency plan in place to keep generators running for days so they could probably wait a bit....same with emergency services. I think schools would be pretty low on the list just because those days can be made up and attendance would be low until power was restored to the residential areas anyway. I would say after hospitals and nursing homes, they should get power to the residences. There are plenty of elderly people, homes with small children, and people who are ill who may not have a gernerator or relatives to stay with.
3 people like this
@GardenGerty (169477)
• United States
14 Dec 07
Kansas was not nearly so bad as Oklahoma, but I was off work (in a school) for two days. We went back today, but had an outage of about an hour. Around here our utility companies trim our trees in the spring and summer if they look like they could interfere with our power. They said that compared to Ok. we are lucky. Our feeder lines are mostly the ones that are out, our main lines are intact, mainly due to the tree trimming program. With my second job, I am not allowed to take my clients out anywhere, for fear they will fall. It still looks pretty bad out there, or pretty beautiful, if you forget all of the broken up trees. They are predicting snow tonight here, as well. Actually the weather channel says that radar is showing snow over about the western two thirds of the state. I do not see any evidence of it, I can see stars when I look up at the sky. I would LOVE to have another day off from school. I have cleaning to do for company. If they are restoring power to the jails, I bet they do not tell you about it. Stay warm, Pam. I bet the old folks just remember what it was like trying to survive before all of the modern conveniences.
1 person likes this
@AmbiePam (120757)
• United States
14 Dec 07
I hope you get another day off school. A snowstorm is supposed to hit us tomorrow evening, and then Saturday too. Just a few months ago on Main Street I saw trees being trimmed, but boy they missed the mark. I don't know why they didn't do a complete job. Maybe they left it up to some businesses to do the job themselves? You think that could be it? And residential people who were close to main streets, had their trees go through their fences and out into the main road. I like to breath in the cold air this time of year, it's so pure. But I know the cold makes it hard on other people. It sure isn't good for arthritis.
@KarenO52 (2950)
• United States
16 Dec 07
I thought about you when I heard about the ice storm out your way. I'm glad the power is back on now. That must have been horrible. Hey, you could always drive up here next time, we've got lots of room! We've got our own storm going on this weekend. It started this afternoon, and is expected to last until Monday morning. We could get up to 12 inches of snow. We have a gas powered electric generator, and a propane heater for backup just in case. If our roads turn into ice, I will be staying put. Other than the hospitals and nursing homes, I don't know what the next priority for restoring power should be, but I would agree with you in that it wouldn't be the schools. I wouldn't want my kids to be in school in such weather. I used to keep my kids home when the weather got very bad here, because I didn't trust the safety of the school buses on the roads.
1 person likes this
@AmbiePam (120757)
• United States
16 Dec 07
Twelve inches of snow, no way! We're only supposed to get 3 or 4 inches. I think the stores are out of generators now. There are still 250,000 people without power right now, and it's only getting colder. I guess with the snow you usually get where you are, it's wise to have a backup generator.
I think they would be crazy to have school in this because some of those buses still don't have seat belts! Which makes me wonder about that. They have the most precious cargo, why not have seatbelts in each bus?
1 person likes this
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
14 Dec 07
I'm glad to see you back. I saw your PM to me back as I did notice you were MIA here and then I was watching all the news of how terrible OK was and thought right away of you and if you had been affected by the snow and ice storms, and sure enough you were. Glad things are getting back to a lit bit of normalcy where you are. They had a piece where one person spent a fortune getting kerosene heaters to make sure their home was warm, not so much for them but because they had tropical birds who can't survive the cold
Mmm--just thinking about that and priorities of where and whom should benefit by getting power back on...are there any zoos in the area? Those animals that need heat to survive would need the power on, no? Pharmacies too, many medications do have and need to be refrigerated, and how about stores that is supermarkets? I bet a lot of foods were ruined
1 person likes this
@AmbiePam (120757)
• United States
14 Dec 07
There is one big zoo on the other side of Oklahoma City, and I'm pretty sure if their power went out, they had some powerful generators to back up. I don't know if they were hit that bad. I was glad that almost all the pharmacies were able to stay open. The one nearest my parents lost power for a couple hours, but they were able to get things working. The big problems was that there wasn't enough people coming in to work. Gas stations too were closing because they were running out of gas. My sister and her husband went 40 miles to find a gas station that still had gas. I guess everyone thought they needed to do that first thing - just in case. I just kept hoping people were taking their pets inside. I passed some horses out to pasture on a back road that weren't covered with blankets or anything. Poor things. How hard is it to get a blanket on them? Farther up the road a horse farm had put some kind of poncho type things on their horses.
1 person likes this
@jillhill (37353)
• United States
14 Dec 07
We had an ice storm like that several years ago. It took over two weeks to restore some of the people out in the country. I myself was out for four days. I was lucky to have a gas stove and oil lamps etc. We stayed nice and warm and had plenty to eat as we could cook. I also have a gas hot water heater so I still had hot water. I think that after hospitals and nursing homes it should be emergency services like the firestations. Then residential. But that is just my opinion.
3 people like this
@AmbiePam (120757)
• United States
14 Dec 07
I was thinking jails because it would be so dangerous for guards to be around prisoners if they couldn't see them well. I'm just glad I had my parent's house to go to. I don't know what some of my neighbors did. I was worried about an elderly lady who lives in my building, but when I checked that first day of the outage, she was gone. I'm pretty sure her daughter came and picked her and her dog up. Everyone else can take care of themselves around here. But I get concerned about the older people. None of the apartment staff came in for three days. So none of the ice had been salted down. It was so slippery!
