Power outages.Follow

So the big storms all over the US last night were just some heavy wind here in Michigan. Yet at 5:45PM, shortly after getting home from work, my power went out.

It wasn't turned back on until 10:45AM today. And the power company didn't give any info or updates until 9:30am, when they said it would likely be fixed by 10:45. Spent all night waiting for word from them about when I would get power again, and fell asleep. Woke up in the morning and my house was about 50 degrees (F). Couldn't make breakfast, cause I didn't want to open the fridge. I couldn't use the bathroom because I'd run out of water. Drove into town, stopped to get breakfast at a restaurant, then had to spend a few hours at my parents' house waiting for the power to turn back on.


From what I can guess, a tree damaged a line and it wasn't discovered til it was too late to fix. I guess they don't do certain work at night. So they had to wait until the morning. But they could at least tell us this. I spent the night in a dark, cold house with very limited water, doing nothing waiting for them to turn it back on, when they had no plans on doing so.

I have no idea how people survived without Electricity. Once the light was gone, I didn't feel like doing anything but sleeping. I fell asleep at like... 8:30.

I also missed Fringe because of it. I did watch it on Hulu today, but still, not being able to watch it Friday really annoyed me.

Was a lot funner a couple of months back here when they did the rolling blackouts and I woke up freezing in bed with no power, Frozen water lines and temps below 32 degreese outside. Ended up in a hotel for 3 days because of it.

http://www.reddit.com/r/firstworldproblems

Some people, outside of cities, use well water. Pumps are electric.

You steal my thoughts!

Thats how it use to be. My grandparents are still like this. They get up about the time the sun comes up, and are usually asleep shortly after sun down.

My power was knocked out during the storms a few days before that. I think I went to sleep at 4:30pm and force slept until 9am the next day when they started working on fixing the lines.

Virtually the entire county I lived in lost power for a month after one of the hurricanes hit a few years back. The city certainly was out for a month.

Some people were trapped in their gated communities for days because large trees fell across the gates and the city didn't have time to send out people with large enough chainsaws to get them out.

Granted when I was in college I had let the electric bill lapse for 3 months at a time so I'm not really all that bothered by lacking electricity. I had well water back then, which the neighbor flipped to use his electricity when mine was off (like he was going to live without water) and it was heated by the immense amount of sulfur in it; not that the winters were all that cold in south florida.

You shared a well with your neighbor? We all have our own. Separate water and septic systems.

When I finish my basement this summer, I'm going to look at getting a generator for backup power to run my furnace and water pump. Gas furnace, but it needs power for the controls and the powered exhaust system.

Yep. Shared a pump and a well. I paid for *all* the pump electricity for about a year without even knowing what the heck was going on.

We never had a manual pump. We didn't live in a rural area; just a very run down low income suburban one that at some point was a rural area.

Also, it was south Florida. Much easier to hit the water table when it's 20 feet or less under your feet.

Edited, Apr 21st 2011 10:01am by SwiftAusterity

That's the weirdest complaint I think I've ever heard...

Separate faucets, Belkira. One spout with just hot water and one spout with just cold water. At least that's what I'm assuming. It would probably **** me off too. It would be especially hard to find that perfect temperature, like taking baths or something. Instead of knowing the temperature and adjusting accordingly as it's coming out of the spout, you'd have to wait a significant amount of time for the tub to fill and use the water in the as a gauge. Can you not buy single-spout faucets? Or is all the piping designed for completely separate sources of water?