Whee! That was a fun power outage!

[jinxmchue]

So I'm sitting here at about 8 pm waiting for my kids to get ready for bed when the power started going on and off a bunch of times before permanently staying off.  Checked outside and the whole area is dark.  Hear an ambulance scream by one street down.  Lots of other traffic in the area, which was odd.  Finally checked with my mom and she heard on the radio that a car had crashed into a power pole just a few blocks from here.  We spent the evening keeping the kids calm (their special lights helped) and putting them to bed, and keeping the frickin' stupid cats away from the candles.

[asdf2231]

They do seem fascinated by the darn things don't they?

One of ours tried to lick the flame one night.  He was not the brightest bulb in the light fixture. 

[NHSparky]

Cars hitting poles will do that.  Plus the breaker that feeds the particular line is programmed to reclose the breaker up to a specified number of times to "test" to see if the fault has cleared, which is why I tell people not to just rush in if they come across someone who just hit a pole and there are lines down.

[jinxmchue]

I guess the guy responsible is the nephew of someone in our church.  He had fallen asleep at the wheel and hit a car and TWO poles.  He didn't wake up until the airbag went off.  Thankfully, though, it doesn't sound like he was hurt very bad.  The car was a newer one he had just bought.  His last car was older and didn't have airbags, so the accident could've been much worse.

[Chris_]

No Internet?

Man, how did you survive?

[Airwolf]

Glad the driver is going to be ok. Still if you want to have a real adventure ,try having no power and only your fireplace for heat for about 10 days for a two story split level home. Back in 1996 about this time of the year we had a huge ice storm roll in and covered the entire area with 10" of ice and snow. That will make your day go sour real quick.

[Chris_]

Glad the driver is going to be ok. Still if you want to have a real adventure ,try having no power and only your fireplace for heat for about 10 days for a two story split level home. Back in 1996 about this time of the year we had a huge ice storm roll in and covered the entire area with 10" of ice and snow. That will make your day go sour real quick.

Airwolf you're a friggin' pessimist.    Glass half empty and all that.  You could have at least been thankful that God had given you all that ice to keep yer beer cold with! 

[Airwolf]

Airwolf you're a friggin' pessimist.    Glass half empty and all that.  You could have at least been thankful that God had given you all that ice to keep yer beer cold with! 

Yeah well that would have been good too. Except we didn't have any beer here at the time,LOL.

[Chris_]

Yeah well that would have been good too. Except we didn't have any beer here at the time,LOL.

Let's see, how does that line go?  Something like, "proper prior planning....."

 

[franksolich]

Glad the driver is going to be ok. Still if you want to have a real adventure ,try having no power and only your fireplace for heat for about 10 days for a two story split level home. Back in 1996 about this time of the year we had a huge ice storm roll in and covered the entire area with 10" of ice and snow. That will make your day go sour real quick.

Ah, yes, the famous Halloween ice storm.

It was pretty bad in Lincoln; no electricity in the center of town for 14 days.

It hit Omaha pretty bad too, but as I was in Lincoln, I paid attention only to Lincoln.

Great big huge drifts of snow on the ground, after the ice.

Hundreds of thousands of trees down.

City devastated.

I seemed the only cool person in the city at the time.....but then and again, I had just gotten back from the socialist paradises of the workers and peasants, and so all this was old hat to me.

[Zeus]

I know nature plays a role in power outages from time to time. It is funny though some areas of the country someone walking down the street farts and 8 city blocks are without power for x amt of time. While other parts of the country are almost never without power.

[Airwolf]

I should tell everyone here that the infamous ice storm Frank and I are talking about was not forcasted to happen. In fact I was up untill midnight the day before and the local forcaste was for 2-4 inches of snow. I figured that at worse I would be late  for work and get there by around 9am. At 6am the next day I was told there was already 10 inces of snow and ice on the ground there was more to come. Think of a normal snow followed by having everything you see covered in 1-3 inches of ice. Trees down everywhere and anything less then 4wd trucks were stuck where they were. Even then it took a long time to get someplace.