Thursday night: in the late PM/early AM we get a high windstorm. I don't mean a little whistling through the trees. I mean you look out the window and expect to see Elvira Gulch on her bike threatening Toto. Oddly it's not cold, and the rain from earlier in the day has stopped.
None of this stops me from getting to sleep, and when I get up in the morning I'm not thinking about it too much, although later in the day I'll see a downed bus stop sign. When I get to Central Falls I try stopping for coffee at Dunkin' Donuts, but they're closed because there's no power. And when I go in to work, the lights are off. Also closed because there's no juice. Which is one way to get the day off. The blackout's hit most of the city, I find out.
So Santa Ana type winds are disruptive when they come to the Northeast. That's one thing I found out. Also it kind of seems like the utilities de-prioritize poorer cities.
None of this stops me from getting to sleep, and when I get up in the morning I'm not thinking about it too much, although later in the day I'll see a downed bus stop sign. When I get to Central Falls I try stopping for coffee at Dunkin' Donuts, but they're closed because there's no power. And when I go in to work, the lights are off. Also closed because there's no juice. Which is one way to get the day off. The blackout's hit most of the city, I find out.
So Santa Ana type winds are disruptive when they come to the Northeast. That's one thing I found out. Also it kind of seems like the utilities de-prioritize poorer cities.
2 comments:
It sounds as though the good news in your case was that you didn't lose power at your place and it would appear the buses were running next day. When I read your story about the storm I checked out one of the local RI news stations to discover that there was lots of damage. Hopefully everybody's up and running again now.
You must have read about PG&E turning of the power to hundreds of thousands of homes in California in order to prevent fires from downed lines. Maybe it did some good but some serious fires happened anyway.
Power outages make a mockery of smart technology. Remember this scene from Ubik? It may not be about electricity but it sure describes the core problem of smart home systems.
“The door refused to open. It said, “Five cents, please.”
He searched his pockets. No more coins; nothing. “I’ll pay you tomorrow,” he told the door. Again he tried the knob. Again it remained locked tight. “What I pay you,” he informed it, “is in the nature of a gratuity; I don’t have to pay you.”
“I think otherwise,” the door said. “Look in the purchase contract you signed when you bought this conapt.”
In his desk drawer he found the contract; since signing it he had found it necessary to refer to the document many times. Sure enough; payment to his door for opening and shutting constituted a mandatory fee. Not a tip.
“You discover I’m right,” the door said. It sounded smug.
From the drawer beside the sink Joe Chip got a stainless steel knife; with it he began systematically to unscrew the bolt assembly of his apt’s money-gulping door.
“I’ll sue you,” the door said as the first screw fell out.
Joe Chip said, “I’ve never been sued by a door. But I guess I can live through it.”
There was storm damage all over the place, including Providence. We didn't have any outages, as far as I know. Maybe it helps that we're more elevated, or the infrastructure is better protected. The last blackout I remember was within the last couple of years, late summer or early fall. Night time and for blocks and blocks around, no lights on at all. Kind of freaky.
I don't know how justified PG&E were in that instance. There might have been a good reason. A lot of Californians aren't happy with them in general. There's talk about them needing new management. We'll see.
That's the crazy thing. Climate change will probably make power failures a more regular occurrence in the future, and we're becoming less prepared for them.
Philip K. Dick's writing was shaped by the time he grew up in, so a lot of the prose and some other aspects were old-fashioned even when he was writing. That becomes explicit in Ubik. Yet there are ways he foresaw the coming world too. A fascinating man.
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