Black Out

Last night, we had a blackout and I missed my post.

It was a hot summer night and we have had few such nights this summer so it was a night ripe for overuse of the electrical grid and we were not surprised until we discovered that the people up the street and the people down the street still had power. There were only seven houses down. Bad sign. We called LIPA and reported the problem. We were informed that the maintenance guy (she said 'guy' not 'crew') was up in Hauppauge and would arrive within 2-4 hours. They took our cell phone number and told us they'd call back with an update. And we waited.

Thirty minutes later, an automated message informed us that there was a "transformer issue" and a maintenance truck had been dispatched. We wondered out loud whether most average folk would understand what a transformer was and in light of the current summer blockbuster movie, Transformers, might perhaps think that we were dealing with some type of robot in disguise. Well, our maintenance truck showed up about an hour later and yes it was just one guy. We thought that maybe LIPA had really cut back, using automated messages, reducing personnel for emergency response, but then why were they still charging us so much?

Anyhow, our guy turned on his big search light and went up and down the street a few times looking for the right pole and we began to worry that we were in for a long night. Thankfully, we were having a great time catching up on street gossip with our fellow affected neighbors so it was all good. Meanwhile, our maintenance guy had found the pole with the transformer and appeared to be working on it. Then suddenly he turned off his big lights, got into the truck and drove off up the street at which point we panicked for we still had no electricity.

A few moments later he came barreling back down the street and pulled up at another pole. He had only set off to turn around. My street is a somewhat narrow dead end street with a few dead end side streets so it takes a little effort for a big truck to turn around. A few days ago, an 18 wheeler came down the street and the driver had to back all the way up the street to get out. Anyhow, the poor LIPA guy had to start lopping of branches in the middle of the night so he could reach the other pole. We of little faith waited while he fiddled at the pole certain that there was no power to be had.

At last a flicker in the house across the street or was it a candle? Then their floodlight came on, yeah! Except, we still had no juice. Oh no! Then straight out of poltergeist, the microwave clock and the refrigerator came on in our house. Nothing else. Well, at least the food would be saved, we thought. Then the TV flicked on and off and still none of the lights were working. We checked the neighbors on either side of us and their houses were still dark. A few minutes later one of the kitchen lights came on but not the other and still no other lights were working. Then slowly the whole house started to come back to life. It appeared to me that the guy was jury-rigging something for there was no credible explanation why parts of the house had electricity while other parts did not. None of our circuit breakers had blown so it was very strange. Finally, our house returned to full power and we rejoiced.

Our guy then packed up and left and that was that. Except the neighbors to our right still had no power. Oh well. The automated voice called back about an hour later to check if we had power, press 1 for yes, 2 for no. This morning we woke up to a fleet of LIPA trucks on the street. 5 huge trucks and lots of guys yelling and standing in the street for 5 long hours while work was done on the two poles. It was definitely overkill. Last night, it seemed like a miracle that we got our power back with the one lone guy toiling away but this morning, it was business as usual for LIPA.