From: Irfon-Kim Ahmad (irfon_at_ambienautica.com)
Date: Sat Aug 16 2003 - 06:02:17 PDT
I'm a regular reader, but not a regular poster. However, I'm in
Toronto, which was blacked out well and good. To be honest, it was
sort of fun (although obviously we worried about people with more
serious situations, like people who need oxygen therapies and such).
I had the day off anyway, and I was just about to trim my goatee, which
was getting too bushy for my liking. I had the plug about an inch from
the wall socket, when *zzewp!* -- power out. I muttered a couple of
choice words to myself. Then, ten minutes later or so, my work called.
They wanted to know if there was anything that they needed to do,
because the power was out. That was my first tipoff that there was
something awry; I don't live that close to my work. As I told them
that I'd come in so that I'd be there when it came back on to nurse
everything back up safely. As I walked out, a neighbour who is known
to be full of tall tales was standing outside and told me that all of
Southern Ontario was out. I thought, "Yeah, right," and got into my
car. (I usually ride my bike, but I wanted to get there quickly.) It
was en route that the magnitude became apparent, as well as that we
weren't getting power back soon. I turned around and came back home.
The traffic was ... 'fun'.
After that, it was more or less like 'free day off'. Having taken
Thursday off anyway, this gave me a four-day weekend. I live in a
project of stacked townhomes ringed by tall condo 'apartment'
buildings. The townhomes have rooftop terraces. Thursday night,
everybody was up on their terraces BBQing. It was incredibly dark at
night, so the stars were lovely. About half a dozen people got out
high-power flashlights (I was one) and bounced them off the towers that
are still under contruction, making impromptu light shows. Someone got
a laser pointer out and raced it over the tower while all the
flashlights tried to follow it.
I went in to work Friday morning for about two hours just to unplug
everything, when I'd heard of rolling blackouts all weekend. We got
power back at around 4pm Friday, after being out about 24 hours. I
know some folks are still out, but the majority of stuff up here is
back on. A friend in a nearby city had power on at 4am Friday morning,
so I got in the car, picked up another blacked-out friend, and we drove
down there for the afternoon. We caught a movie and had a bizarre
dinner out. At around 11am Friday morning, our *land lines* actually
went down, which was a little weird. Being totally cut off,
communications-wise, was strange. I don't have a battery-powered
radio, so suddenly my only contact with the world was walking outside
talking to neighbours.
All in all, people in Toronto were really calm and laid back about the
whole thing. I mean, a day's power outage, for most people without
special needs, is totally not a big thing. I saw a lot of people
chilling out on their patios, and we had some friends over late Friday
to play Trivial Pursuit Friday night. I don't know what it was like in
American cities. Someone told me that the news was predicting violence
and looting, but I'd be surprised if any of that actually happened. I
haven't looked at the news since the power came back on.
Anyway, I hope everyone else affected is safe too! Sorry about my
overlong rambling. :)
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