10 Days Without Power?
What would you miss most if you had to go 10 days without power?
Last year on New Years’ Eve we had a huge storm that took out all the electricity and several thousand redwoods, alders, eucalyptus, Douglas fir, pine, etc. Just a couple of miles from here it looked like God decided to go bowling. As a friend who lives right there said, Mother Nature gave them what the California Coastal Commission refused to – an ocean view.
We were without power for 4 days. I had just rented a bunch of movies, and so my husband and I got into bed early (by the light of the kerosene lamps), and watched movies on the laptop. The second night, the laptop died as the credits were rolling at the end.
Now, when we’re without power, we’re literally camping – just indoors with a roof.
We only have electricity (there is no natural gas here), so there’s no cooking unless we put the Coleman up on the stove. Luckily we use a wood stove for most of our heat, so we usually have a good stock of wood. And because we’re on a well, there’s no water for drinking, washing or flushing. Unless we use the rainwater from outside.
So it’s always an interesting experience, and we generally get 2-3 power outages of 1-2 days every year. Sometimes it’s worse, like a few years ago when we went about 6 days. Because we are fairly remote, we’re often some of the last neighborhoods to get power restored.
And last year one of the wires across the dirt road to our driveway came down with a branch, so we had to wait for PG&E to repair that before we got power again. And we were a bit anxious even about crossing it to get to the store.
So, we’re very grateful that the huge storm that swept Oregon and Washington just barely touched us. We are only about 70-80 miles from Oregon, so we are very, very lucky.
We were talking earlier tonight with family in New Zealand and they told us that they can’t connect to their “work” mainframe in Seattle because the power is out there. And in some places the expectation is it will be 10 days before power is restored.
We become so accustomed to things working and problems being fixed easily, that the idea seldom passes into our thoughts that we might have to go 10 days without power. In a city setting, chances are good there will at least be water and telephone. But in a rural setting (and Washington has many of those, just as we do), the modern comforts we’ve become used to having just don’t exist when the power is out.
My husband and I have lived here “behind the Redwood Curtain” for about 12 years. We love the rugged and unspoiled beauty. But every winter we are grateful for all the modern amenities we have. And even though we only use it in the most extreme circumstances, that generator we bought a few years ago does come in handy sometimes!