Personal

Wow, that was an interesting 2 days without power. What were you doing when the power went out? Everyone who lived through the outage probably has a good story to tell. This is mine.

I was in Kingston NY, finishing the setup of my companies new office. When power went out the group of us thought someone had tripped a breaker or something. We were pulling cable so you never know. Our first indication that it was a bigger outage than our office was the call Dan was on with a construction contractor over an hour away. He said power was out by him also. Then we received a call from our NYC office telling us that the power was out down there as well. After like 20 minutes of speculation one guy went to his car to listen to the radio. Dan, Keith, & I went to Dan’s car for the radio also. After a little bit dan had the idea to goto the store. He wanted bread and water. He wouldn’t let Keith and I get the stuff since (in his own words) he thought we would get 1 can of soda and a candy bar. We ended up getting 4 gallons of water and 2 things of bread.

Once we realized this was going to take a while we coordinated with our contractors about what to do tomorrow (friday). I originally was going to stay in Kingston and oversee the contractors if power came back. Unfortunately the hotel room I had didn’t have an outside window, so it was completely dark. At that point Dan was like screw this, and told me to come with him. Keith and Dan were heading to Dan’s parents in Connecticut. The reasoning was it was closer to the city and a place where we knew people. I hopped in the car and we were off. It was weird, the power was out yet ezpass worked. Also there were tons of cars on the road. The NY State Throughway looked normal. We only noticed a difference when we got to CT and we had no traffic lights.

Dan’s mom and dad were very cool. His mom made us sandwiches with everything she had left in her refrigerator. We sat on their deck and hung out after we figured out how to work the fuel burning lamp. If you were wondering it took 2 tech guys and an operations guy about 20 minutes to get a lamp to work. By 10pm or so we heard that power was slowly getting restored to NYC. we decided that if it came back Thursday night or Friday morning we would want to be near the office to get stuff working. It just so happened that like 3/4 of our company’s “crisis team” or people who work in emergencies were together far away from the office. Gus was the only one who was still down in NYC. So we got in Dan’s trusty car again and headed into Manhattan. He had well over a half a tank of gas in a honda so we were set for fuel.

The drive down to the city was interesting. Some parts of Manhattan had power, others didn’t. dan missed the exit on the Tribourough bridge so we ended up in traffic in queens. We turned around and were in manhattan in no time. You could see the hospitals because they were the only places with power in manhattan. Once off the FDR drive it was eery. The busy intersections had a cop or two directing traffic, but other intersections had nothing. We parked on 21st and Park Ave near our office and once the lights were out from the car the sky had this weird green glow to it. no lights to be seen. You could look down 21st street and see nothing.

The security desk at our office was lit by candles. We ended up walking up the 10 flights of stairs to the office only to find 6 hold outs who couldn’t or didn’t want to go home. We hung out there for a while and then Dan and I left to his place for some sleep. Keith for some reason stayed at the office. He figured he could sleep on the floor in the office just as easy as he could sleep on the floor in dans place. I didn’t care since I had called dibs on Dan’s comfy couch. Dan lives right near the office, so after a quick ride we were at his place and I was fast asleep. I actually slept like a baby that night.

We woke up at around 9 to no power. dan went to the car to charge his cell phone and get breakfast. My cell phone was dead and I didn’t have a car charger. I went to the backup phone but got no signal. Verizon still has the best service, even in a disaster. Dan found bagels so we ate and hung out. We played cards for a while and then decided to see if the office had power.

Well the office didn’t have power and we had nothing else to do. I convinced dan after a few minutes that Queens would be a good destination. My parents had power so that meant that I had power. We could get lunch, fuel and some AC. We trekked to Bayside and I filled Dan’s car up at the gas station by my house. I guess power was back for a while since we actually didn’t have a huge line for gas. We ate at Applebies and ended up napping at my place for a while. That air mattress is helpful when you have last minute guests.

At around 7:30PM we got the call that the office had power. We went back into the city so we could turn everything back on. We meet Gus there and powered everything on. It looked like everything came back fine. We got lucky. We went to eat and I caught car service home.

That was the end of my experience with the black out. I actually didn’t have such a bad time. I wouldn’t like it to happen again, but at least I didn’t have to walk for hours to get home. All in all, I finish the experience with some memories that I won’t soon forget.