On Thursday August 14 at approximately 4:10 pm, the lights went out in Detroit, New York, Toronto, Cleveland, Toledo and much of the area inclusive. You don't realize how much you depend on power until you lose it.
Where were you when the lights went out?
I was messing with my laptop in my living room. Luckily for me, my battery saved me from losing what I was working on. I did not think much of the blackout since it occurs enough (once every few months for maybe an hour) to make me think it was just temporary. My sister and I left about 30 minutes later to go pick up my grandfather and we ran into gridlock.
I should mention this as a little aside. Detroit is known throughout the world as the Motor city, home of the Ford Motor Company, General Motors and the Chrysler Corporation. A lot of people in and around Detroit work for these companies and their subsidiaries. Buying or leasing cars is pushed, so public transportation here in Detroit is confined to the SMART bus line and the People Mover, an elevated train which only traverses the downtown area.
We flipped on the radio and started going through the stations. Hmm, there are a lot less stations than usual. We finally found one that was broadcasting news out of New York. Apparently, there was a huge area in two countries that was without power. The announcer wondered if it was a terrorist attack. About 5 minutes later, it was said that there was a malfunction at a power plant in the vicinity of Lake Erie and that it was not a terrorist attack. Greatly relieved, we continued driving on, but after 20 minutes, we only moved 2 miles. The next couple miles proved to be faster, but the whole 5 mile trip which usually takes 10 minutes took almost 4 times as long. We collected up my grandfather and started the trip back, but with the usual heavy traffic plus no traffic lights, it took an hour to get back.
After getting home, we started trying to get a hold of our parents and sister on their cell phones but not having much success, eventually my parents arrived home with driving horror stories similar to the one we encountered. By this time, reports were saying that the authorities were not sure when the power was going to come back on, but it was not going to be soon. We gathered up all of the flashlights and candles we could find. My sister and I did not look forward to a night without computer or tv, so we decided to do what we found out later a lot of other people did, we drank. We headed over to our older sister's apartment and hung out with some friends.
The next morning was warm, muggy and not very good for sleeping. My parents decided to venture into work to see what they could get done. My sister and I decided to explore around and get some supplies (water, non refridgerated foods). There were reports all over the radio of people sitting in long lines at the closest gas stations that had power. We decided we would bypass all of that and head towards Lansing, which was only a 50 mile drive from our house. This drive was complicated by the fact that everyone was on the expressway, trying to get anywhere west to do the same thing. We turned north into a rural area and drove around the backups. Finally about 40 miles down the expressway, we got back on and had no backups. We drove the final 20 miles into Lansing and contrary to reports, Lansing did have power. We stopped off at a Meijer's and picked up what we needed and also filled up with gas (there was no line there). When we got back to our house, we wasted over half the day, which was fine because the car had air conditioning and our house did not.
A few hours after we arrived home, the lights came back on. We were asked to not turn on our air or plug too many major appliances because there was still a large area of Detroit that did not have power. Also, there was a warning to boil any water that came out of the tap before it could be safely used. This deterred us from taking showers and believe me, by this time, we were all very nasty and grimy.
Saturday morning came and my family decided that disease or no disease, we all needed showers and we even ventured to put on the air conditioning to cool the house down. I was out of town Saturday night and Sunday morning, but I was told that nothing major happened in that time. By Sunday evening, almost all of the Detroit area had power again. The boil water warning was dropped earlier today.
People in the community and around the city of Detroit responded well to this disaster and held together. They were calm and did what they had to do to get through.
Posted by Simkin at August 19, 2003 12:17 AM