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Powerless

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Our community experienced a total power outage yesterday for about two hours in the afternoon. We had about 4 inches of wet, heavy snow the night before that broke some lines and made the whole town lose power. At my work we were thankful that no one was trapped in the elevator.

All work stopped. Most of the offices are windowless.  Since I have a window I let colleagues with clients use my office for meetings. There was no Wi-fi or Internet unless you knew how to connect your computer to the mobile Hotspot on your phone I did, but then my phone battery got too low and I had to stop.

Many of the main doorways in my office building are accessible only with special cards that only work if the electricity is on. We had to make sure we propped those doors open with chairs to allow us to come and go.

I found that my Internet at home was also inaccessible, but used my mobile Hotspot to post this. I was pretty panicked I couldn’t post a blog. I then remembered a tip from our Internet provider that if I rebooted our routers, the Internet and Wi-Fi might come back. I did, and they did! Uffda! I hope things are better today!

How would you cope without power? Know anyone who was stuck in an elevator?

37 thoughts on “Powerless”

  2. Ha! Late, shmate – it’s a minor miracle you got it up, Renee. And I can’t imagine what a nightmare it would be to get stuck in an elevator.

    I hadn’t heard the term mobile hot spot before, but whatever it is, I’m glad it exists.

    Don’t want to even think about what I would do without power, at least for more than a few hours. Would some land line phones work? Thinking…

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  3. The mobile Hotspot is a feature on cell phones that let’s your phone act as an internet route for your computer. I think all cell phones have it. Ourvstaff uses it to access the internet with their computers when they are out in the middle of nowhere providing mental health services.

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  5. Rise and Shine Baboons,

    I feel powerless over financial institutions. The last two days was a battle with Long Term Care Insurance. This follows a summer/autumn of trying to close my mother’s accounts at large institutions which left me feeling frustrated and overwhelmed. But maybe that is not the powerless you mean. It is just the powerless I am.

    In early June, 1998 we lost power for 5 days after a hail storm that also ruined our roof and damaged the siding. The neighbors behind us, including Crabby Pants Jane who is a very bad neighbor, ran extension cords to our house so we could keep the fridge, refrigerator and a light on. It was a kindness that saved a lot of food. All other power outages pale next to that experience.

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      1. No, we are open and our computers are working off of our mobile Hotspots. The State funded internet provider for our region lost a major transmission box in the power outage yesterday. They are trying to restore service , but my agency, all other State agencies in our region, the County courthouse, the schools and the college are without the internet right now.

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  7. No to the elevator question.

    With a power outage, I’d light some candles, turn on the fireplace for heat if the furnace didn’t work, and hunker down with a good book or listen to MPR on battery-powered radio. If I were hungry for a hot meal, we could probably use the gas range to heat something up. If not, fire up the ol’ Coleman two-burner campstove.

    Longest we’ve been without power in Owatonna was about two hours I think. But I also think it was during summer, so not a major issue other than worrying about food in the refrigerator going bad. All was well that ended well in that case. 🙂

    Chris in Owatonna

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    1. I have a gas fireplace too – love it! But it has electronic ignition and won’t work in a power outage, even though the pilot is lit. It still needs that spark. Last fall I had it cleaned and the tech guy set me up with a remote control. I hope I never reach the point where I can sit in my recliner and direct my life from it!

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  8. WP ate my first response. It’s my own fault for trying to do three things at once.

    We had a power outage here after the tornado in 2018. It lasted several hours. I didn’t expect it to come back on as soon as it did considering all the damage around here.

    I am anxious about power outages. I worry about cyber security (i.e. another country attacking our power grid or water supply); domestic terrorism; and political unrest – all of it. Who knows when some nutcase who thinks he should be king will decide to take down our grid as a vendetta. Yes, I struggle with anxiety about things like that. I don’t know if I am more or less anxious than the next person. I have built myself an emergency box. It’s not perfect but it will be useful in case it’s needed.

    The hospital building I worked in was old, around 1900. The elevators were old due to it being a state building and taxpayers not caring if state employees got stuck. I worked on the 3rd floor. There were two elevators to choose from but you never knew when the one you were in would get stuck. This was in the ‘80-90s, before cell phones. There wasn’t a landline in the elevator either. You had to wait until someone on the floor above called the elevator before you had hope of getting help. There were no maintenance staff on duty weekends, holidays or evenings. An elevator company had to be called to come rescue you and you never knew how long it would take for them to get there. The worst thing would be to have a patient in there stuck with you. They were extremely medically fragile people so it could be scary. I think the longest I was in a stuck elevator was a couple of hours. I remember once it was much longer than that for someone else.

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  9. I was just on an elevator while out delivering meals, and I looked closely – it looks like there are panels in the ceiling that could be removed if one knew how – so maybe there are ways, at least in some cases – to get out if there is a long power outage. ? ?

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    2. A friend of mine once climbed up through that trap door and rode the elevator up and down for a while just to observe what people did when they thought they were alone on the elevator. This was many years ago and I don’t have any details but it was entirely in keeping with his experiential character.

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  10. Been a while since our power went out for long…

    We have the big tractor powered generator, but it’s not connected to HEAT, just electricity. (We have electric heat, but it’s on a different meter and separate box than the regular electricity. In dire consequences, I could move a breaker to get heat.)

    The other issue is that the generator is in a back corner of the shed, and usually when I park it there and then park something else in front of it, I cross my fingers I won’t need it. And if it’s just a branch down or regular thunderstorm, the power wouldn’t be out very long. Winter time blizzard or ice storm and it might be days… then I’m going to have a problem.

    Not to mention, the book will tell me to run the generator every 6 or 12 months to be sure it’s working. I ran it 4 or 5 years ago… again, fingers crossed. Dad bought it used 40 years ago and it’s always worked when I needed it.

    It would run the barn and milking equipment, and it would run one silo and feed bunk. It wouldn’t run both silos and the bunk. Those were all 5 or 7 HP electric motors.

    Talk about an electric bill… hate to imagine that these days.

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  11. out of power? depends on the to do list

    a book first came to mind but i do have batteries that will recharge the phone so hot spots will work or in reality i do most of my computer stuff in the phone these days

    i typically have a heavy backlog on my to do list so candles and a corner table suffice to tick off an item or two

    i fondly remember the days of contemplating my navel between tasks … no more

    i remember being stuck in an elevator and prying the door open only to discover i was between floors ,the easiest to access above so i pried that door open and lifted myself out. i want about to sit idley in a dark elevator for who knows how long

    i’m not the patient type

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  12. At the Rochester repertory theater, there used to be an elevator backstage. It was put in by a previous tenant in 2000. A concrete block shaft had to be added to the back of the building. The Theatre moved in in 2007 and basically the elevator went from backstage to a balcony storage area, it was of no use to the audience. We did use it to move furniture, and sometimes actors would use at intermission. Until It got stuck between the two floors. I wasn’t there, I only heard about it. The concrete block shaft was never built that well, not perfectly square, and every so often the elevator would get out of alignment. We had to do yearly inspections until we had it turned off in 2015. About two years ago we had it fully decommissioned and removed from the building. There was talk of if it ever developed an oil leak, Of course we would be creating a toxic waste dump that we would be liable for. Besides that we could use the space where the elevator control room was.
    Glad it’s gone.

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  13. At one point in my bookstore career, I worked in the IDS Center where the receiving and storage areas are underneath the center. We used to call it “the bowels”. Once on a Saturday, when I was down there getting some books, the lights went out. Not just in our little storage space but everywhere downstairs; I thought it might be the whole building but didn’t know. And the landline down there didn’t work either to call out. I considered wandering out but the idea of turning the wrong way in the dark (and omg it was dark) turned my stomach. I figured I might eventually have to do this but was saving it as a last resort. I picked up the phone receiver which was tied to the store, hoping that John (my co-worker) would at some point make a phone call. While I waited I spent my time going over the route in my mind from the storage room to the main center of the building where the elevators/stairs were located as well as the hope of more people. It took 45 minutes before John did in fact, pick up the phone. Once I told him what was going on, he contacted security and they got the lights turned on and I “escaped”. On Monday my boss bought us two industrial flashlights, one that we kept in the storage space and one that we kept in the store, in case we needed to get down there in a blackout. A very very very long 45 minutes in my life.

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    1. I can attest to the darkness of the bowels the IDS Center, and can well imagine that those were very long minutes. I salute you for remaining calm and not going into full panic mode.

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