Power Is Back On

Well, we lost power at about 10pm on Thursday night and it finally came back on at around 3am this morning.

But we’re lucky.

We live pretty close to a substation, plus a PSE repair guy lives on our street (though I’m not sure if that had anything to do with it…) and our power is back. But I just nipped out in the car to head to the local safeway which is running on a generator, and nobody else in Kirkland appears to have power.

Yesterday it was out everywhere. Kirkland, Bellevue, Redmond, you name it.

Our friends Dawn and Darwin in another part of Kirkland don’t have power, so they’re planning on heading over here with the kids.

But I still feel lucky.

One of our neighbours lost their roof. Another had an Atlantic Cedar come down on their garage, narrowly missing the house. It took their power and phone lines with it.

Last night all four of us humans plus the dog slept in the one bed after cooking dinner and heating water on our barbeque’s single burner - handily we had a full tank of propane.

So, we’re fine.

And we still feel lucky.

Update: Check out this great post by Joshua Allen. It’ll give you a better insight as to what was going on than I can.

Also, we spent most of yesterday listening to NPR (KUOW) and KOMO 1000 on the our portable radio (with handily stock piled batteries), and most of today watching the news after the power came back on.

I tell ya though, listening to the radio all day (and a lot of the night), especially NPR, was a treat.

Anyhow, impressions? Yes, it really was as Joshua described. I was sickened by the dude selling gas at $15 a gallon (a mark down from $25…) I was also briefly worried about running our Christmas decorations once the power came back on in our little oasis in Kirkland, fearing that people driving by might take it as some sort of affront.

Anyhow, Joshua’s post sums it up nicely. It makes you wonder what would happen if the shit really hit the fan…