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So as you might have heard, basically the whole DC metro area is reeling from a big giant windstorm that came through here on Friday. In my case the power went out about 10:45 Friday night, a few minutes before the storm arrived. I dutifully reported the outage using Pepco's smartphone app and went to bed.
By Saturday morning, it was 1.5 million people region-wide whose power was out, and unsurprisingly the power companies were pretty overwhelmed. They handled their overwhelm quite differently, of course. Dominion Virginia had the same number of outages as, if not more than, Pepco, and although they both said substantially the same thing in their interviews with the news - massive event, lots of downed wires and trees and safety issues to make sure are taken care of before we can get customers back online, hard time getting help from other utilities because this thing was so widespread, could be up to seven days, not what anyone wants - Pepco sounded smarmy and defensive about it and DVP sounded sincere and apologetic. Suits at Pepco need PR lessons in a big, big way.
I went to a yoga class - power was on at the studio - and then picked up Gentleman Caller so we could drive to the mall in the air-conditioned car, charging our phones on the way there and chilling out for a while before coming home to who knows how long without electricity. I had two bars on my gas gauge when we set out, so I planned to fill up when we got there. But at that station, wouldn't you know, the power was out, so the gas couldn't pump. ... Over the next half-hour we went to every gas station on Rt 7 between Tysons and Seven Corners, all but one of which had no power - and the one who had power was out of gas, unsurprisingly. We had about a half-gallon, by the predicted mileage, when we parked in the shade at a pump in a non-functioning gas station and started making phone calls. ( Long story short (... not really, I guess) )
In sum: it's hot, people are angry, things are okay by me, Gentleman Caller is awesome, I'm so lucky.
By Saturday morning, it was 1.5 million people region-wide whose power was out, and unsurprisingly the power companies were pretty overwhelmed. They handled their overwhelm quite differently, of course. Dominion Virginia had the same number of outages as, if not more than, Pepco, and although they both said substantially the same thing in their interviews with the news - massive event, lots of downed wires and trees and safety issues to make sure are taken care of before we can get customers back online, hard time getting help from other utilities because this thing was so widespread, could be up to seven days, not what anyone wants - Pepco sounded smarmy and defensive about it and DVP sounded sincere and apologetic. Suits at Pepco need PR lessons in a big, big way.
I went to a yoga class - power was on at the studio - and then picked up Gentleman Caller so we could drive to the mall in the air-conditioned car, charging our phones on the way there and chilling out for a while before coming home to who knows how long without electricity. I had two bars on my gas gauge when we set out, so I planned to fill up when we got there. But at that station, wouldn't you know, the power was out, so the gas couldn't pump. ... Over the next half-hour we went to every gas station on Rt 7 between Tysons and Seven Corners, all but one of which had no power - and the one who had power was out of gas, unsurprisingly. We had about a half-gallon, by the predicted mileage, when we parked in the shade at a pump in a non-functioning gas station and started making phone calls. ( Long story short (... not really, I guess) )
In sum: it's hot, people are angry, things are okay by me, Gentleman Caller is awesome, I'm so lucky.
