Our first power outage

Hi everyone, Mandi here.

This morning, as I was wavering between asleep and awake, Jordan was getting ready for work.  I half noticed the lights go out, and I thought, 'oh, either Jordan's really good at turning off all the lights at once, or I managed to doze off...' before Jordan poked his head in to the bedroom to inform me that the power had gone out.  I looked to where the clock's little red numbers usually glare into the dark, and sure enough, I saw nothing but black.  The wind whipped a number of pinecones free from the nearby trees and scattered them across the tin roof, making a racket that made me wonder if it was hailing outside.  Ah, so there's a tree down somewhere.

Okay, I've been waiting for this.  I anticipate that we will get quite a few outages this winter, as we're about 15 minutes out of city limits.  I had a half-formed plan in the back of my head, so I called the power company to report the outage and they confirmed that they were getting calls from others as well.  That's a good sign (to me, anyway); I suspect that their service may be a bit slower for one customer than for the 1000 homes that were affected by this morning's outage.  Plus, if it was just out, then there's likely a tree down on our property, which could be a real can of worms (Is it across the driveway/road?  What has it taken out for fencing?  Is there gas for the chainsaw?  Not that I would be dumb enough to remove a tree down on a live wire, but... there will be work to be done after, I'm sure).

I usually listen to CBC radio in the morning, and while I have batteries for the radio, I don't want to put them in and drain them unless it's a real emergency (such as a winter storm or forest fire).  Luckily, I can get the radio on my cell phone by plugging in my headphones to act as an antenna, so that was how I discovered it was about 1000 homes in the dark this morning.

Another problem was, you guessed it, light.  We don't have a lot of windows in the first place, and it's now full dark out at 5:30 in the morning.  I keep a flashlight next to the bed just for situations like this, and I was able to use it to feed the cats and find my headlamp (which you may remember from this post) so I could still use both hands.  Zim, our pooch, didn't seem phased by the dark, so I let him out, and he came back in without falling off the deck :)

I was able to get ready for work without any major mishaps, other than putting the headlamp on a shelf to brush my hair and then nocking it off the shelf, which turned it off and plunged me into darkness without any hope of finding where I had put down the flashlight.  So I used my phone (which I was able to find by following the sound of the radio, and I managed to grab it without knocking anything else over) to find the flashlight, which I used to find the headlamp.  I tucked the flashlight into my back pocket in case of future mishaps, but luckily, it wasn't needed again and I put it back beside the bed before I left for work.

The best thing about our house in a power outage: our 'furnace' is a propane fireplace that is capable of running without any power.  The fan that moves the heat throughout the house is powered, of course, but the thermostat remote control and the receiver are both battery powered (and I have extra batteries for both).  So the fireplace stays on longer than usual, which burns more fuel, but we will not freeze; if anything, the house gets warmer than usual, as the heat doesn't reach the thermostat as efficiently without the fan.

Mander on the toasty fireplace

The worst thing about our house in a power outage: our well needs power to run the pump, so we lose our water.  This is a relatively minor inconvenience when we have water on hand, but we don't yet have any ready to go.  Once we get some water on standby, we'll have a different 'worst thing': if it's well below freezing, we are in danger of frozen pipes both under the house and in the well-house.  I haven't yet thought up a way to prevent this, so we'll have to do some research (as this is a common problem on most rural northern properties, it's likely that someone has an preventive idea, I just have to find it!).

The most amusing thing about this morning: I got up earlier than usual to deal with the outage, so I had about 20 minutes to spare before I had to leave the house.  So I pulled up a chair in front of the fireplace and crocheted by headlamp :)  May as well make the best of an odd situation!!