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The electric power throughout our entire town (county seat, population about 38,000) and a good deal of the surrounding county went out shortly after sunset, and stayed out for about 90 minutes.
I was at our church near the middle of town, participating in our weekly all-church Wednesday dinner, when the lights shot out. The church social hall where we were eating has battery-powered emergency lighting. It came on, and no one panicked. In fact, most people just continued eating and talking by the light of the emergency lights and a few cell phone lights. But at the time we assumed the power would be restored promptly. After about 20 minutes, we realized it might be a while. So, the rest of the evening's activities were cancelled. (Our choir director is not happy about losing a rehearsal, as we have a lot of music to prepare for Lent, Holy Week, and Easter.) But we still celebrated one of our members' 90th birthday.
Driving home in the dark, with none of the light that normally illuminates our street, was very bizarre. No business lights. No lit business signs. No street lights. No parking lot lights. No glow from business or house windows. No house porch lights. Moonlight was very dim.
A few traffic lights remained operational, but most did not. The greatest danger was that if you didn’t intuitively know where the intersections with traffic lights were, you wouldn’t know to treat the intersection as a four-way stop. Since none of the businesses around the intersection were lit, many of those intersections were so dark as to be essentially invisible. On my 3-mile drive home, I saw the consequences of two crashes at intersections at which the traffic lights had gone dark.
Although we rely on the headlights of our cars for driving at night, I was surprised to realize how much I apparently also rely on the ambient and reflected light from the businesses and houses lining the streets to help to illuminate the road. It appeared some other drivers were having trouble navigating the roads without the usual lighting from buildings and signs along the road, helping to illuminate the road and providing context for the road.
Some businesses apparently had battery backup or a generator for some lighting, but most of that was minimal. It was so very odd to see all the businesses along the commercial Main Street all dark, even darker than when I drive by them after closing late on Christmas Eve. Oddest was one of the very large gas station/convenience stores that sits on top of a hill, normally lit very brightly at night. But tonight, completely dark.
We get so used to having artificial light available that our world looks very odd to us when that artificial light is taken away.
In the modern United States, most electric power outages are rather brief (a few minutes) and local (a block or a few blocks). This one was quite widespread and went on for quite a while, making it very dramatic.
A modern American town without electricity is a very bizarre sight.
Discussion (10)
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Depends on where you live. Where I live out in the country in SW Michigan it is not so uncommon to have multi-day outages, but not for such a widespread area as you describe. We had a five-day outage at our house a few years ago. Last summer the power was out back home while I was on my way from Warsaw to western Ukraine. Our son who lives with us looked after the generator, which is not an automatic one connected to the house's main power distribution box. I think that one was two or three nights long. I saw some big generators parked outside buildings in Ukraine, but the power never went out once in over two weeks while I was there, despite my supposedly being somewhat prepared for outages.
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When I was stationed in Suffolk, England, there was a wide spread outage for 10 days following a big wind storm. It was interesting to say the least.
We were able to get hot meals at a restaurant that had gas stoves. There were no lights in the dining room but I set a Mini-Maglite on the table in candle mode.
The Burger King on base continued to function, and was extremely busy. Their US made equipment was 60 hertz, and didn't run correctly on 50 hertz electricity, which is the UK standard. So they actually had their own generators which ran all the time anyway.
I took showers in the base gym which only had emergency lights, but the water was hot.
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This reminds me of a book (which I admit I haven't actually read) I saw at the library few years ago that had one of the most evocative titles I've ever seen: A World Lit Only by Fire.
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The first thing to do when the power goes out at night is look at the sky. Dark surroundings make better star-gazing. When we were at Hillsdale, and staying in Coldwater, the stars were beautiful, even with the town lighting.
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Here in a small town in eastern Nebraska, we experienced a straight - line wind in August. Winds were measured at 90 MPH. Power was out for one day at our house, across the street a couple days longer. Hundreds of trees were blown down, and hundreds of power poles were also sheared.
The power company put high priority on storing service to a part of the downtown area with a couple restaurants, so hot food was available within a couple days. Hundreds of power company trucks converged here, including I don't know how many trucks loaded with poles, and others with big augers.
We have a generator. Without it, we would have lost all the food in our refrigerator & freezer. In retrospect, that generator saved us more than it cost. In the "old days," refrigerators and freezers would stay cold enough for two or three days if you kept them closed. No more. Modern refrigerators and freezers are not as well insulated, and warm up remarkably fast.
Being August, keeping warm was hardly an issue. Instead we found some little battery - operated fans in a hardware store that kept operating. That was something.
We did fine. Living in tornado territory, we have a good supply of emergency lights. We also have a decent supply of emergency and backup foods in our basement. We used our barbecue occasionally. And I always find a way to make coffee.
I wrote more extensively about our first - hand experience in the Prepping For Reasonable People group.
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