Subject: Aftermath...
Date: Mon, 25 Jan 93 12:05:21 -0800
From: li@inigo.Data-IO.COM


Friday night a friend of ours who had a well that was pumped with an
electric pump, so, not only did they not have any power, but they didn't
have any water as well.  So John offered part of his mom and dad's house
for them to stay in.  We got ourselves together after work, went home, fed
Fezzik and brought him along to his parents' house.  Once there, the
friend called us and told us that when he'd gone home, there had been a
power truck just down the road from his house, fixing their lines.  The
power guys weren't *done*, yet, but he hoped that they'd have power.  So
he told us to go ahead and eat, and he'd call if the power guy fixed
things or gave up.  After dinner, he called and told us that they had
power.  Cool.

That night, reading the paper, I found out that about 200 of the 300
substations that Puget Power ran had been knocked out of commission.  That
they'd replaced more than 500 powerpoles, compared to the previous 'worse'
power outage that had only 53 power poles that needed replacing.  Also
found out that they'd imported power crews from Oregon, California, and
British Columbia to help make all the repairs needed.  Talking with the
crews, the reporter had found out that *all* of them were working around
the clock, catching catnaps in the trucks while they moved from area to
area or when they had to wait for another crew to finish with something
before they had to get on it.  The crews had been working in that mode
since Wednesday morning...

Yow.

They do get paid double for 'storm-time' but one guy said he'd rather be
home with the wife than racking up the bonuses.  An interview with the
imported California crews was singularly unsurprising when the reporter
asked them what was the most different up here.  "Is it colder?"  "Yup,
it's colder, all right, real cold up here.  We're not used to that."
Laughter!!  Bet the B.C. guys were surprised at how warm it was down
here.

Actually, the Californians really had something worth complaining about
because on Friday night it got below freezing; and the families that were
without heat and without any alternative way to heat their homes were
*really* hurting.  Also turns out that even with all the extra crews,
temporary fixes continue into this week; but long-lasting *real* fixes
would take about a month to finish.

Saturday morning we got up a little late, and then went to our house to
clean up.  The whole morning was spent sweeping, picking up, putting
things in the ravines around the house, and putting things back in place.
We also lit a fire in the woodstove because the innards of the house was
at about 42 degrees, and we didn't want it to get cold enough to even
*think* of freezing anything.  So we cranked it.  Turned out that two firs
had come down during the storm, on our property, along with an alder up on
the dirt road leading to the house.  So we're getting a chainsaw from
David Rostykus and cutting everything up for firewood, eventually.  The
biggest things was just clearing all the branches from the road so that
the CRX could drive over the road without puncturing it's underside. We
also pulled all the *huge* branches from Fezzik's run, some of 'em were
well over 6 feet long.

Once all that was done, John found his camera, Fezzik and he and I piled
into the van and we drove as far down Thompson road as we could get,
parked the van and then walked down.  First, there were two big firs on
the power lines, we skirted as much of them and the lines they were on to
keep going and look further down.  About that time a little, white Puget
Power compact drove up from further down and a guy got out to take a look
at the first of the big firs.  John yelled, "How's it look?" and the guy
just laughed and waved us off.

We went down the road a couple blocks to where the trees had gang tackled
the one pole.  I was wrong.  There were half a dozen trees all stacked on
this one pole; *and* the pole was unbroken.  It was the next pole down,
though, that has paid the price by having the whole top half of it
completely snapped off.  A block further down was the tree that I'd first
seen on the way up, a fir that leaned across the whole street, draped with
wires.  As we were looking at 'em a guy came out of his house and we
commiserated about how it was to be without power.  His family had moved
out to her parents' house and they were completely without heat.  Their
house had gone all the way down to the 30's during the freeze on Friday
night.  The guy was bundled up and still looked cold and a little pinched
with the long stay.  He said it was just impossible to stay any longer.

It was amazing seeing just how much damage there was and just how many
trees there were on the lines.  This was day four and no one had even
*started* clearing the trees or the lines.  We took pictures of
everything, and started our slow way out when a truck with a cherry
picker, a regular power trunk, and another of those little white compacts
pulled up.  We waved and cheered and the crews got out, looking *really*
beat and grinned at us.  The plates on the trucks were from British
Columbia.

We went back to several other more spectacular falls, took pictures and
then went back to the house.  One of them that I'll never forget is a pile
of 17 trees that were all felled along one of the little roads at the top
of the plateau.  They all pretty much fell on top of one another, and the
cut ends of 'em was almost like a wall...

John noted that it felt like we were in something of a war zone.  All the
hazards, the destruction, and just waiting for it to get fixed or get
worse.  It was weird and a little nerve wracking.  It had definitely
changed how we listen to a wind storm.  There was high wind last night, as
well, and it made it that much eaiser to really *hear* the moan of the
wind through branches and rattling the house.

At home, I pretty much just sat and spun with the little battery powered
radio for accompanyment.  There are distinct advantages to having a
low-tech hobby, John couldn't do a thing to his Rover without light and
some heat, whereas, as I was spinning more sweater yarn, the light from
outside was just fine even on a cloudy day.  John and Fezzik went back to
the fall along Thompson and the Australians live right next to the worst
of it.  All the neighbors were out and watching the crews work.  The
Australians recognized Fezzik and *then* John.  Grin.  John said that they
had a lot of fun watching the crews work and just talking with folks; and
when he'd left, a lot of the clearing had been done, and the crew was
waiting for a new power pole.  It started raining around 3, just the light
drizzle-mist that is common to this area.

A friend in Bothell had gotten her power back the previous afternoon, and
we'd planned a dinner at her place Saturday evening.  So we went there
around 5:00 (when my sunlight was *utterly* dead) and it started *snowing*
on our way there.  Lots of the stuff, but it didn't stick.  The evening
was lots and lots of fun, with Rachel, their little daughter, providing
most of the early evening entertainment.  Dinner of phad tai, chicken
satay, steamed spinich, and a can of lychee nuts (yum!!  Haven't had those
in a while, since Mom and Dad got us fresh Dragon's Eyes the summer before
from Vancouver); and then we watched Deep Space 9 and My Neighbor Totoro.
That was fun, and it was about midnight when we went home to pick up
Fezzik and, perhaps, bring him to John's parents' house.

It was raining the whole way home.  We stopped at a Dunkin Donuts to get
breakfast and some coffee to keep us awake and warm on the way home.  It
was cold out, but no longer snowing.  The streets were wet, but not icy.
We drove up Thompson, hoping that it would be open; but there was a stop
sign and a white Puget Power car.  We stopped and a man came out of the
car to talk to us.  Turned out they were presently putting in the pole,
this is at midnight.  After we went around the long way home (about an
extra 4 miles to go a half mile in distance), we found six power trucks
parked near the entrance of the development near out place, with their
parking lights on.

When we got home, the house was fairly warm from the woodstove and the
upstairs was far warmer than the downstairs.  Fezzik was soaked, so we
didn't really want him to go to John's parents' house.  So we decided to
just stay at home.  Fezzik went into the laundry room with a biscuit
instead of his usual bone (as they were all in the Rostyki's freezer) and
we went upstairs to find it surprisingly warm.

Sleep was easy that late, and I realized, about then, that I really hadn't
slept well at John's parents' house.  There had been too many noises, too
much traffic, and the sounds of the people that surrounded them.  I had
*really* missed the silence, the wind through the trees, and the ability
to only listen to the soft fall of the rain.

When we woke up in the morning, John asked, "Do you hear the heater?"  I
listened real hard, he said, "It *should* be really quiet, no?"  And, sure
enough, the register was *blowing* air.

YEEHAH!!!

I burrowed more deeply into the warm bed while John got up and started
making more noise than I thought possible by a single man.  He had help.
He started the dish washer, turned on the TV, snapped back on all the
breakers (we'd turned them off in case the power came back while we were
away, as we'd left teh fridge and freezer open so that they wouldn't grow
nasty things while they were off), turned on all the coolers, and let
Fezzik in.  Impossible to sleep again, so I got up and got dressed in the
relative warmth of the bedroom.  And, indeed, all the power was back.

Breakfast was the donuts from the night before and a stop at the local
Starbuck's for mochas.  I still don't like Starbuck's mochas nearly as
much as the ones at Cornerstone, probably because Cornerstone uses
Hershey's syrup instead of Smith's Chocolate Milk and both John and I
noted that Starbuck's doesn't make 'em hot enough.  Grin... the niceities
of mochas in the NorthWet.  :)

We went to John's parents' house and cleaned up after ourselves, watered
the plants one more time, and then packed all the fridge and freezer stuff
for quick transport back home.  Their freezer had done the job really well
and everything was brick solid.  When we got back home, everything was
cold again, and we dumped things back into place.  Nice.  Very nice to
have things pretty much back to normal.  I was amazed at *just* how
wonderful a hot shower in our shower felt.  There seem to be few things
that feel better than dumping a lot of hot water on ones head.

So, yeah.  We got out power back, four entire days after we lost it.
There are still come areas that don't have power, yet; but steadily fewer,
I think.  We have more firewood.  It didn't snow *too* badly.  But, today,
as it rained on our way to work, temperatures rose to the mid-50's which
means that the snowpacks that had grown the last couple of months are now
melting, quickly.  So there are flood warnings all over Western
Washington.

Chuckle...

And this isn't even *mentioning* the fact that on the way to the soccer
game last night, we ran out of gas in the Vanagon, and John and I had to
*push* it into the gas station across four lanes of traffic and (luckily)
down a huge hill.  Surprised me, a little, how relatively easy it was to
move.  Then the silly thing's fuel injectors decided to be finicky about
their mix and *NOT* start the engine until after an hour's worth of
cranking the thing (and Fezzik and I standing out in the rain and wind to
stay out of the way of the jumper cables when the Vanagon's electric juice
ran out).  Luckily, the game was cancelled and the field was dark when we
got there, so we didn't disappoint our teammates.  They probably had
called to tell of the cancellation while we didn't have the power to
*have* an answering machine.

Did someone wish me an 'interesting' New Year and forget to tell me??

-----
Phyllis Rostykus     | "... and how you feel can make it real
aka Liralen Li       |      Real as anything you've seen... " 
li@inigo.Data-IO.com | Peter Gabriel _US_