Lights Out!
At my house, we were just settling in to watch a movie. (Guardians of the Galaxy, to be exact. Some were viewing it for the 1st time, some were seeing it for the 2nd or 3rd time, and one grumpy person said it was overrated and wanted to watch something else, but was outvoted. Christ Pratt is popular around here.)
The power didn't go out and stay out; it flickered and teased and came on and went off and came on again long enough for us to watch the DVD's previews, then quit for good just as the main menu appeared.
What to do? After a 1/2 hour or so of waiting and wondering, we checked the social networks and saw that Tideland EMC was reporting that there were poles down on Ocracoke north of the Pony Pens. Road trip!
The Current isn't always a week behind in the news. Sometimes we're hot off the presses! We were off to get the scoop!
Seven of us piled in the car and headed north. The sky was amazing – a hot pink sunset behind us, ominous dark clouds and streaks of lightning ahead of us.
We found Bobby O'Neal, the head lineman of Ocracoke's Tideland crew, waiting with his truck for more crew members to arrive. He told us that there were two poles down and one broken, and two more leaning a bit. He was waiting for his colleagues to arrive with new poles that they would install ASAP. "I'm saying four hours," he said about the work ahead of them. This was at 8:30-ish, as it was getting dark.
Bobby thinks that a waterspout did the damage; there was flooding on the road nearby that would indicate lots of water being dumped. What else could take out 3 poles that fast?
He said they wouldn't be cutting on the generator for the island; they would work instead on getting power restored as quickly as possible.
We drove the rest of the way to the last beach parking lot to turn around, and as we came back past we saw that the second Tideland truck had arrived, and another was on its way. Those guys will be out there as late as it takes, being hoisted up in their bucket in the dark, making sure we can sleep in air conditioned comfort tonight. Yay, Tideland!
Meanwhile, the candlelight is nice and the storm cooled off the air enough that it's not sweltering. And thanks to my Verizon hotspot, I can still keep the Current current! It's electric!
Which reminds me... when Jenny and I first started the Current, we came up with the tagline "We post with such frequency, it hertz!" but nobody in our limited sample got it. Oh well. It turned out not to be true anyway, but when we're on, we're on.
Update: Power was restored at about 4:15am, a couple of hours later than predicted. Tideland posted on their Facebook page that the trucks kept getting stuck in the sand, so they needed more time than they'd thought. (Interesting factoid: Tideland's press release stated that 1301 homes and businesses on Ocracoke were without power. Who knew there were that many?) I'm not even going to complain about the heat and my fitful sleep (first world problems!), because think how much worse it was for the Tideland guys working for eight hours in the dark, in the heat, with no sleep. I hope they get some much-deserved rest today. Oh, that a/c feels good. Thanks, Tideland!
