Branches and Blackouts

On Wednesday, July 19th, our area was in the middle of a near 3 digit heat wave when we were hit with a surprise of a storm with massive winds tearing though our communities. In some places these wind gusts exceeded 90 MPH.

Falling trees took down power lines, falling power poles did so as well. Damage to the power grid was massive resulting in over 500,000 AmerenUE customers without power Wednesday evening. Like many of you, I was one of those citizens in the dark and watching the heat in my home climb uncontrollably. Once the storm passed my family and I exited the basement and waited for the power to return. Until now we had never seen an outage at our home that lasted longer then 20 minutes or so. When the power did not return we began to discuss options and started gathering the supplies we might need. When we heard on the radio that the power could be out for sometime, we went into full "emergency mode".

Wednesday evening was manageable for my family and I. However, Thursday was rough, I can't tell you what the temperature was during the day because I personally did not want to know the actual number (a mental game left over from my time in the Desert with the US Navy). However, the evening was unbearable. I moved my family down to our unfinished basement at around 2AM when the temperature in the house was still in the 90s.

To their credit, AmerenUE managed to get alot of people back online. The number went down to about 350,000 customers in the dark by early Friday afternoon. I saw the block next time me get their power back Thursday night, jst before dark. However, nature was not done with us. Another powerful storm blew through the area (this time with alot of ran), winds once again smashed though our neighborhoods. Down went the power gains and more. The result was 575,000 or so AmerenUE customers without power. One good thing came of it though, the storm smashed the heat wave thankfully. That evening the low was in the mid-high 60s.

Through all of this my neighbors came together. Some neighbors who are musicians tried to lighten the mood with a impromptu concert at one point. Others checked on various elderly neighbors and the like. The family with the youngest children managed to find a hotel room Wednesday evening (thankfully), and the two older residents that I was most concerned about (including one who needed an oxygen machine) we able to stay with family after the first evening. Having both a cheap inverter for my personal van and a 12 volt coffee pot I did what I could by keeping coffee available in the morning (I was soon joined by neighbors with various "antique" percolators, dripolators and the like). I was also able to rig up a small TV to the inverter and the house antenna so we all had access to the news. We all worked on keeping the ice, drinks and non-perishable food coming and in the end, we all faired pretty well.

Thankfully, though some of us had small and large tree limbs down, none of us on the block experienced major home damage or injury.

Then, to our surprise and joy the electric came back on at around 11:00 AM Saturday morning. I had been down visiting with the folks at Overland Hardware at the time. I heard the big "bang" inside the substation next door as they closed the circuit, which was quickly followed by a series of cheers from within the newly re-lighted Overland Hardware. I rushed home to see if we had power as well (forgetting to pick up the hose nozzle I went there for in the first place) and was greatly relieved to see that my block once again had power.

So it seems Overland Hardware and I are on the same circuit. So OH guys, take it easy and don't plug everything in at once Ok? LOL

Saturday was a clean up effort for my family and neighbors and now that we are all close to back to normal (or as normal as the odd balls around here get ), I was able to start gathering some information to post at Overland Speaks Out! for residents who have access to the Internet (one way or another).

I am hoping all in Overland (and elsewhere) are doing well and that no one is injured. I would ask that anyone who might need some assistance and can see this posting, or anyone who knows of others in need, please reply to this topic, or post about it on Overland Speaks Out! and let's see if we can't work together to get everyone though this.