Hello world

[lovingboth]

The power went off just after nine this morning. A big plume of smoke could be seen towards Crystal Palace and we had a call from someone coming over that the trains weren't going along one of the two lines near us.

A call from someone closer revealed that it was an electricity sub-station going bang, and could he come over to do some washing because it looked like taking four or five hours before the fire was extinguished and - apparently - might be days before power would be restored.

Gosh that was frightening... Never mind having to do all clothes and dish washing by hand, with cold water (gas heating/hot water, but electric pumps), never mind quite probably no school for JA next week, never mind losing a recently refilled freezer's worth of food... no internet!

Fortunately, it came back a few minutes ago, so the power cut was about three hours long.

How long is civilization meant to be away from breaking down? As someone who grew up quite happily with power cuts in the early 70s (miners strikes leading to coal shortages at power stations) it feels like it got shorter.

Comments

[ludy]

i was born in the 70s and just about remember the power cuts. I think people coped with them better because they knew they were going to be hapening. Inthe ummer of 1995 there was a seris of power cuts in the area of Bradford where i lived (we always suspected it was due to Yorkshire Cable bumping into power lines but they denyed it). The firest one was cary nd brought everyoneone out onto the street but after that we got quite blase about them and jut made sure we had some non-perisable food an could make coffee with gas. Though if it covereda big enough are to take traffic lights out that stayed rather worrying!
Though saying that - i got very freaked out by having no landline for half a day trhe week before last!

[lovingboth]

This looks to have taken out a whole sector of SE London, from zone two (Brockley) to at least zone five (Bromley).

I know at least one person lost their landline, but that was because they now know their portable handsets have rubbish battery life.