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

[lovingboth]

Oh, losing analogue radio will be another step: the range of transmissions is shorter, there are lot fewer battery powered digital radios out there, and they seem to eat batteries at a much higher rate.

It also brought home how many things need regular recharging...

[valkyriekaren.livejournal.com]

Yes, my phone running out of charge mid-afternoon was quite annoying, especially since our landline phones have electric base units as well so they'd all died. Fortunately I was able to borrow lolliepopp's phone when I needed to!