Some days ago now, we had another experience of a person in a cherry picker reaching out with a very long stick!. This had a lot more personal consequences, than the man painting the silo with a long stick, in a previous post. We were expecting 16 people for dinner, followed by a presentation from a young friend who has just spent two weeks in Afganistan with the organization Mountain2Mountain.
The weather around here had been very wintry with torrential rains and wind roaring through the area. Several quite serious effects ... sliding houses, mud slides closing train lines, local flooding etc had occurred.
Just after 2pm, on that day, a violent wind storm with pounding, torrential rain blew through: it last maybe 4 minutes. In the midst of this blast there was a moderate "boom", coming from the power pole across the street from our home, and our lights went out. A call to Tacoma Power ascertained that no one else on the street had called, but they would have someone out here as soon as possible.
We lit every candle we could find in our pantry, which created a lovely warm glow in our living room. Dinner was stove top cooked on our gas stove and our gas fireplace warmed the living room at least.
Without detailing all the steps to re-establish power it was more than five hours before our power was reconnected ... following some major work on the pole outside our home ... in torrential rain and wind off an on. The workers who came to fix the problem couldn't have been more helpful. I always feel for the people who are responsible for getting power up and on again following power outages and I know from a friend (whose husband works for a NW power company) about how badly harassed power companies often are, following power outages, by people frustrated by living without power.
We simply want to say Kudos to Tacoma Power for their professionalism and hard work on our behalf. At the moment our guest was about to give up on the idea of showing her pictures of her time in Afganistan ... the lights came on. Anna's stories were so interesting and images fascinating!
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| Tacoma Power crew arrives to diagnose the problem |
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| The technician reaches with a long stick ... followed by another boom! |
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| Removing all the "bad" non functioning equipment in the rain and wind. |
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| Anna, by candle light, arranging the Afgani dinner before speaking about her experiences |
Check out www.mountain2mountain.org for images of our friend's time in Afganistan.
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