Power

I don't live anywhere near the zone - or hemisphere - of last week's great power outage. But reading the various accounts of it has reminded me of a couple of things. One, our "there for the grace of the air-con God go we" power threat a couple of summers ago. And the other the best black-out experience I can remember.

It was several - ok, many - years ago in LA. It was January and had been raining for about two weeks straight which of course gave the whole place a tinge of the apocalyptic to begin with. The gutters were mini-rivers leaving about two feet of space as the actual road, and in the Palisades houses were sliding off the side of hills. At some point around this time the courtyard of our apartment building flooded and the pool was filled with dirt escaping from behind a substantial retaining wall we weren't all that convinced would hold.

I had some relatives come to visit. They weren't staying with me because there just wasn't room, but we had spent the day at Universal Studios. A day at Universal Studios in the pouring rain is actually pretty good because there are no lines whatsoever. And aside from my cousin dropping the extra battery from his video camera into the Backdraft exhibit/extravaganza/thingy, it was a pretty good day all around.

On the way home we got about two blocks from my building when everything became dark. It was already dark outside, and now clearly we had passed into the blackout zone. No street or building lights. And of course it was still raining.

The family dropped me off and I climbed up to our fourth floor apartment to find candle-light glowing prettily in the fogged up kitchen window. My roommates, Greer and Dada were home, together with Greer's boyfriend Ben. We had a gas stove so Greer and Ben were cooking Swedish meatballs by candle-light and had fogged up all the windows.

We were on the top floor so could hear the rain on the roof and after scoffing the meatballs and with no sign of a return of the power which had already been out for an hour when I got home, the four of us sat around in the living room communally doing the LA Times Magazine crossword by candlelight. It was one of those perfectly relaxed evenings that you don't want to end. We were even disappointed when we finished the crossword because it seemed like we could happily keep going at it forever.

The lying around with no lights and no TV did make us all more sleepy than usual and we went to bed early. The power came back on some time during the night, but really it was something of a disappointment. I haven't seen Greer or Ben in years, but when I'm in LA Dada and I still reminisce about that night (and many others) when we drive past the old building (which remarkably is still standing and still painted the same odd chocolate brown and royal blue combination it was when we lived there).

On the other hand I can relate to some of the greater difficulties of having no power during the summer that those in the northwest US and Canada were experiencing last week. Three summers ago the power grid in this city, State and surrounding States threatened to give out during a hot stretch to the point where the government actually had to ration power.

The grand plan was that for several weekday afternoons when the weather was at its hottest and the power supply under the most strain, non-essential appliances had to be turned off between 1pm and 6pm. At work this meant most of the lights and the air-con. Essentially we got to keep the computers and the lifts running, but there was no air circulating in the building whatsoever. In the afternoon. At the hottest time of the day in the hottest time of the year. It was extremely unpleasant very quickly.

Most of us went home by 4pm. Some companies set up wading pools or organised water gun fights in the park to give their employees a break before sending them back to work.

But the power didn't go down. And they beefed up the grid a bit over the winter. And then the following summer failed to deliver any hot weather at all. And this summer was fine, but after what happened last week I can just see the warnings that are going to be issued this coming summer. I imagine there will be plenty of recycling of those images of people streaming out of the Port Authority and dire predictions of it happening here.

Ah well, I only work on the 10th floor, so its not that big a haul to get out of the building. And I live walking distance from home. Which still has a gas stove and no air-con anyway. And this is the city that no so long ago complained its way through no gas supply for more than two weeks, so I'm sure we'll cope as well if not better than our friends in the States and Canada, and like them take the opportunity to appreciate the things we usually take for granted that so many others in the world don't have.

Oh, and I'd just like to add that while I'm writing this our power isn't out, but the air-con system is. I can hear them banging away on it on the roof. Which doesn't help us at all because it means there is no heat in the building. And all the residual heat seems to have leeched away in the last hour or so. Current temperature outside: a chilly 5 degrees. Current temperature inside: rapidly approaching the one outside, and if this building is anything like my house it will rapidly get colder in here than it is out there.