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Saturday, August 16, 2003 Le Black-out I've been living in the middle of the biggest story on CNN, Le Monde, the BBC, and the other news sites for the last two days. Ann Arbor (where I live), Livonia (where I work), and Redford (where my parents live) were all affected by the collapse of the Niagara power grid that affected 50 million Americans and Canadians beginning on Thursday after 4pm; it's the largest blackout in history. Our total dependence on electricity is funny in a slightly fatalistic sort of way. I was at work when the power went out. At first we figured that one of the offices connected to ours must have had the air conditioner running too high and had blown the fuse; after a half hour we found out that the power outage had affected everything from Detroit to the East Coast and that flights in Detroit were grounded because there was no power to run the security screeners. With no working computers, lights, phones (yes, I know, most people had working phones but for some reason our land lines were dead), we ended the day at 5pm and I battled long lines of cars on the freeway to get home. It took me 45 min. instead of the usual half hour, and I was lucky--had I been going in the other direction, it would have possibly taken an hour since the cars were barely moving. When I got into Ann Arbor all of the lights on Main St. were black, save one--which seemed random--though drivers were being particularly courteous and the police were directing traffic on certain streets. I managed to get ice cream at the Washentaw Dairy, which was packed, soon after, unsure when the next cold anything would be available. At my house, my roommate Elise and I realized that we could hear news from someone's car radio parked in the driveway a few houses down. Callers included: 1. an irate woman from Wyandotte who complained that her power shouldn't be out since they had a plant and weren't connected to anyone else for electricity, right? (too bad all power plants are connected to the grid by law) and 2. another woman from somewhere in the Metro Detroit area who couldn't believe we supply power to Canada and them to us, because it's obviously stupid. Good grief. If they actually thought about it, they'd realize that a grid helps more than it hurts. A few of my friends and I decided to BBQ since opening the fridge wasn't an option, so we headed to Busch's... and promptly left the parking lot as soon as we saw it (too crowded). Meijer looked normal until we got inside--they had generators so the half of the lights and--get this--music were on, but they'd cleared out the entire meat/seafood section and covered it in plastic wrap. Likewise, the deli and frozen sections were in what were probably hundreds of square feet of thick plastic wrap, as was half of the produce. One worker told us, "You can't buy anything here." Needless to say, we left and headed back to Busch's, which turned out to have fewer people than we'd originally thought and was functioning normally. That night, the Detroit Free Press worked by candlelight and managed to get out a newspaper this morning. The city of Ann Arbor was in darkness, with the exception of a few select buildings, including a couple of parking lots. What amazed me was the university: the University of Michigan was functioning. Although all of the buildings were closed, apparently we have some well-thought out contingency plans because most of the streetlamps on campus were working and lights were on in most of the buildings that would normally have them, such as the art museum, parking garages, offices, libraries, and labs. Frazzled students filled the Diag, the center of campus, and sat on the steps of the Grad Library, studying for finals (summer classes) in the light. Seeing campus in such a normal state was almost disconcerting coming from the black void of the city and nearby Saline, where we'd eaten dinner and stargazed without the glow of city lights on the horizon. However, everything on campus was closed--all finals were also canceled for the day, which means that students in those classes will have no idea if and when a rescheduling will occur until Monday, and many were planning to leave town this weekend since it was supposed to be the end of finals. At that point, word from DTE Energy was that power would be restored in two days. This morning, work was canceled and I got to sleep in, although at 9:30am my neighbors, who apparently had just acquired a power generator, started their machine as I tried to continue sleeping. Think: jackhammer. Admittedly I felt some triumph when power returned at 11:15am (heh, less than two hours after they'd gotten the noisemaker); coincidentally or not, I'd prayed last night that power would come back around 10 or 11:00am today. Literal thanks there to God. Most of the Detroit area now has power, although the system won't be fully functional until Sunday. (Though I find it amusing that some parts of the country--and the Metro area--had managed to restore power only to have another blackout when people immediately went crazy with air conditioners and other electronics.) The US (more specifically, the mayor of New York) is currently blaming Canada for the outage; Canada is blaming the US (more specifically, Cleveland). Who needs terrorists? We're perfectly capable of screwing things up on our own. ^ Top | 1:21 AM | | | 
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