Power failure fail

The power went off at about 6:30 this morning. t! let me know before he left for work, so I put on an extra layer of warm clothes when I got dressed, and then fetched the wind-up radio from the “emergency stuff” shelf in the basement. Cranked up the radio, found the CBC, and listened to the 8:30 news – there’s nothing about the power failure, so it’s probably a small, local one.

All the while I was very conscious of the fact that I failed to re-fill the 10 gallon water container that we’re supposed to keep full for this sort of thing. We have a well, with an electric well-pump, so when the power is out we are limited to the amount of water in the pressure tank – which is enough to flush the toilet a couple of times and make a pot of tea, at least. Beyond that, I’ll need to head out to the pond with a bucket, and dig the water purification tablets out of the first aid kit.

It’s 5°C outside and 14°C in the house.

Took the dog out to do his thing, fed him breakfast, and got him settled on the dog bed in the living room where he is still convalescing from his twice-broken leg.

Then I got the campstove & pot from the crate of camping equipment in the basement, and the campstove fuel and a board to sit the stove on (so as not to damage the kitchen counter) from the garage. Both of these required the big Mag-lite flashlight, due to a lack of natural light in the garage and basement on an overcast day. Make a mental note to fill the kerosene lanterns well before nightfall.

Boiled water on the campstove. Made a large pot of tea and a bowl of instant oatmeal. Remembered that our one currently functioning carbon monoxide detector is plugged into the mains, so opened a kitchen window a crack while I was running the campstove. Fortified with breakfast and tea, I called the Ontario Hydro emergency number to find out if they had an ETA for the power coming back on. The recording told me that 4800 customers in my area were affected by the outage, and that power was expected to be restored at 10:30am (about an hour from when I made the call).

Fetched one of the emergency propane catalytic heaters from the basement, and am just about to read the instructions for lighting it (the last time I used it was a single test, 5 years ago when I bought it for emergency heat in my apartment) when I hear the fridge, furnace, and water pump roar to life.

According to the radio, there’s a high-tension power line down on a fence about 10km north of us, and 10,000 customers are affected by the outage. I expect this means there’s every chance of us going out again while they’re fixing it. Going to fill the water container now.

Lessons learned:

Keep the water container full!

The campstove should probably live on the ’emergency stuff’ shelf with the wind-up radio & kerosene lanterns, rather than in the big box of camping equipment.

I need to tidy the garage.