Making It Up As I Go Along #319

MONDAY...
— No sleep... 3.5 hours only tonight.
— ADT silliness is part of the problem. The alarm wakes me early in the morning.
— I plod through work... it’s tough but I make it.
— Vitamins are to be the answer. I’ve been fighting with my immune system enough that it’s time to do the multi vitamins.

TUESDAY...
— Still ADT issues. I need to get a new battery. Bah.
— Work is fine today, I slept better last night.
— Fire! Well something anyway. I’m watching some TV just after midnight and the electrical box outside my building is buzzing and flicking the lights... then they go out and smoke is coming up out of it. I call 911 and wait outside with the fire department for an hour. Finally I ask to go back in while they wait for Hydro to come deal with it. It looks like the fire is out by this time but I’m in the dark.

WEDNESDAY...
— Not so eventful a day. I’m up early... power is back at 8:00 and I’m up with the electricity. Get back to bed for an hour to top of the rest. Still not enough but it helps.
— Work is fairly quiet and easy going. Greek food with Melissa for supper.

THURSDAY...
— Fairly ordinary day for me. Hang at the house in the morning... had a nap before work... work is kind of slow but Claudio is there too so it’s not lonely... groceries on the way home.

FRIDAY...
— Still improving with the stamina and energy. I work alone tonight and it’s pretty nice... quiet and relaxing. A bit of a loser working alone on a Friday... but that’s how it is.

SATURDAY...
— Was going to do a walk today but started losing energy as the night went on, so I decided to take it safe and stay in to write instead.
— Other than that... some TV... some stuff on the computer... a nap round out the day. I watch the I Am Legend alternate ending DVD today. It’s a fairly good ending... although for realism, I think they did better going with the theater release.

The longest story in quite a while. Prepare for a bit of a read....

The Real Heros

So, home from work and plans for some down time watching the Daily Show before a reasonably early night to bed. Now this is all relative when I say early night. If I’m home from work around 11:00, that means 12:30 or 1:00 is fairly early. 2:30 or 3:30 is more the norm.

So Daily Show is coming on and I go to clue up at the laptop. The light next to me flickers a few times. It’s a big white mineral lamp. Ruby and Lee brought it from Mexico and, as you’d expect as a gift from Mexico, the white mineral is carved to look like a block of ice with polar bears on and around it.

So I sit there wondering what kind of bulb does the Mexican Polar Bear lamp take and decide I’ll turn it off and try to save it.

It’s at this time that I notice the flickering isn’t the Polar Bears... it’s the house. The light in the corner of the living room is now also flickering.

I sit and begin watching Daily Show, hoping it’ll last without a power failure.

Within five minutes, the power dimming increases in regularity. And now I can hear it accompanied by an electrical hum. I’ve heard the hum before. Last year I remember hearing it for a few flickers of my electricity. At the time I had thought that my neighbour who lives below me was doing something weird in her kitchen. I again think that... and, as before, I await the scream that would proclaim, in no uncertain terms, that I’m about to have a new neighbour living downstairs... and a possible ghost in the building.

Still, the flickerings are now becoming heavy surges... with a big hum accompanying second long dampenings of power. Even the TV itself is now dimming.

I go up to the front bedroom and look out the window, wondering if this is a neighbourhood issue. I check to see if lights in the surrounding buildings are also having troubles. Up here, I notice that the source of the problem is indeed outside. The hum can be heard coming from the hydro electrical box out on the front lawn.

I decide to go out and examine the situation more closely.

From the lawn, I notice that the surges are affecting my entire building. Even the outdoor lights for the alcove are dimming with each hum. And from here I notice that I can feel the humming... the vibration of it... right up through my shoes.

I check the hydro box, without touching it, to see if there’s a number to call posted on it. With nothing, I return to the house and pull out the phone book wondering if there’s a listed number... some 24 hour number... that will put me in touch with someone working the grid.

I picture the power situation, in big cities, like some sort of futuristic control room where analysts immediately become alerted to any anomalies in the grid. Surely, a truck would be dispatched to flick a few switches before I can even find the 24 hour number I’m sure must be there.

In reality, it’s probably a room the size of my living room with some night watchman eating a tuna fish sandwich as he watches Ultimate Fighter on Spike TV.

As I look for the number, the power gives up. Although it’s final seconds is an interesting time. My sensor light in my bedroom is flickering like mad... switching from off, to dim, to moderate, to high illumination... and back to off again. The night lights around the house are jumping from on to off in the blink of an eye... the one in the kitchen, as well as the one by the front stairs, flicking from colour to colour with each on and off... red, blue, green, yellow, purple... it’s all happening so quickly that it feels as though an alien craft is about to land on my deck. Within a minute, it’s all blackness.

I return to the outdoors to see what’s happening. I now see smoke wafting up from the box and, with that, I decide the 24 hour number to call is now an easy one to know... I hit 911.

It’s not like on TV. On TV they seem to always tell the caller to stay on the phone. You could be on the verge of being run through by a charging bull, with your only hope for survival being you hanging up that phone and diving out of the way... and the 911 operator somehow convinces you to not do it! Don’t hang up the phone! Stay on the line sir!

So you’d understand my surprise when, after the operator puts me through to the fire department, she thanks me and says goodbye. I stammer a quick “uh, okay... thanks.” and hang up.

There’s a fire station in less than a mile from my place. I figure the trucks will be arriving in about 35 seconds. I go outside (can’t see anything in there anyway) and decide to wait to guide the trucks in when they arrive.

A few minutes, and still nothing but me and the smoking hydro box. It’s now smoking quite heavily and, while I was in on the phone to 911, the internal pressure caused a great popping sound as the lid of the box was lifted off it’s hinges. So I’m keeping my distance. Staying a good 30 feet away from the thing.

As I wait I notice other neighbours have been alerted to the activity. But most do nothing. It’s only my building that’s blacked out. I see the person who’s kitchen looks right out at the box. He’s in the next building and his kitchen window is open. He looks out at the smoke, proceeds to close his window, and then disappears.

Another person, who just came home, parks his car and looks at the smoke as he walks to his door, but then he just dodges in and is not seen again.

A stray dog would have a dozen people fawning all over it, bringing the thing water and looking for it’s owner. A neighbourhood fire brings a glance before ducking away indoors. People... crazy.

After about ten minutes, I finally hear the fire trucks. But it sounds like they’re coming from the wrong direction compared to where that fire station is. It takes another five minutes for me to see them off in the distance, on the road beyond the pond. Where they came from I don’t know. But they do arrive.

One fire fighter hops out and walks over to me. I tell him it started about a half hour ago and, before I can go into any further detail, he goes back to report to the rest of the boys in the truck. They ignore me from there.

Now it’s a waiting game. The firemen sit and watch, making sure the smoke doesn’t intensify or flames don’t pop out... but they aren’t touching the box until the hydro truck comes. Who knew... in case of fire, wait for the electric company! Although I suppose it is understandable. For all these guys know, an axe to the box could blow the place up. Maybe the hydro guys would just flick a switch when they get there and kill all the power.

So we wait... and wait some more. The cable guy shows up before the hydro people. So when I was thinking there was a well oiled machine back at the hydro headquarters, where analysts see a problem before anyone else even suspects it... with flashing lights on a great big display board, showing all the power stations all across this great city... well I was probably right in everything but the company. It’s not the hydro company that has such a futuristic setup... it’s the cable company. So all us civilians can at least try to watch some cable TV as we sit there in the dark... brilliant.

In the end, it takes about an extra hour for the hydro guys to arrive. So from the time I noticed my lights flickering to the time the truck arrived, ready to oversee the problem, almost two hours has gone by. The fire is out and the box is left just with a wisp of smoke, smelling of charred wires.

I finally ask the firemen if it’s okay for me to go back in the house. They say “sure, go ahead”. Since they had just been sitting around for the last half hour, sitting in their truck so not to get too cold, you’d think someone would have looked out the window and told me “you don’t need to stay out here sir!” I suppose I was expecting a fire chief in the form of David Caruso on CSI: Miami... there to question me. Perhaps in the simple telling of my story, he’d be able to pull off his sunglasses dramatically, and proclaim the case solved. My dreams were shattered by the group of firemen sitting in their truck, leaving me out in the cold.

From inside, I look down at the box and the hydro guys working on it. This is about an hour after I was allowed back in my house. It’s about 2:00 AM and the firemen have actually left now. I guess they figure the real heros have arrived to take over the scene. So the hydro workers and the cable guy remain on the site to save the day.

I remain nervous about the fire situation. The hydro workers dig a hole next to the box and, when they reach the level in the ground where the wiring goes into the house, smoke rises up from the dirt. The extend the hole closer to the house... and more smoke. This keeps going for several feet and a good half hour. Constantly the hole edges closer to my building... and constantly new smoke rises up out of the dirt.

Finally, by 3:00, the hole digging fails to bring smoke. I guess the fire is indeed out and the workers seem more at ease... as if they now know what their job will entail and it’s time to get to it. It warms the heart to see hydro workers and the cable guy working hand in hand. Flashlights being held by one, for the good of the other.

I decide that it’s now safe for bed, and I drift off into a deep sleep, dreaming about smoking ground and Horatio Cain firemen... they’re all David Caruso... all with sunglasses and overseeing the blaze.

At 8:00, I wake with a start. It’s one of those wakes like Christmas morning. You become conscious with eyes still closed... realizing that it’s Christmas day, you jump up wide eyed, ready for what the day will bring.

In my case, I do wake with eyes still closed. In my haze I think “I wonder is the power still out?” I open eyes and look towards my clock... it’s black... nothing.

I get up and walk to the front room to look down at the work. I wonder what I’ll find. If daylight hours will shed light on the horror. If there’ll be a giant hole the size of a buick. If the building across the street is no more.

What I see is the workers... those same two hydro workers and the cable guy. But now they have reinforcements. More hydro workers and a new truck. They seem to be putting the finishing touches on a new hydro box. Five minutes later, the power lurches back on.

And that’s how the cable and hydro workers have earned my respect. Even though it took almost two hours for them to get the ball rolling, they took a burnt out electrical box and brought back power within six hours.

And I survived the inferno of the hydro box. I endured the emergency situation without cracking under the pressure. I was able to speak in full sentences to a 911 operator who was more than happy to hang up the phone... and I gave my statement to a fireman who was only interested in the first ten words out of my mouth.

Years of CSI: Miami prepared me for the moment. David Caruso... he’s the real hero.