It's Electric Part II

By now you may have heard that the "midwest" was hit hard by an ice storm last Thursday causing approximately half a million people in St. Louis to lose their power. I am one of those people. It sucks...Bad. Now we lost power in July due to a freak thunderstorm and it was not good but overall it could have been worse - it could have been like last night. Last night was one of the worst nights of my life.

We are now on day 4 of no power and our house was 42 degrees when I left this morning. At 3:00 I woke up and just wanted it to be morning so I could get in the shower and get out of our house. Why are we still staying there you may ask? A couple of things...

We stayed Thursday night and it was fine. We stayed Friday night and it was cold but not to bad. We slept in our bed wearing hats and scarves and gloves and so many other layers that rolling over was a futile attempt. Saturday it was pretty cold so we stayed at friends but left both the dog and the cat because our friends have a dog and Murphy does not do well with other dogs. I was worried sick about them. I realize they are pets and they have fur coats but still...

Yesterday we had eight different people from our church, some I had never even met before, offer to let us and the pets stay with them. My friend Korri said we could stay with her so the plan was that if the power was not back on by 7:30 we would pack up the dog and go. We aren't sure about the cat at this point because it may be more traumatic for her to go somewhere else than to stay at home and curl up in the linen closet. Then at 7:45 we saw a sign from above - a power truck. Men with flashlights and trucks and radios and such spent the next two hours on our street. Then they drove away and our power was still not on. We thought for sure it would only be a matter of minutes so we laid down on an air mattress in front of the fire place to wait it out. The power never came back on. At 2:00 I woke up and just cried because it was so cold. My feet were frozen and my hips were numb from laying on my side, it was awful. This morning Jeff and I got up and put all of our clothes in the bathroom, took a mercifully hot shower (God bless our gas hot water heater) and left the house as fast as we could. I blow dried my hair from the vents in the car and took all of about fifteen minutes to get ready. I kept trying to think about all of our blessings and how glad I was not to be going through this alone but I will confess it was hard.

As of lunch Jeff went home and checked and we still have no power. I WILL NOT SLEEP IN THAT HOUSE AGAIN TONIGHT! We are hoping Korri is still good with us coming over and if not I will sleep in the car or something.

I definitely know they have lots of crews working on it and I have all the respect in the world for the guys freezing their tails off in the hopes that I don't have to freeze mine off one more night. I have been checking the City of Kirkwood's web site for updates all day and as a former PR person I wanted to give counsel to the City of Kirkwood. First, when you change the update time, change the language of the update. At least make it look like you are making progress. Second - someone needs a lesson in spin. Here is what their web site had to say.

"Approximately 600 of Kirkwood ElectricÂ’s customers remain without power. A 5-man crew from Hannibal, Mo, arrived this morning to assist Kirkwood Electric crews with power restoration. Kirkwood Electric crews have been working nearly around the clock since last Thursday night to clear storm damage and restore electric service. Because fatigue and exhaustion are concerns during outages such as this, the city is grateful for the assistance from Hannibal to aid our crews so that work can continue safely for all involved. "

You mean to tell me you have 600 customers without power which translates to about 1800 people and you got FIVE guys to come help? You have the nerve to tell me about the concerns about fatigue and exhaustion and then tell me you magnanimously brought in FIVE guys from outside. Seriously, I could have rounded up FIVE guys myself. Really it should read like this....

Approximately 80% of Kirkwood Electric's customers have power fully restored to their homes. Our crews have been working tirelessly so we have called in for reinforcements from outside the area. The additional workers arrived today and should help expedite the power recovery process for the remaining 600 customers without power.

Okay, I believe I have vented enough. The really great thing about the power outage is I have forgotten completely about being anxious about the bean coming. As Jeff says, my water can't break because it is frozen. : )