This is the first time I've been able to sit down at a working computer since late afternoon Tuesday. Tuesday at noon, the Pacific Northwest was hit by a sizable storm, but nothing quite like the one that my city of Spokane received. The winds picked up in the mid-afternoon, and as they crested to 45-50 miles an hour with 60-70 gusts, power in the city started going out one after another. By 5 pm, pretty much the entire city was completely out of power. Power poles were snapped in half, trees were in pieces all over roads, or worse, plunged into houses. I work at a large retirement community, and fortunately, we have two backup generators that were keeping hall and entry lights on, and a tiny bit of power to keep the main refrigerators running. I didn't leave until 9pm that night, and what I saw when I left the front door was one of the most surreal moments of my life.

You take a lot of things for granted in life, and adequate lighting is certainly one of them. I walked out the door into sheer, total blackness. Not only was the retirement community devoid of light, but everywhere as far as the eye can see was out of light as well. I had to walk 500 meters to the employee parking lot, with absolutely nothing to guide me except my own knowledge of whether the sidewalks were. No moon light, no nothing. Just pure inky blackness. And making sure the path I was going, hopefully didn't have any felled trees crossing it. Driving the 3 miles home was another fun moment, because I had to dodge trees and downed power lines, even on the major roads that I took. Not a single light to be found, save for my headlights and the few headlights of other drivers. Craaaaaazy.

I was one of the fortunate ones. I had power back on by 4am the following morning. Knew it when my bathroom fan started blaring. That's one good thing about being immediately adjacent to a very large grocery store. They're usually one of the first to get power restored, because people need food. Especially when their refrigerators go out for an extended time. Too bad my internet power hasn't been restored yet. I'm having to write this on my recently restored parents' computer.

It's a funny day to write this, because 19 years ago to the day today, we had an ice storm in Spokane that matched this one for pure numbers of houses out of power. I missed that one, as I was living in California at the time. Looks like I didn't miss this one. As of now, probably a little less than half the households in the city are still without power. Regrettably, my work is still among those. Going to be another exciting day of playing doorman and resident dog walker tomorrow. Hard to do accounts payable when your computers are all down. ^_^