Technology Restored

Yay! As of today I have both power AND Internet access :)

Pictures are slowly being added to my flickr set as well:

Downed Power Lines on Haisley

My back yard looks like hurricaine Katrina made a cameo



I had just walked in my front door after coming home from my mom's house (I'm dog sitting for her). I was standing in my living room watching the rain come down in my back yard. The rain had just started to build up to 'storm' levels.

All of the sudden there was an incredibly bright white flash of lightning in my back yard, striking my neighbor's tree, sending it toppling towards me into my yard. It brought the electrical wires down with it as it came crashing through the fence dividing our backyards. Once it landed, the top of the tree was not more than 10 feet from the edge of my house. Damn I was lucky.

A downed transformer was going nuts - a bright white ball of electrical fire was hissing and cracking near the ground. Sparks were flying everywhere as smoke filled my yard and seeped out into the street in front of my house.

The lights in my house would brown out every time the transformer arched. So the first thing I did was run down into the basement and flip the main circuit breaker so I could at least spare my appliances and computers from further damage.

Next step was to call *someone* ... 911? DTE? Mom? But shit, the battery in my cell phone (my only phone) was almost dead. So I grabbed my dog and ran out to my car so I could plug the phone into my car charger. I dialed 911 and told the woman on the other end what was happening. One of my neighbors ran up and banged on my passenger side window as I was talking to the 911 operator. I was probably acting like your typical freaked out 911 caller. Talking to my neighbor and the 911 operator at the same time. The 911 operator had to tell me to calm down and tell her fully what was going on. At the end, she told me the fire department was on its way and we hung up.

I got out of the car ... went back inside to quickly put suitable clothes on and put my contacts in. Couldn't have taken me more than 3 or 4 minutes and by the time i was ready to go back outside, the fire department had already arrived. Good response time guys!

Now I could finally relax. I stood out in the street with my neighbors and my dog as the fire department taped off my house and the one next door. The rain had let up a bit so it wasn't too bad standing out there.

The firemen weren't actually able to to do much though. The only way to get into my back yard without going through the house involves opening a metal gate which is attached to a metal fence which goes back into the danger zone. So the firemen weren't able to get close. Then they got a call that another person's garage was on fire just a couple blocks away from the same incident. So they gave us a little warning speech about not touching anything metal in our houses, and they left.

We stood around chatting in the street for a while after the firemen left. Hell, it happened to my house and I almost missed the speech. The firemen just looked for the largest group of people I think and just started explaining the situation to them, regardless of where they lived or how they were related to the affected houses. My immediate neighbor missed the speech and continued to walk inside the danger zone and go in and out of his house like everything was normal. We didn't warn him or anything but he seemed to be doing fine ... so that gave me the courage to walk back into my house ;) It was nice to be back inside where it was dry, and also get a great view of all the damage. I took a few snapshots with my camera-phone and a short video clip as well .... wish I had a real camera so I could take some high resolution shots, but oh well.

So I decided to go to my dad's house, where I could enjoy modern luxuries like power and running water. I grabbed a change of clothes so I could take a shower, some essentials that I wanted to save from the fridge/freezer (i.e. Ice cream!), a few DVDs, and my laptop and headed out with dog in hand.

The firemen earlier said that DTE was "more than aware of the problem" but they didn't know when they would be out. But I decided to call them myself from my dad's just to lodge a formal incident report and get an estimate and whatnot. And when I spoke to them, they did NOT have a previous ticket for the incident ... so that was confusing. Anyway, one of the questions they ask when you report a downed wire is if you live near a school park or playground. I happen to be right next to an elementary school's playground, thus making this an extremely high priority case. Note to self -- always try to live near a school park or playground because the power company will take you much more seriously when there's a problem :)


Addendum: Pictures of the tree and my fence made the 11 O'clock NBC news tonight as the newscaster said something along the lines of: Residents in an ann arbor neighborhood are still without power after an Oak tree fell and took down some power lines on Haisley street. Woohoo!