Posts Tagged ‘stories’
Powerless adventures; or how we lost electricity at work
There I was, washing dishes. Quite a large stack of them to do. The movements were rhythmic. It was easy. The time was 17:30. Then everything went black. It was quiet.
Thought that perhaps a fuse had blown, so went to the power box, and indeed, one of the safety switches was in the off position. Flicked it back, but nothing happened. Maybe the problem was more widespread? After all, I had heard that various areas of Melbourne had experienced blackouts the night before. Power, trains: both die with high temperatures it seems :P
Wandered down the road to see if other places were also without electricity. They were. The folks at Sony were meant to close up for the day, but couldn’t, as they required power in order to shut the doors. It strikes me as worrying the reliance upon which so much of our infrastructure relies on power. A simple thing like a one hour blackout can cause great inconvenience or damage.
The Doppler shift of the sirens alerted me to the fact that emergency services were approaching. A fire-engine passed right by us, to turn down a road behind us. Then an ambulance came past in front, and a little while later, a police car. I never found the emergency to which they rushed, but I suspect there was a fire nearby, and that related to our lack of power.
Back at work, it was all very calm. With the fridges and lights off, there was a tranquillity about the place. A customer joked that we should have a backup power supply. Thankfully, electricity is reliable in Melbourne (and the rest of Australia). Power outages are not common and are generally quickly remedied. This is unlike the time that I was in India, where the power or water would just stop at various points throughout the day, to come back many hours later, or a few minutes later, one could never know. The helplessness of the situation (we could do nothing to get the power up) only accentuated the relaxedness of the situation, it was not stressful.
At 18:30, power returned, and work resumed as before. With another day in the mid-40s predicted, who knows if tomorrow will have a sense of déjà-vu.
