Surviving through a wind storm

The Pacific Northwest was hit by a ferocious wi nd storm on thursday night (December 14, 2006), you can read about it here. The results were bad, about 1.5 million people were left out without power and as of this writing most except about 200,000 got power.

At about 1/2 hr past midnight on thursday, the power went out in our apartment, I slept through all night, waking up intermittently for the loud thuds and transformer pops. The extent of the disaster was very much visible the next morning and to my bad, I forgot to fill up gas in my car and I was riding on the empty line in the fuel gauge. Several trees were taken out by the storm, and they rested on the apartment blocks, but there was no damage to my block. The necessity of electricity struck within an hour, no food, no warmth, no phone (I have VoIP), no internet, and no gas stations. But, we had friends! Thanks to Arul for hosting us in his home, he had gas stove with which the food problem is taken care of. I spent the next couple of days at Vijay's place (he got power by friday evening) with Shobha's delicious food.

Puget Sound Electricity crews were working day and night to restore the power to their customers as fast as they could. Our apartment got power by Sunday morning and life returned to normal. I hope life returns to normal soon for the rest of the people who are still suffering from the aftermath of the wind storm.

More pictures...

(thanks to Kartik for the pictures)

later...