Power Outage of 2011

Rookies
That is really all I have to say.
After surviving the Midwest/​East Coast power outage of 2003… which was a lot worse and a lot longer… I was more prepared than 99.9% of the San Diego population.
Upon getting a text from someone in Del Mar telling me that their power was out… then from someone well North of Carlsbad… I didn’t sit and wait to have anyone tell me what was going on… I got in my car and went home. Total estimated saving of time 2:11:53.
When arriving at home I retrieved all candles, flashlights and frozen meats. Went to the corner 7−11…bargained with them on their ice cream… scored 75% off ice cream. Commence great evening of BBQ, and hanging out with the neighbors. My only complaint was that it didn’t last long enough for work to get called off the next day for me.
Ohhh…and one other thing I learned from the Midwest/​East Coast power outage of 2003… in about 9 months… BABY EXPLOSION!

The power outage was a blast!
*The parent meetings at my work were cancelled
*i didn’t have to tell my kids to turn off the TV
*i finally taught my kids how to break into our house (we usually enter through the garage door and do not keep keys on us)
*I met neighbors that i have never met in the 18 years i’ve lived in my house
*i hung out with neighbors and drank wine on a work night
*i BBQ’d with neighbors
*the kids ate more ice cream than they wanted (i seriously kept stuffing them with more ice cream… it was going to melt anyways)
i broke out my camping lantern and battery operated fan to cool off… now i know they work.
What a fun night…

I arrived in San Diego on a plane literally 20 hours before the power outage.
At first I was afraid I was petrified thinking something I had done had caused the power to be gone.
Realisation soon dawned on me that it was the whole of my block, heard people outside talking about how it was the whole of San Diego.
My first concern was how the heck were we going to do anything– we had no food so a cheese sandwich, chips and candy was what we had and sat in the candle light (thank god we had been and bought a few with nice smells for another reason).
I actually panicked that this was a regular occurrence and wondered whether I had made the right decision to move here.
In bed by 9pm (what, I had the excuse that I was jetlagged plus I didnt know anyone!) and woken at 1am to the power coming back on! woooo!
Poor show on there being no power from 3pm until 1am!

My friends and I had a blast and I got to meet my neighbors but losing $$ due to food spoilage, not so fun. 3 stars.
I think the government should have a mandatory blackout every month. You get to actually talk to people rather than being at home in front of the tv or your computer.
Just give business owners a headsup, thats all.

Wow, I can’t believe there’s a Unilocal review for this…
My night without power was pretty lame. No tv and internet obviously, my phone battery died about 2 hours in, and all I really wanted was to go up to OC to visit friends since I had just moved down here and didn’t have any friends here. But I had only enough gas to reach San Clemente, and apparently they were out of power too. So I ended up just going to bed at like 9pm. I haven’t slept at 9pm since elementary school.
But I did get a chance to appreciate the downtown Oceanside street fair, until it started getting dark and the local hoodlums began to take over. I think that was the first time I realized I actually LIKED police presence… and they were out in numbers that night. So I eventually decided to go home before the rioting began, and went to sleep early.
Not really a great way to wrap up my first week of living in SD. But hey, at least I got to finally break open my Zombie Survival Kit, even if all I ended up using were the candles and matches.

The Good: I got to leave work early
The Bad: The traffic home. A 10 minute commute turned into 1.5 hours. All stop lights were out of service.
What did I learn: Extra D Batteries are a blessing, stock up on them. Don’t get rid of your old AM/​FM radios just yet. It’s a good thing I know how to grill a good steak with propane. Get to know your next door neighbors, spread good karma, it’s good to have someone watch your back when shit goes down.

For me it wasn’t all moonlight and roses. Okay there was moonlight but I don’t like being without power. My eyeball has to strain to see. My cat kept bumping into things since she is partially blind. Scrounging for food and practically starving. The heat was unbearable. One cold beer in the fridge. No car. Streets were dark and surreal looking.
At least we had a few candles and a battery operated radio. I got pretty sick of the grand stories on the radio about people barbecuing, swimming in pools and having big parties. Where is my party?
I was a little depressed also when callers called into the radio station to say they had power when we had none. Some were down the street from where we lived. At 2:05 AM a caller boasted about his power being on and I started to get jealous and then all of a sudden our lights came on. Yep, in the flash of an eye they came on, just like that. Ahhhhh, it feels so good to be back in the world of technology.
PS. I had to throw out all my food from the fridge and it cost a bundle.

Not gonna lie, it was kind of chaotic to figure out what the hell was even going on. My particular power outage lasted longer than others. Kind of felt like I was stranded on an island.
Overall though, quite fun meeting new neighbors, napping, actually READING.
Fun stuff :)

How can I top the masterful Unilocal of my two buddies preceding me here? I agree with Ron C.-LEARN FROM THE PAST!
Do not freak out and go ballistic when a little bit of electricity goes haywire! As a part of being prepared and ready for any calamity, EVERYONE should have some candles, flashlights, good batteries and a transistor radio on hand for emergencies. I always refill all my gallon water bottles as soon as they run out. Consequently, I never lack for bottled water. This is not meant to brag but to show that WHEN YOU ARE PREPARED for events, it is no big deal.
My neighbor said there were panic-​stricken people in line out the door at the nearby ⁷⁄₁₁ store. They were acting like it was the end of the world. My son & I had a BBQ, tried to eat up and drink up all the perishables we were worried would soon go bad without refrigeration, and did everything we needed to do while there was still some daylight.
Once it got dark, it was reading by flashlight and listening to news reports. A little bit of vino and a nice quiet night with no airplanes blazing overhead on take-​off from the airport and I have to say, it was a very relaxing evening-​without electricity.
I will save my harsh words of disbelief for the idiotic reason SDG&E has given for the start of the Power Outage of 2011: a linesman in Yuma goofed up! Yeah right. The weather was hot and either the Calif ISO and/​or SDG&E threw a wrong switch on the power grid at the height of highest usage and messed up. That threw the entire system into mayhem.
Nevertheless, I must abide by my two Unilocal cronies previous 5 Star Unilocal on the Power Outage of 2011. People: try not to panic & act cool when these inconveniences strike. Make it into something fun and amusingly survivable-​which of course, it really is!

«I DIDN’T DO IT!»
Those, my friends, were the first words out of my mouth when all the power went out all over San Diego county on September 9, 2011.
Despite the general havoc that the power outage wreaked, a good time was had by all. (By «all», I mean «me», and not «millions of people who were inconvenienced and lost countless amounts of time, business, productivity, etc.»)
Check out the evidence:
*impromptu grill-​out (salmon burgers!) with the neighbors
*so-​called «blackout parties» in every bar in the neighborhood
*keeping up on the news via iPhone and candlelight
*going to bed at 8:30pm and feeling ridiculously well-​rested the next morning
Let’s do this again sometime. I’ll bring the cupcakes.

A power outage of this caliber deserves 5 stars.
But at the cost of being an enormous inconvenience to my friends and I while trying to move furniture out of the 4^th floor at public storage. Luckily, none of us were in the elevator when it happened, but we were stuck at the top with large televisions, furniture parts, and pissed and hungry grunts we picked up to help us with the move.
Then, a realization sunk in that no restaurants or supermarkets would be open. We had tortilla chips, nutella, and canned tuna. I looked around at my friends in the dark and contemplated who would be eaten first, should the time come.
However, Bristol Farms was open and we got 11 yogurts for the price of one and didn’t go hungry after all.
1 star for inconveniencing life!
5 stars for the closest thing to a zombie apocalypse we’re going to get… at least for now.

I was in the OC on my way down when it hit. Traffic congestion starting from Mission Viejo! so i waited until traffic died down. That and all the ice sold out… in orange county!
Got to my gf’s apartment after driving down the dark lanes of the 5 and the 78… it was pretty interesting to drive the freeway with no street lights on the offramps nor the glow of any house lights along the highway.
also saw some geniuses who thought that it was ok to breeze through non-​working stop lights…
battery-​powered tea lights came in handy!
i thought this was good practice for if anything more disastrous were to hit
Anyway, this is what we had for dinner
sdoutage quesadillas:
1) get cheese and tortillas from fridge… quickly!
2) put cheese between tortillas
3) wrap entirely in foil
4) use tongs to cook over vanilla scented candles (probably the ones you had to take from the bathroom)
5) six mins later you have a hot, delicious meal
Me = 1, power outage = 0

–3 stars on the traffic jams but +7 stars on having twitter feed me updates via limited mobile usage on what was going on when I didn’t have a radio or TV.
And who knew that it would actually be NICE to «escape» from the craziness of work, television and internet etc for a few hours!!!
Power came back on in about 9 hours, 3 of which I spent asleep.

Best
Power
Outtage
EVER.
I got to leave work early.
I had PB&J and beer for dinner.
There was a taco shop with a generator supplying the grocery-​impaired folks of Hillcrest.
It was awesome.
the end

Calm the fuck down! We survived.
Watched «The Day After Tomorrow» on my laptop, seemed appropriate.
I made shadow puppets on the street.
92.5 still worked, blasted it from my car’s radio.
I «raved» with my flashlight on my driveway.
p. s. looting is a FELONY when a state/​local emergency is declared, so don’t kid yourself into committing such crime. because you’re f u c k e d.
–1 star because I missed the Saints/​Packers game.
It’s good to have essentials:
Cash
First Aid
Flashlights/​Candles
Top Ramen
Water (good thing my parents costco’d it up the day before)

No power means no TV, no Internet, no lights, no smartphones, no video games… what were the Wife and I to do with our evening?
Warm, soft, vanilla scented Walmart brand candles were lit…
Opened up a good bottle of champagne…($ 2.99 Crane Lake of course)
Took out 2 spoons and 2 semi-​melted pints of Ben & Jerry’s Cherry Garcia and Chubby Hubby…
Turned on the ’99 ghetto blaster with Marvin Gaye’s «Let’s get it on» (
)
«I’ve been really tryin’, baby
Tryin’ to hold back this feelin’ for so long
And if you feel like I feel, baby
Then come on, oh, come on
Whoo, let’s get it on
Ah, babe, let’s get it on
Let’s love, baby
Let’s get it on, sugar
Let’s get it on
Whoo-​ooh-​ooh»
And then…
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Yeah…I had a pretty awesome night! ;-)
(We also played Scrabble and I won)

I really didn’t mind the power outage. I left work early, cooled off in the pool, and grilled some hot dogs. Made it hard to find the dogs in the back yard but they eventually made it in the house at bed time.
What I don’t like is this news conference on TV right now. I want to watch my soap operas during lunch time. Geez!

When the ish went down I left work immediately. My coworkers were hemming and hawing over whether to take this as an opportunity to head to the nearest gym to work out, and all this «don’t they have a generator for the ellipticals?» banter circulated. But I knew better than to wait around for doomsday and was out the door before you could say protein shake.
Zipped downstairs and drove over to my Grandparent’s down the street. Took 40 minutes to go two miles but once I got there I helped Grampy get his oxygen situation figured out with some portable bottles (why don’t they make battery backups for the big machine?!) and set up a portable battery-​powered radio tuned to KOGO in their den. We ate See’s Candies, smugly laughed that none of us bought the Nissan Leaf (we have three Pri between us!), and listened to the radio till it was almost dark and I realized I had to get home to get my zombie apocalypse crap together.
Dinner was canned tuna, a tomato, crackers and a slice of strawberry cake I had expertly frosted and spent hours on the day before. (As I write this my cake is a wasted mess! Phooey!)
Five stars for my Kindle Mighty Bright! Attached it to the side of our Scrabble Board, lit a couple of candles and had an old-​fashioned night in, which was a welcome respite from the hurried pace of everyday craziness.
PS — I’m extra happy that our salt-​water fish tank occupant, Puff the Pufferfish, survived! We aerated the water frequently and kept a keen eye on the temperature. We’ve had him for 11 years now and are so glad he made it out a-​ok!

My 1100^th!!!
Dang, what the heck?! NO POWER?!
While working on a project at work and prepping for my board meeting at 5p — all of a sudden — lights out… GREAT!!!
Around 4p, we had the option to go home. I stayed behind since traffic already started to accumulate and I decided to ditch my meeting.
A handful of us stayed behind and jammed to some Barry White and Al Green with a nice bottle of red vintage wine — opened by scissors and a mail opener — MacGyver style baby!!!
Took an evening walk (since there was nothing else to do) and it was actually pretty cool to see people out enjoying the night. It was a full moon and the sky was clear. It was just freakishly eerie that the streets were bare and that there were no lights.
No lights, no power, no cell service, no Internet… BORING!!!
It was an early night for me…

Power mysteriously went out. Meh.
After a few minutes, we start to learn how far widespread this blackout reached. Meh.
Pack up my gear and send my team home for the day once it becomes apparent power will not be back anytime soon. Meh.
Sitting in my car for nearly 2 hours to travel a total distance of 5 miles. Oh hell no!
Grabbing a still cold 18 rack at the gas station near my house. B*ner.
Seeing the psychos fighting over the last 5 bags of ice. Oh hell no!
Drinking cold beers and eating food that otherwise would have gone bad. B*ner.
Thinking to myself that we would have to eat the dogs. Oh hell no!
Power coming back on in the middle of the night. Meh.
Quickly realizing that meant that we all would have to come into work today. Meh, better than eating my dogs.
I have had better, more fun power outages when I was younger growing up back east, but this still an a-​ok time.