The Great Southern CA Blackout of 2011

You may have heard about it last week, but western Arizona and southern California experienced a massive blackout last Thursday (9/8) when a high power line was knocked out. It was a huge mess! All of San Diego's power went out at around 3:40 that day, and once people realized the extent of the outage, companies started sending their employees home. The problem was that all the traffic lights were out, no one could pump gas, phone lines were out of service, and the cell phone towers were too busy to get a call to go through. Plus, the first game of the NFL season was that night and no.one.could.watch.it. It was straight from a horror movie, people!

I had to wait at work for an extra hour until traffic died down a little (my car overheats in stop-and-go traffic), but I was so thankful that Dan & I already had enough gas to get home from work! It took us each about an hour to drive home and we saw plenty of people in accidents or stranded without gas on the way. The police & firefighters were of course overwhelmed, so they said to resolve any accidents among yourselves unless there were injuries. They warned us to not expect power for 24-48 hours since the outage was so extensive. All the public schools announced closures the next day, and so did Dan's school. I'm sure many people had a very rough night, but I know God was watching over our city since I didn't hear of any related deaths or too many issues with vandalism or violence that night.

When we got home, our house was really hot, so we opened our windows and went for a bike ride to see how people were faring. Everyone was outside & enjoying the last light we'd see for the day. It was so crowded it looked like a holiday weekend on the beach.

Once it got dark, almost the only lights you saw were headlights from cars. This intersection is the busiest in our neighborhood & is usually all lit up at night. You can just make out the reflective vest of the traffic guard in the middle of the intersection.

I know you can hardly see it, but this bar was completely full of people sitting in the pitch dark, drinking beer. Maybe the beer was half price since their refrigerator wasn't working, but we didn't stop to check.

Then we saw the Beacon Of Light. The Vons grocery store had an emergency generator & still had lights on! We rode over there to check it out and this is what we saw. A line of people wrapped around the front of the building waiting to get in to buy supplies & food at the only functioning store in the area.

They had Vons bouncers at the door who were only letting in a few customers at a time, because let's face it, I can easily see a fight breaking out over the last flashlight & pack of batteries.

We made it home safely and decided in retrospect that it wasn't our best idea ever to go biking in the dark of night when the rules of the road are suspended and everyone is feeling panicky. We broke out all our decorative candles, pulled out our flashlights and camping lanterns, turned on the battery operated radio, and enjoyed a (slightly) quieter night than usual. Although it was hot in our bedroom and I hate to sweat while I sleep.

I woke up at 1:30 a.m. to go to the bathroom, and as I was walking back to bed, I saw Dan's alarm clock flashing! My first thought was "YESSS! The power's on! I can turn on the A/C!!" and my second thought was "Aw man, I'm going to have to go to work tomorrow." :)