Powerless...in the State of Confusion

Update 7 p.m.: It's now definite.  Lost Coast Outpost reports the plan to use local power has failed, and we got a robocall from the Arcata police announcing that Arcata will be without power, possibly for several days. 

The outages will hit the Central Valley, leaving them without air conditioning while it leaves northern areas without heat at night.  The economic costs could be substantial, although bypassing San Francisco and Silicon Valley may mitigate those.  Now the power companies for southern CA are suggesting they may cut power as well, although affecting hundreds of thousands fewer.

Update 10 p.m.  Just two hours away from our scheduled plunge back to the 18th century, and I worry about all the medical devices and breathing machines that aren't going to be working tonight or for some nights to come.  This is the price for the corporate malfeasance of PG&E that all parts of our government allowed to come to this.  Are we to believe that this danger from power equipment is not avoidable, not subject to better maintenance and technology?  Must it take lost lives and certainly a large economic loss to bring those questions into the light?  By the way, the PG&E site you're supposed to go to for information now crashes immediately.

Well, time to get out the quills and parchment.

Earlier today (Tuesday Oct. 8), our sole power company PG&E sent out via phone and text the warning that power in Humboldt County (or parts of it) "may" be cut off, beginning at around midnight tonight.  If it does go off, we could be powerless for up to five days.  That's days, not hours.

For out-of-staters, the background briefly is that PGE was found responsible by the courts for a big fire last year, due to sparks from a transformer or something.  The company is already in bankruptcy.  So this year, they planned to shut off power when weather conditions made a new forest fire more likely.  Right now there are big winds building in much of northern California, though the actual danger zone for fire is considerably south of us.

But location doesn't matter, because of the Grid.  When power is shut off in one place, it can affect far-flung places like Humboldt County, which is just one of more than 30 counties that may be affected, and something like 800,000 people.

 A good deal of the Bay Area will lose power, but mostly the more rural and poorer areas it looks like. San Francisco is to be spared, and farther south, Silicon Valley.

As of this afternoon, it seems more likely than not that power is going to be shut off here.  What we don't know--and apparently won't know until it happens--is who is going to be without power, and who might still have it.

The interesting thing is that Humboldt County generates enough power to take care of its own needs.  But the power generated here gets fed into the grid, and nobody seems to know how to keep that power local.

Nor does PG&E know what will happen in Humboldt when they shut down a couple of lines that come up here.  They have already shut off power for some Humboldt customers, as early as 10 this morning.

This is an unprecedented situation here, and it's hard for people to wrap their heads around it.  We lose power sometimes during winter storms, for a few hours up to a few days.  But five days--possibly some people in rural areas have experienced that, but I doubt that anybody in Arcata or even Eurkea has experienced it.

Electricity is like air to a modern society--it's necessary for almost everything, and it's always there.  It's hard to imagine it not being there for almost a week.  It probably would be easier to think about it if there were a visible local emergency.  But there's not.

I remember when electric power was a public utility.  I remember when localities had power over their power.

The only news I've seen is that there are blocks-long lines at the gas pumps at Costco in Eureka.  I expect that all the grocery stores are crowded.  Public schools have announced that they will be open tomorrow regardless, but the Humboldt State University web site information is confusing at best, stating that school buildings will be closed and students should stay in their dorms, which will be "locked down."  What does that mean?

So we've done the inventory check, and we seem good on the essentials.  The devices are recharging.  I did a load of laundry, took a shower.  If natural gas is not affected, we will have stovetop cooking and hot water from the gas water heater.  Water has never been affected in past outages.  My flashlight fetish may also pay off--we have many, and lots of batteries.  Also long-burning candles in glass.

But the truth is we don't know what to expect.  Past power outages have been pretty local.  A lot of normal infrastructure could be affected.  Refrigeration seems like it's going to be a big problem, beyond the home.

This is also a moment when the stark lack of local news reporting becomes important.  The Eureka Times-Standard, the last remaining daily, has cut back to almost no local staff.  There is little local television news.  Radio no longer does news regularly, and we'll see what they can generate in an emergency.  There's the Lost Coast Outpost web site, and a few blogs.  That's it.

But then we won't have wifi, and maybe nobody will.  They may not be able to post, and very likely I won't be able to receive.  Or to send.  So I guess, over and out.