I didn’t see a thread on this, which surprised me. The storm that came through Maine Sunday night included torrential rains and hurricane-force winds. Our power went out early on Monday morning. We hooked up our generator and figured power would be back on shortly. Uh, no…
We couldn’t operate our home business because it wasn’t safe to run the computers off the regular generator. We had clients anxiously awaiting drawings from us, but they were polite about it.
This morning, I had had enough. I carted my desktop computer, monitor, keyboard, etc. 30 minutes to my friend’s house in Portland so I could get some work done. As I was finishing setting everything up, literally, I got word that our power was back on! So I lugged everything back on. Our computer guy had to come over to get the internet working again. 3 1/2 days without power! What a mess! We’ve already ordered a generator with an inverter so that we can run our computers safely during the next outage. Of course, this probably won’t happen again! It was the worst storm aftermath since the Ice Storm of 1998 (which I was horrified to learn my fitness trainer is too young to remember!). What surprised us was that even the main street of our town was without power for two entire days. Only one gas station was open. We had to pay with cash and only one person at a time could pump gas. It took forever just to get a few gallons for our generator.
At the peak of the outage, almost 500,000 homes and businesses in Maine were affected. Central Maine Power said it was the worst outage in the company’s history.
Just FYI, most UPS devices provide line conditioning for electricity. You can safely run computers and other sensitive equipment on them when using a generator.
We had our power out on Sunday night during the storm while in a hotel in Arlington, VA. It was out when we were trying to sleep and stayed out for a few hours only. Fortunately, the hotel did have hallway backup or emergency lighting.
We left our midcoast Maine property on Sunday afternoon after battening everything down as best we could. We knew the power was out by Monday morning by checking the CMP website. Power was apparently restored to our area late Tuesday afternoon (according to notification on my smartphone from CMP’s alert system). One of our neighbors checked the property and reported one tree down, but otherwise good as far as he could see; not sure he looked everywhere though. I am sure we will have to throw away a lot of stuff from our refrigerators (after two days without power) when we do get back there…
We had three large trees come down in our yard (which is mostly woods). One narrowly missed a large shed but it fell on the kids’ treehouse. We saw a LOT of trees down all over the area.
We were at a funeral in Massachusetts and drove home to mid-coast Maine on Monday afternoon. We had to detour three times because of downed trees across the roads.
We had power, but many of our neighbors do not. We still have no internet, so are using 4G and have probably exhausted our data limit.
The YMCA in Camden is full of people coming in for showers, since many are still without water, even 5 days later.
Our lights flickered for a couple hours but didn’t go out for long. Same with my son in college up the coast.
High School my others go to was out of power for days.
Electric company went through, cutting trees a few days before the storm. I guess they knew it was coming?
I sympathize @MaineLonghorn. We used to live pretty far from the grid. During Sandy we had no power for two weeks: no water (electric well pump,) no heat, etc. Couldn’t even get gasoline as roads were impassable. Trapped inside playing board games and pretending to be colonial settlers in front of the fire, Kids were 8-12.
When we decided to move, I chose a house on the main line!
On Long Island, many of us also had no power this Sunday night into Monday morning. Ours was back when we got home from work around 4 p.m.
(Our Sandy experience was like IvyGrad’s— ten days of no power.)
I used to pride myself on how not dysfunctional my family is… until we had a 5-day power outage and suddenly everyone started fighting. That’s when I realized — normally our devices protect us from having to talk to each other!
We were on the verge of buying a generator about 5 years ago… and then the power started staying on. Bless their little hearts, the electric company folks decided to take down a bunch of trees overhanging power lines in my neighborhood in the 2 weeks before the storm. Our power stayed on.
I was with a group of people last night. 9 homes were represented. Only two of us had power back! Some of them said there are still lots of trees down on their roads. They didn’t see any way their power would be restored by Saturday, the date listed on CMP’s website for getting people back on.
We had the high winds too but our power company has been doing a great job cutting trees back - it’s done every five years now on a schedule. We use to lose our power all the time even in a relatively light wind. One year I was so frustrated I called the power company to complain and they actually told me, “ but you only lost power 13 times this year,” like that was a good statistic!
I figured there was no thread because all of us affected were incommunicado!
Our power was out from some time Sunday night to Wednesday afternoon, and I live on a fairly major road, for our area. CMP had just sent a text saying that the due date was Saturday! I was so happy to come out and find the power on.
We don’t have a generator. H has bought one several times when we had outages, but always taken in back before setting it up, LOL. One of these days…
The fact that the days are short now does not help. It isn’t really daylight until about 7:30, and it’s dark before 6. Reading by candlelight in the cold and dark is highly over-rated. Finding a place to get a cup of coffee became somewhat challenging. Even Macdonalds in the next town was powerless. The few places that did have power had very, very long lines. I guess I should have dragged out the camp stoves, but I figured the power would be back soon…
It does get wearing. Luckily, we are on public water, because years ago they ran a water line out to the county fair grounds about a mile down our road. Being able to flush the toilet is a godsend: in CT we were always on a well and no water is really a pain.
Luckily, there was no danger of the pipes freezing and there wasn’t heavy rain that would flood the basement with the sump pump off. That’s happened during a nor’easter.
My major worry was that all of the freezer pesto I’d made from my huge basil crop would thaw out and be ruined. But it made it through okay.
Really, it is nothing compared to what people in Puerto Rico are enduring.
I was at Foxwoods for annual CT School Librarians conference on Monday and that is pretty close to the CT/RI border. The storm on Sunday night was so intense that I don’t think I’ve ever heard thunder so loud and so long. The lights flickered on and off but no power was lost. A good many school districts were closed on Monday or had delayed openings and many attendees either never made it there or it took so long to get there because of road closures, downed trees. I saw a massive downed tree in a residential area not far from the hotel when I left on Monday afternoon. There were school districts closed in NY in Putnam and Northern Westchester because of power issues and downed trees.
Sorry CCers to hear that your power is still not back on. Hang in there, everyone. I personally know how that feels - fireplaces for heat and having a hot water tank instead of tankless are little luxuries that are much appreciated during power outages.
We were supposed to get high winds, and I guess we did because our back yard is covered with branches. Nothing big though. Some people up county lost trees though. I’m still hoping our neighbor’s giant Norway maple will keel over one of these days. (Without damaging our garage or their house of course!) Then I’d be able to have a real vegetable garden!
