<p>In the Big Wind of 2006, our power went out at 7pm PST on Thursday, Dec. 14. Our electricity came back on Wednesday, Dec. 21 at about 4pm. As of now, 11:30am on Dec. 26, we still do not have our primary phone service, cable TV, or Internet access. Since we don’t have cell service at our house (we live in Redmond, about eight miles as the raven flies from Microsoft’s world headquarters – of course I can’t find a cell phone that works at my house…), we used a 25-year-old Western Electric phone on the only real phone line in the house, which is what we use to receive faxes. Funny, our local phone company is the only service we DIDN’T lose. The high-tech phone-over-cable system went down when the first tree fell and still isn’t working.</p>
<p>Anyway. I understand that PSE had to bring up 700,000 customers who were without power, and that it took less than a week was pretty good service. Comcast (cable TV, cable phone, Internet) uses the same poles and has now taken longer to not restore their services than PSE took to replace a dozen downed poles and two miles of electrical wiring. </p>
<p>When PSE was restoring power, I saw them out in the middle of the night working by generator light. Their tree removal contractor was also working 24 hours a day. I didn’t appreciate being without power for six days, but I understood that they were working on it. The miserable Comcasties have had access to the poles since Wednesday afternoon and still haven’t fixed their system. That’s five days and counting AFTER PSE reinstalled the poles and gave them access. Driving up and down the main road into our area over the weekend I saw them working on Friday, but no sign of them Saturday, Sunday or yesterday. I swear they didn’t want to pay overtime on the weekend and Christmas and just took the days off. I might even appreciate this if it were something they did to support their employees, but I think it’s a lot more likely that they a) didn’t have the equipment on hand to fix their system, b) they were trying to avoid overtime expenses, and c) just figure that losing a few hundred subscribers costs less than fixing a down service line.</p>
<p>Thanks for letting me rant. If these folks don’t get my service back up today, I’m going shopping for a satellite dish tomorrow. There’s no way I’m missing the college bowl games because these idiots can’t figure out how to attach a cable to a pole.</p>
<p>Let’s see, where are the 800-numbers for DirecTV and DISH…</p>
<p>Awwwwwwwww, WashDad, I’m <em>SO</em> sorry that you’re having to deal with this right now!! My guys would have a FIT what with all the bowl games and such! Hope things get fixed up soon! Meanwhile, VENT AWAY!!! :D</p>
<p>Well, we had a satellite with DirectTV for a few years. It went wonky with every single windy night. Notice I don’t say windstorm. I’m talking about the normal winds we get around here, in beautiful Sammamish.</p>
<p>WashDad,
So sorry to hear about your extended Comcast outage. We had a 3 day outage here on the East Coast over Labor Day weekend and of course lost all our food, etc. Can’t imagine going what you are going through for that length of time. I literally chased down a power company supervisor’s car to show him where the d<em>mn lines were down since he couldn’t seem to find it on his own. And I have to tell you that my MIL and FIL’s luck with having a DISH was no luck at all. When the wind blew, there went the reception. So, I’ll think good thoughts about your d</em>mn Comcasties and please feel free to let loose on CC. Most of us have been through this incredibly frustrating experience at one point or another.</p>
<p>We also feel like we are living on the edge of technology. The home phone is cable/internet. So far only one outage in a year. We live in a densely populated suburban area, but our home seems to be in a dead zone and the cell phones don’t work. After the last big storm and power outage a couple of years ago, we did get a portable generator. The tank only holds a couple of hours worth of gas, but at least we should be able to alternately power different essentials such as the sump pump, refrigerator, freezer and furnace.</p>
<p>Oh WashDad, welcome to the world of hurricanes! Down here where it could be a yearly occurrence, Comcast has buried (at great expense) as many cables as possible. They still share some poles with the power company, but with the buried cables to individual neighborhoods, they can concentrate on the trunk lines on the power poles.
The cell service though is the worst, especially if a big tower goes down, as FEMA and the state of Louisiana discovered to their chagrin - cell is not the best emergency back-up. Hope you rejoin us in the New Millennium soon!</p>
<p>The comcast guys had to stay out of the way of the PSE guys while they restored power. PSE also “borrowed” line crews from other places. We lucked out up north as most of our lines are underground. I’ve used a dish for years, ever since the cable guys sprayed red marker paint all over my yard (and wife’s roses) 20+ years ago, assuming we’d want their service. Almost considered going to them this year because of internet needs, but GTE came through and now I don’t have to ever use cable.</p>
<p>It rained here last week. A bunch of people I know lost ALL of their Comcast services…and the efforts to get them back were less than stellar. The Comcast customers were very annoyed and they said that the Comcast customer no-service people were not at all helpful. Perhaps this is a Comcast issue in addition to the storm. Good luck.</p>
<p>yesterday we lost power which was exciting, since that meant that not only did we not have lights, we didn’t have water since the water was from a well.
It took all day to find the pole that was down, which ended up being about 4 or 5 kilometers out in the woods, so they had to take a snowcat out to fix it.</p>
<p>It came back on about 10:30 pm, which was very exciting, but the power also went out about 4 or 5 towns out, where my H and 16 year old were downhill sking and were stuck on a lift and had to be rescued.
However d apparently thought it was a great adventure, although I was surprised and relieved that H actually got gas on the way there, before the power went out as opposed to what he usually does and wait till it is closer to empty, by which time the power would have been out.</p>
<p>but now we are headed b ack to civilization yea!</p>
<p>Jr did an application at a coffee shop this morning.</p>
<p>Our Comcast service came back up this evening at around 6:30 – so that was 15 days without phones, Internet or television. Puget Sound Energy had our power back in six days. Even our friends in Carnation and Duvall (that’s like “The Possum Lodge” for those of you outside of Western Washington).</p>
<p>After blowing off a lot of steam on the subject, I’m going to move our phone service back to Verizon. I’ll probably just count on modems as a backup for the Internet, and an old-fashioned television antenna so we can get news coverage in emergency situations when the power is out. We have a lot of very tall trees to the south, and my neighbors tell me that satellite dishes don’t work well here.</p>
<p>Anyway, back on CC, and back in the 21st century. To continue the Unusual Weather saga, we had about four inches of snow the night before last. At least the power didn’t go out…</p>
<p>Well, I got mine this morning. High winds shredded a section of roofing and I have a skylight leak to deal with. Now the trouble is getting someone out to deal with a small roofing problem when they are all booked pretty solid because of all the stuff a few weeks prior. </p>
<p>I have had a bad string of luck lately when ever I think I’m lucky to have missed a certain thing, it hits the next day or so. I was previously thinking how nice it was to miss the power outages and problems from the strom. </p>
<p>So today I am starting to think how lucky I’ve been by not winning powerball or lotto. It would be so difficult to deal with money,</p>