The Big Bang

It was about 12:50 last night. I was watching a movie with my father.

All of a sudden there was a bang, the TV image shrunk to a dot, and then nothing. The lights disappeared. The router lights remained on (thanks to a battery back-up system).

My father and I went to the window and lifted the blinds. We saw that it was raining and that the other houses on our block were also without power. To get a better view, and to see if we could find the cause of the bang we went to the front porch.

While on the front porch we noticed that houses on the next block had power. We did not find anything that we believed might be the source of the problem. After being warned by my father to watch for downed power I donned some boots and a jacket and out to try and locate the source of the problem.

After checking pole that had blown a transformer that had blown a few years ago I went towards the telephone building. Throughout my search I only found evidence that everything was working, except the lines on our block.

Upon my return I learned that my father had called the power company to report the outage. To his delight he was the first one to make such a call and until that point the company was unaware of a problem. We then stood around and had a candlelight snack while waiting to see if we could spot the power company trucks. After about a 20 minute wait we both called it a night and went to bed. Candlelight gets old fast, and I was full.

I awoke this morning to find that power had been restored. I was able to rest easy, TV viewership and internet surfing averages will not be negatively affected by this power outage.