POWER!

Hurray! Yippee! The power is finally back on! NEWS FLASH! At 5:40pm October 24, 2008 one of us was standing outside and noticed the porch light was on. Since that light was not connected to the generator we knew we had finally been reattached to the island wide power grid. After a relatively fast 9 days without power we were once again living in the glare of modern technology. All of us were at once happy to have power and nostalgic for the romantic tones of the kerosene lanterns. Practically every light, fan, recharger etc. was put to use at once. All were tested to see if they still worked and by 5:45pm the place was aglow. The following day more work was undertaken and the washer and dryer were put into heavy use that is still happening today. At 12:03 yesterday afternoon a WAPA(Water and Power Authority) representative called to see if our power had been restored. i said yes it had but it had gone off again just 5 minutes before she called. "WHAT!" she says, "Hold on" and i was left listening to all the ways one can save money on their power bill. You can save $18 a month if you turn off lights when you leave a room, you can save $28.50 a month if you only run your ceiling fans when you are in the room, you can save even more if you unplug the hot water heater when you are not using it and even more if you replace the incandescent lighting with CFL's. When the recording started repeating itself i found myself getting impatient.

Finally she comes back on the line and says, "Yes, you don't have power." i guess she thought i didn't already know that. "The line crew has turned off the power and is clearing the trees away your power will be restored later today." After the other hurricanes that hit here WAPA never contacted you so hearing from a rep was a huge improvement. Even the governor had sent out a robocall when the storm was approaching encouraging all residents to finish their preparations. These two calls, before and after the storm were greatly appreciated even if i started wondering if we should pull out the electrical cords we had put away and wondering if power would be restored before the food we had bought would start to melt in the tropical heat. Luckily the outage was short and now we have had uninterrupted power for 24 hrs. Oh happy day when one can walk into a room, flip the switch and the light comes on.

Looking into alternative generating sources has moved up on our list of things to investigate.

One other thing I might add is the sense of community that always happens after a damaging storm. Someday I hope that after we have finished the clean up work we don't all just go back to our respective corners. We do know how to work together to benefit our community, if only that drive could be bottled and sold everywhere we could do wonders.