Well... I've had an adventurous little event here. The story begins right after a long day's work:


Monday: Holy fuck, it's raining like hell. Driving to work is more like hydroplaning to work, and tha news (Global BC, Channel 11 here) says there's a high flood risk throughout the lower mainland.

3:00 p.m.: I get home from work. Freezing.

5:00 on: Hail. Lots of hail. My dog doesn't even want to take a piss in this weather without bolting back inside my house.

5:20-ish: A single lightbulb flickers. Not surprising, considering the somewhat painful blizzard outside.

Sometime around 6:00:

I said "I swear my house just shook". The Tempest #1 Official Maps I said "there's a lightning storm in Vancouver". The Tempest #1 Official Maps I said "oh, holy fuck". The Tempest #1 Official Maps
^^Understatement. For about 3 seconds I heard the nearby crackle of thunder. 2 seconds later, it got crazy loud. A second after that, I hit the deck.  The whole damn neighborhood was shaking, my modem and my CD tower actually fell over during the thing and my dog was barking his lungs out.  Poor guy was so wracked from the thing he curled inside a quilt for the rest of the night. Screw the TF2. That was when I realized this shit is 4srs.

6:30-ish: Power goes out and comes back on 5 seconds later. Clocks hit 12:00 and the burglar/smoke alarm goes completely nuts.
My roommate actually woke up.

From here on out is when I started tracking the actual times of these events:

6:40: IRC. I give a little explanation to some peeps (Cheney and Blah) about the shit that's going down right now before 30 quesstions related to stargate. The rain eversoslightly lets up a little, and I get the impression that the storm's over.

7:10: Power off again. Damn.

7:15: Power on. Moar alarms.

7:46: Power's off. Everywhere. Streetlights shut down and everywhere within eyesight of my house is now sans electricity.

8:10: Now, I'm suspicious. I haven't had a power outage last this long in the last year.

8:30: What the fuck. 3 dollar flashlights are put into action.

8:40: I run out of Tim Horton's donuts.

8:43: My iPod nano dies.

8:45: I consider playing some Nirvana on my Gibson Firebird to pass the time. That plan was rubbed out after I couldn't find my pick in the near pitch-black darkness. Oh, and it's still raining.

8:50: Roommate falls asleep.


8:52: I have an LG Chocolate with mobile IRC installed. And I didn't charge the batteries. Into action... for about 3 minutes. It went something like this:

CiaoTime:hey
hooli:hey
DickCheney:welcome back
hooli:power holding?

CiaoTime has left the server (Timed out)

lol. Now I'm out of contact with the outside world. Land phone lines are also down.

8:55: My ancient iPod 10gig has hit the end of it's songlist. Now we have a crisis.

8:55 1/2: Roomie's snoring begins. I can't hear myself think from 2 rooms away. He even wakes up the dog.

9:10: All natural light is gone. It's completely pitch black except for a GE electric lantern.

9:12: Reading Car and Driver magazine by lanternlight. New Challenger destroys the new Mustang Bullitt on the drag strip. Not surprising, considering most Mustangs are underpowered and overly heavy hunks.

9:15: Still raining. Screw this, I'm going to bed.

I ended up falling asleep on the couch.

Tuesday:

5:54 a.m. WOOWOOOWOOO! Power's on, also waking everything present from their near-comatose sleep. Car alarms go off outside. Still raining. And my roommate still doesn't wake up. What a trooper, eh?
This has been the longest unresolved power outage I've ever experienced since the '90s... anywhere.

6:00: Noos time.

6:03: Sex offender list. Looks like Brian Peppers has some competition on the ugly wagon.

6:06: The top story of the day is that McDonalds has pulled all tomatoes from their burgers. Oh, wow.

6:10: Half of White Rock has been wiped clean due to massive flash floods. Thank God The Boathouse wasn't damaged. they easily make the best clam chowder in the whole country.

6:14: The traffic lady makes a small (read: 4 second max) remark about how power's been cut to the entire east side of the city. Then going into traffic. Wow.

6:17: Roomie wakes up, drinks a glass of warm Nestea from the fridge, and goes back to bed. Even the goodness of Canadian Nestea can't keep that guy awake.

6:30: That's it. No mention whatsoever about the fact that we, probably your only viewers, were living by candlelight, WITHOUT TIM HORTON'S, for 11 hours.

6:31: I send BC Hydro a nice, friendly e-mail wondering WTF is this shit. We've had storms worse then this one (although not by much) have power outages lasting 20 minutes at the maximum.

7:00: I start writing this timeline. No reply from Hydro.

7:24: Finished this timeline. No reply from Hydro.

Well, this was fun. A power blackout, followed by a communication blackout, followed by a media blackout.

Oh, and it's still raining.

I'm with you on that one cheney.
it's funny when you never see anyone outside, but since the houses start heating up in florida due to no air conditioning, everyone strangely finds things to do outside of their house in the front yard.
it's like a whole bunch of bears coming out of their caves after a nice hibernation.

I really wouldn't call that an outage though ciao, i think you just need to suck it up :)

That's nothing. During December/January-ish parts of town here (midtown USA) were in the dark for weeks (yes, that is plural). In the middle of town. Because of an ice storm. Yeah....it was crazy. We are used to power outages.