the Walnut Diary

This evening I was just going to sleep when the bedside lamp suddenly went out.  Then I noticed all of the LEDs in the room were no longer there.  It was very dark.  And I had lost my sense of direction.

With no idea of where a flashlight might be, I opened my MacBook and used its powerful flare until I could find my phone, then searched out flashlights, then candles.  No matches.  Found a lighter.  A lifetime non-smoker, I couldn’t remember how to operate one.  Woke my wife up to light a candle.  She was less than pleased, but co-operated.

All lights off as far as I could see.  Eerie.  Then the street lights in Crosby came up.  A utility truck began to flash lights in Forfar, lighting up half the houses in the hamlet.

My Internet was out, so I couldn’t even instant-message anyone on my phone.  Had to text.

Soon I became bored with the darkness, so I went outside in the rain (46 F, thank goodness), lit up the Kubota, hitched it to the generator, and backed it up to the dangling emergency cable.  I had already flipped the generator switch in the basement, so in a couple of minutes I had the 220v feed adjusted to 60 hz, and we now had heat, water, and refrigeration.  And Internet, it turns out.  Seems at some point I must have deemed the circuit to power the router essential, because I noticed it was lit up.  I plugged a lamp into one of the plugs in the load centre, and we now had one light on the main floor, though the basement lights proved to be on the generator panel, as well.

A flashlight search of the house eventually located my laptop (upstairs bathroom, exchanged for large candle) and I logged onto the Hydro Storm Site.  Surely enough, we have a power outage from a pole fire.

.Incident Id: 4919341
Customers Affected: 285
Crew Status: Dispatched
Cause: Pole Fire
Estimated Restoration: Mar 8, 12:45 AM

Oh, well.  I didn’t miss anything on TV, and I finally had a chance to run the little pto generator I bought 3 years ago.

We don’t get many outages in Forfar since the Ice Storm.

Funny how dark it felt when the lights went out, though.

Update:  12:01, 8 March, 2017

There’s no longer evidence of work progressing in Forfar.  All is dark.  I checked the Storm Site:

Incident Id: 4919341
Customers Affected: 307
Crew Status: Crew Working in Area
Cause: Pole Fire
Estimated Restoration: Mar 8, 2:00 AM

Maybe they had to go get a pole, or a transformer.  Meanwhile, the Kubota’s humming contentedly as the wind steadily rises.

Update:  4:04 a.m., 8 March, 2017

Power restored at 3:40.  I had just refuelled the Kubota on-the-fly when the fire alarms bleeped and the lights came on.  I waited for the furnace to finish its cycle and then switched the generator panel back to Ontario Hydro power.  Neither the Kubota nor the 7.5 KW generator showed any sign of stress from about 15 litres of fuel turned into electricity over five hours on a warm, rainy night.

We are now in mud season.

Update:  1:30 p.m., 8 March, 2017

I have just spent an interesting hour researching pole fires.  The short version is that at this time of year, dirt and road salt can build up on the ceramic insulators which keep the wires away from the large bolts which support the wires and connect them to the pole.  Dry salt does not conduct, but under the right conditions of humidity, the accumulated salt can begin to conduct current through to the metal bolt beneath the insulation.  This can in its turn heat the bolt which chars the post, sometimes to the point that the wood ignites.  This produces a pole fire, the most common cause of power outages in cold climates.  Repairs typically involve replacing the pole and any hardware attached to it, as it’s all toast if there is a fire.

Last night’s pole fire resulted in a six-hour outage to four hundred customers.  Though they restored the power in that interval, I saw the crew was still at work on the pole (which appears to hold three transformers) in front of Baker’s Feeds at noon today.