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4x4Mom

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Re: Where were you when the lights went out???(5th anniv of 2003 blackout)
« Reply #30 on: August 15, 2008, 10:07:10 AM »

I was at work...ended up staying on duty for most of the 2 days (straight).
All kinds of calls all over A2 as nobody's alarm systems worked.
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erfire

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Re: Where were you when the lights went out???(5th anniv of 2003 blackout)
« Reply #31 on: August 15, 2008, 03:55:42 PM »

I had just picked up my mother's ashes from the funeral home and drove to the cemetery.  The owner and I walked out to our family plot and laid her to rest. When we returned to the office we noticed the power was out. I drove to my grandmother's house to check on her and learned the extent of the blackout. My sister was scrambling for a generator for my grandmother because she was on home oxygen.
It is a family joke that it was my mom that did it.  We figure she didn't appreciate being driven to the cemetery on back seat of a Jeep in a Pink Gift Bag...LOL.

Other than that, when I finally got home, it was so hot we all piled in the truck (for the a/c) and drove to Jackson. They had power there and we got a big cooler, ice, and some groceries to last a few days.
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Re: Where were you when the lights went out???(5th anniv of 2003 blackout)
« Reply #32 on: August 15, 2008, 04:08:38 PM »

This is funny NOW!

In the state I live - we had already lost power and Monroe still had power.  So I packed a bag and headed there to Monroe..... I walked in my friends house, and literally before the door shut poof  - power went out.     >:(   
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blueangel

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Re: Where were you when the lights went out???(5th anniv of 2003 blackout)
« Reply #33 on: August 15, 2008, 08:57:43 PM »

This is funny NOW!

In the state I live - we had already lost power and Monroe still had power.  So I packed a bag and headed there to Monroe..... I walked in my friends house, and literally before the door shut poof  - power went out.     >:(   


 :D
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DundeeDad

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Re: Where were you when the lights went out???(5th anniv of 2003 blackout)
« Reply #34 on: August 15, 2008, 10:33:53 PM »

I was watching the ladies play golf at the Jamie Farr thing in Sylvania.
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katy scarlett

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Re: Where were you when the lights went out???(5th anniv of 2003 blackout)
« Reply #35 on: August 15, 2008, 10:40:32 PM »

I was at home. None of the coworkers I talked to knew how far the outage reached, so a bunch of us went to work to find out it was out there too. I remember feeling really bad for my supervisor-her and the maintenance guys had to stay in case it came back on. Not only was she bored to tears, she was also about 5 months preggers.
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BigRedDog

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Re: Where were you when the lights went out???(5th anniv of 2003 blackout)
« Reply #36 on: August 15, 2008, 10:55:51 PM »

I was watching the ladies play golf at the Jamie Farr thing in Sylvania.

I was at home. None of the coworkers I talked to knew how far the outage reached, so a bunch of us went to work to find out it was out there too. I remember feeling really bad for my supervisor-her and the maintenance guys had to stay in case it came back on. Not only was she bored to tears, she was also about 5 months preggers.
Oh I'll bet she was miserable katy scarlett...
After we figured out it wasn't coming back on anytime soon I got the generator going...  We can run the well pump or we can run the air conditioning...  just not BOTH at the same time...  so after we got showers and some water stored up I switched it over to the AC and let it run...  it was so hot and humid...   The cable and internet didn't work but we could get a couple of TV stations with the antenna...    figured out it was going to be a while before we had power so I loaded up gas cans and headed for Toledo since we had heard they had power in Sylvania area..   Ran the generator all night and slept right through until morning.  I don't remember the exact time our power came back on, but we were one of the first to get it back...
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PrincessAmy

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Re: Where were you when the lights went out???(5th anniv of 2003 blackout)
« Reply #37 on: August 16, 2008, 02:54:27 AM »

How long were you guys without power? I forgot what even caused the whole thing.

Sorry, we were kind of oblivious out west  ;D
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MomEm

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Re: Where were you when the lights went out???(5th anniv of 2003 blackout)
« Reply #38 on: August 16, 2008, 08:30:25 PM »

IDK how long power was actually out.

I was supposed to be making a birthday cake for a friend's twin sons' party, and they had power but I did not.  But it came on with just barely enough time for me to bot have to back out.

But when it went out, we were swimming and I thought I had blew the fuse by having the radio turned up too loud ( *:)).  But we can see smokestacks from our house and it was strange to see nothing coming out.

:)
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Frenchfry

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Re: Where were you when the lights went out???(5th anniv of 2003 blackout)
« Reply #39 on: August 16, 2008, 11:03:54 PM »

I didn’t recall so I had to ask my wife.

She said we were just returning from a California/Las Vegas road trip and heard the news on the radio as we entered our driveway

I only slightly remember it so dementia may be setting in.

She said it was broad daylight and someone thought it may have been a terrorist attack at the time.

I do recall it was a failure from the power company that knocked out most of the Eastern part of the United States.
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Stubborn

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Re: Where were you when the lights went out???(5th anniv of 2003 blackout)
« Reply #40 on: August 17, 2008, 09:29:09 PM »

Other than the heat and arguing with the person with the ice, I thought the power outage was great ;D and ours was out for 2 1/2 days!

It was Thursday, my day off, and I was watching TV in the middle of a sunny and hot afternoon.  I was thinking it was strange because there were no storms or anything in the area.  So I get a call about 20 minutes later from hubby who was at work (with a generator) and he said he'd been trying to call me for about 10 minutes and it said all the towers were full.  Anyways he said to go get some ice because it was going to be awhile before things got going.  I tried several times to call my mom and finally got through after about 15 minutes.  She said she'd heard 'terrorists'  and I'm thinking 'good grief I'll puke if I hear one more thing about 'terrorists'.  Anyways she doesn't keep much in her fridge so she didn't need any ice.

So I head down to the gas station.  This was the thing that ticked me off.  There was about 4 of us standing outside wanting ice, one poor old couple at the pump, and the attendant had locked herself in the building!  Apparently because her cash register was out she wasn't 'authorized' to sell anything, including the gas from the old couple who'd been there about an hour by this point!  At one point I recall a few were talking about just taking the ice and leaving the money inside because the ice machine was outside and unlocked and would just melt anyways.  About that time a friend of the attendant came, called someone for authorization, and finally opened the store up for small sales cash exact change only.  So I got several bags of ice and headed home to pack up what I could in two ice chests.

Hubby got home, we had a cook out to use up some of the food, we got out the camping lanterns, talked, played cards, and board games most of the night at the picnic table.  Both our work places had generators so the next day was work as usual, good thing our alarm clock had battery back up.  Although because of the heat we slept on our camping cots by the only window getting any kind of breeze.  Work was very slow for both of us, but we didn't lose any hours because of the power though.  We took our morning showers (gas hot water heater) by lantern, I dried my hair by battery powered fan, and we went about our day.

Fri & Sat nights same as before, camping lanterns, cook out, cards, talking, board games, camping cots.  It was a blast, I was hoping it would stay out for longer.  Without all the distractions of TV, CPU etc it was a really fun time honestly.

The only thing that concerned me was that we had tickets to MIS for Sunday's race and I was afraid they would cancel it, but a phone call there reassured me they had power for Sunday.  Late during our at home camping fun on Sat, the power came back on.  So we went around shutting stuff off, resetting clocks/vcr's/appliances we finally did get our fans back and could go back to sleeping in our bed.  Went to MIS that Sunday had a blast. 

I wouldn't mind a repeat of it, wouldn't hurt my feelings any, and didn't really affect our lives negatively, I thought it was fun.
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Mike Ingels

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Re: Where were you when the lights went out???(5th anniv of 2003 blackout)
« Reply #41 on: August 17, 2008, 09:48:40 PM »

The blackout happened the day I had my wisdom teeth pulled.  I came out of anesthesia, went home and the lights went out.  I lived in Onsted at the time and we were pretty much the last neighborhoods in the blackout area.  Brooklyn had power.  So, we just kept running into Brooklyn for ice, batteries and, most importantly, gas.

But it is always kind of fun to be a part of something like that.
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