Time to tweak the plan for power outage

When it comes to technology, there’s nothing more educational or painful than direct experience. I had quite an education recently. A really aggressive storm and an aging tree that fell across powerlines conspired to keep me without power for four days and telephone service for five.

Although I have written about ways to deal with such a crisis recently, my unwelcome real world experience gave me an opportunity to test some of my suggestions.

TECHNOBUDDY

E-mail Bill Husted

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As you might expect, some worked fine, others didn’t. So while all this is fresh in my mind, I’m going to pass along my tips for dealing with power and telephone outages. Let’s start with areas where, despite my earlier pontification, I was unprepared.

Good old paper

Like many folks, I depend too much on technology when it comes to keeping lists and finding addresses and telephone numbers. I routinely toss bulky telephone books and find what I need online. So when it came time to call the power and phone companies to report the outages, I literally was in the dark. I used a cellphone to get the numbers, but it would have been a lot handier to have all my emergency numbers printed out on a sheet of paper.

Breaking the loop

If you’ve ever tried to call a utility during a widespread outage, you know that your call will be handled by an automated system. There’s no contact with humans and often not an option to get out of the loop. After several frustrating non-conversations with robotic recordings, I first tried continuously punching the zero key on the phone. That worked with one recording, not with another. When that didn’t work, my wife ingeniously talked back to the recording with complete nonsense. If asked a question by the robot, she might say … as best I can record it … “walla walla mumph.” For whatever reason, that resulted in a human coming on the line, even when punching zero did not.

What did work

Man, I was glad to have my battery-powered fluorescent camping lanterns. Mary and I used one each. That meant a broad swath of light — nearly as good as a table lamp — to use to read and cook. You can find them at stores such as Target and Wal-Mart. Get the biggest and best ones you can find. On the non-tech side of things, it sure helped to have a gas cooking stove. But it is handy to have matches around since the burners won’t automatically light by themselves.

Our Uninterruptible Power Supply system was also handy. I tapped into the system to keep our cellphones — the only way to communicate — charged. And since a column had already been written but needed to be sent off, I was able to use some of my battery power to fire up the desktop computer long enough to copy the column onto a memory stick. Then I drove to my wife’s office to transfer the column to that machine using the USB memory stick and sent it in to the newspaper.

I was also glad I had plenty of D batteries for the lanterns, along with batteries of various sizes for flashlights, my portable radio (a great source of potentially life-saving news about the storm, as well as entertainment for dark evenings) and other battery-powered gadgets. It’s especially important to stockpile batteries in advance. My wife stopped by a convenience store on the way home early in the storm and discovered that it was sold out of batteries. So don’t wait for a widespread outage to buy the batteries — regular alkaline batteries last two to five years when stored unused.

What I’d do different

I think I’ll buy a small battery-powered TV. The first models capable of receiving the new digital signals are out (your old battery-powered televisions won’t be able to receive the digital signals). Just as an example, not a recommendation for or against this model, Radio Shack sells a 7-inch model that receives both analog and digital over-the-air signals. It sells for $200 and you can read about it here: www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?product Id=2855063. That would have added to our ability to get storm news as well as furnish entertainment.

I hope my experiences help the next time the lights go out. It isn’t the sort of education I wanted, but what I learned might keep both of us out of the dark next time.