power outage
On the 29th of April, at 11:31, I was sitting at my home desk, as usual. My PC turned off, and my first thought was: "These motherfuckers killed the power in my building with their stupid renovations." However, the drills stopped seconds after. I went outside and asked the next door butcher if they had any power. It went out at the same time as mine, so I guessed it was an outage in our neighbourhood. It happens in the summer every now and then, so I knew it was a matter of time until it got back. I would just call the company that maintains the power grid so that they could send someone, and the power would be back in one or two hours. No biggie.
But a biggie it was. I had no cell service. Neither Prince, the grocery store guy. That's odd. With no way of getting in touch with my girlfriend, I decided to cycle to her workplace just to let her know I was fine, but that we had no power at home. I turned on the battery saver mode, and off I went.
About five minutes later, things got weird. As I got to the first stoplight, there were no lights. I kept on going until I stopped near a coffee shop and heard someone saying it was a general outage in the Iberian Peninsula. Fuck, it was a serious issue. I wondered what happened, and decided to get some money from the ATM, just in case.
Another five minutes later, now two minutes away from my destination, a car radio announces that the outage is affecting Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, and Germany. I get to my girlfriend's workplace and roughly explain what happened. While a little worried, we get our rational thinking caps on and come to the following conclusions:
- We have food at home, even if we need to clear the fridge within 24 hours. We're vegetarians, which looks like an advantage in times like these;
- Our stove and water heater are powered by natural gas, so we can still take hot showers— a luxury — and heat up our food;
- We have a stash of dry and wet cat food, so Haruki is also covered, although disheartened by seeing is water fountain turned off.
With that being said, I decided to get a radio, since it can be useful. Now, I must stress that at this time it was 12:30. In less of a hour, people were panic-buying radios, flashlights, and bread. I saw a woman carrying four flashlights and having the audacity of saying: "I left one on the shelf!"
Ridiculous hoarding aside, I got back to my girlfriend's workplace, and we decided that I'll meet her at work when she gets out so that we can go home together. Mind you, all communications are pretty unstable at the moment, so I feel like a kid again: making plans at a specific hour and expecting anyone to show up.
On my way back home, I saw stores and supermarkets closed, massive lines of people at electronics stores trying to get—I assume—radios, batteries and flashlights, and prayed to survive all the intersections in the way.
It is now 15:42, and I had lunch and filled a ton of water bottles and jugs, since the water supply is also shaky, apparently. I reached out to my neighbours, an old and adorable couple, to tell them I'll be home, should they need anything. I managed to send a text to my parents to let them know we're safe and that there's no need to worry. And I'm posting this after weeks of not posting anything because I don't want to forget any of this. In less than two hours, I was reminded that, without power, the world basically stops. Digital money is useless when stuff like this happens. And I really need to get a 72-hour kit ready when we're over this.
I'm 28 years old, and I've lost track how many "historic" moments I've lived. Could we please get back to living not-so-eventful lives?
Update: The power came back at 10:45 pm. I'm curious to see how many people will try to return radios and flashlights today.