Where were you 5 years ago?

[Matt_S]

Today is the 5'th anniversary of the big Great Lakes-area blackout. 50 million people were out of power for several days before they got the grid completely back up and running.

I was at work when the place went dark. I was in charge of about 60 computer systems. We had about 20 minutes before the UPS would shut down. My boss and I decided to give it a few minutes before starting to power everything off since the application we were supporting was huge PITA to restart. After about 5 minutes or so, we decided that it wasn't going to be a brief outage, so we stared shutting things down. We were about 90% done when the UPS gave out. I told my boss "I guess I'll see you when the power comes back on" and went home. That was a Thursday. Power came back over the weekend, so we restarted everything first thing on Monday.

I was very lucky at the time to work 10 minutes (normally) from home. That day it took me 15 minutes because of the lights being out. Most other people I know were stuck in traffic for much, much longer.

(apologies to MarkC for pilfering his title)

 

[ThirdeYe]

I remember that Blackout... not a good time. To be honest, I don't remember what I was doing. Chances are I was playing a video game or something

 

[tom slick]

5 years ago I was an "activated guardsman" in the California Air National Guard in the middle of my second year of activation. I was getting ready to go to "7-Level" (craftsman) turboprop school and was heading to the middle east right after that.

 

[Kestas]

I was watching the Milky Way in the sky for the first time from the City.

 

[Cutehumor]

I was in another city and in college

 

[Benzadmiral]

Doing pretty much the same things (work, weekends) I am now, living in the same place I am now. I was still driving the big Mercedes 420SEL then.

 

[javacontour]

A week away from finding out about my ex-wife's affair!

 

[wavinwayne]

I was working on my first $Million.

 

[javacontour]

I think I've graduated to my second. I don't really know where my first million went. As the old story goes, I spent some on wine, women and song, and the rest I wasted.

 

[MarkC]

Five years ago, I was enjoying the first summer with my wife. I mena ex-wife. Or something.
Quite different from the summers following....

 

[Whitewolf]

First I was in the basement checking circuit breakers.
Then I went next door where they were listening to a battery powered radio, so they could tell me what appeared to be going on.
We had some really good lamb chops which I was originally going to grill in the kitchen but then I thought, we can still do this on the grill, so as soon as I got them going we had a huge cloudburst. We did get the lamb in the end!
The next morning my son and I went to the local store to get water and just beat the point where the police came in to regulate the amount that people were allowed to purchase.

 

[Patman]

I was at work when the power went out, and when we realized the power wasn't coming back on, they let us go home early (it was close to 5pm anyhow)

I was one of the lucky ones though, our power came back on at home by 11pm that night, so we got a good night's sleep and our food didn't go bad. My parents, who live only 5 miles away, didn't get their power back on until the following evening. So we went over to their house that night and had a huge barbeque to get rid of all the meat in their freezer that would've gone bad.

 

[Aldaris]

Starting university. Fat, ugly and discouraged. Pretty much at rock bottom at that point.

 

[Silk]

My wife and I were living in a 16ft caravan (trailer) with our 2 boys on her mother's back yard.I was visiting my best friend every night in hospital,he was diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease.In September I found my mother had cancer....and it was downhill from there.

Strangely my business had the highest yearly turnover we ever did - obviously that was the time to sell....but the situation dictated I stay and run it into the ground.2003 was a real turning point for me....it's good to have it all behind me now.

 

[Matt_S]

Whitewolf's post reminded me that my wife and I ate a lot of steak those few days. Everything in the freezer that could be eaten got eaten. Having a grill and a gas stove was a godsend. Full finished basements are a wonderful thing during a summer blackout, too. Makes sleeping much nicer.

 

[TallPaul]

I had taken the day off work and filled the gas tank that morning. Guys at work said it took hours to get home. We used the propane powered motorhome fridge to store our food. We also had about 17 gallons of water in the basement as I normally stock up for my next motorhome trip.

 

[Papa Bear]

Dreading turning 60 on my next birthday.

 

[Kestas]

I pulled out my recently purchased generator and kept the fridges cool for myself and three neighbors.

 

[JTK]

I was standing in line picking up a take-out pizza, watching NYC unravel on the TV's at the restaurant. I had no idea of the severity at the time. Luckliy we only had some spotty, short lived outages in the Buffalo NY area. Didn't even blip at the house. We did loose ~50 plants all at once at work. Thankfully I wasn't on shift that night.

 

[BrianWC]

Enjoying the used SAAB 900 I had picked up three weeks earlier.....