Community Chat

[butterfly123]

@WORKING GAL

I wanted to check on you and be sure you are doing well after a night without electricity.  I hope everything went smoothly 😊

[hennypenny]

@WORKING GAL, Hi, I am just up the road in Santa Barbara.

The last fire, people are surmising, was started by an edison failure.

It started in Ventura and burned all the way to Santa Barbara.

Last week we had a planned outage. We kept the fridge closed and found that all the food was okay. We did add frozen water in bags etc to the freezer part.

Edison did make a statement that they would also turn power off if heat and winds became a problem. Last night we had sundowners and it howled. I figured we would loose power but didn't. 

I would contact your local tv station and see what they can find out. Keyt here in town covered the story about pole replacements and planned outages.

I hope you are okay. Take care!

Global warming has certainly changed the dynamics. very scary.

[151949]

---

@SahmIam wrote:

I have asthma. In a situation like this, I would be in big trouble as would anyone who needs electricity to operate any medical equipment, keep medications cooled, etc. I'm surprised your county doesn't have something in place for those who need relief from the heat/need power on.

In my situation, we would at the local hospital, Walmart, 24 hour grocery store, anyplace that offered cool air during the night (most likely the hospital).

---

People who have to have electric to operate a piece of medical equipment should have a plan in place for how they would deal with power outages, for instance a battery backup (I have this for my CPAP so I can sleep) or a stand by generator. Electric service is not a guaranteed thing. If your in a heat wave I'm sure the electric company is trying to avoid a much worse disaster due to overload.

[Imaoldhippie]

I would rather have a power outage for a few hours than days or weeks because of transformers being overloaded and blown out.  Just be glad your area is not on fire.  

[WORKING GAL]

We did complain to the power company but obviously it didn't make a difference.  I checked the power maintenance outage online this morning and it is still scheduled to happen.  

[WORKING GAL]

This is the 4th or 5th maintenance outage we have had in the last four years.  In the past they have started at 9:00 a.m. and would be over between 3:00 and 4:00 p.m. I checked our outside temp last night at 9:00 p.m. and it still in the 80's.  Nighttime temps got to the mid 70's between 1:00 and 2:00 a.m.  That was yesterday when our high temp only got to 99.  Today is supposed to be 103 - 104.

[WORKING GAL]

@feline groovy - Wouldn't take a chance on the Motel 6 in our city.  Too many stories of drug arrests there and our city is one of the safest cities in our county.  Thanks for the suggestion.

[WORKING GAL]

@kdgn - We're taking all the precautions you mentioned that we can.  We've been through this in the daytime for 6 hours about 4 times.  I will bag up all the ice from our icemaker in Ziploc bags and place in the freezer.  We'll also buy a bag of ice and put some perishables like milk, cottage cheese, etc. in one of our coolers.

Thank heavens we just put in a new larger AC system so we'll be able to cool the house down more prior to the outage.  Thanks for the suggestions.  It is still an annoyance!

[kdgn]

@WORKING GAL

I did forget to mention one thing: If you have an automatic garage door opener you might want to put a car in the driveway. That's one thing I wished I could've done when we had the unexpected power outage overnight. I know there's a way to open it manually but my car is in the way!!

Good luck tonight----

[Mominohio]

---

@WORKING GAL wrote:

@kdgn - We're taking all the precautions you mentioned that we can.  We've been through this in the daytime for 6 hours about 4 times.  I will bag up all the ice from our icemaker in Ziploc bags and place in the freezer.  We'll also buy a bag of ice and put some perishables like milk, cottage cheese, etc. in one of our coolers.

Thank heavens we just put in a new larger AC system so we'll be able to cool the house down more prior to the outage.  Thanks for the suggestions.  It is still an annoyance!

---

I have to wonder if everyone taxes the system to over cool their homes prior to the outage, it could cause a failure from overload before the planned outage. 

I can't suggest any stronger than for people to get backup generators, either the portable ones, or the stand by ones that come on and off as soon as the power goes out. They can be a bit of an investment for some people, but such peace of mind for things like this, and worse.