Frigid in Pittsburgh

How cold have you ever been? I can remember when we were children and would be outside sledding for hours in the winter only to come home to aching fingers and toes. We’d pour warm water on the digits to slowly warm them up, which made them hurt more for a little while.

I had a close encounter with those memories this week when the electrical power in our neighborhood was interrupted when a huge pine tree fell during a wind storm, pulling down all electrical wires in its wake.

The power (and heat) went out at 11 a.m. Sunday, a fairly typical occurrence in our neighborhood. Our electricity is a fickle thing at best, flickering at times when there’s no good reason to, causing computers and TVs to reboot over and over again.

But this past Sunday was the real deal. The lights flickered a couple of times but then we were thrust into the Land of No Coffee, Heat and Email as they went out completely.

Ever the optimists, we figured that the lights and heat would come back on soon so we went about our day as best we could without electricity (which is getting harder and harder to do). We called our light company to see what was up and after punching in information (the first of many, many times), we learned that the electricity would be restored, no problem, at 6 p.m. (Our neighbors, who had called earlier, had been told via the tape that it would be restored at 12:30 and then 2 p.m. Silly tape.)

That didn’t sound too bad, so we went out of the house for awhile and came back thinking that all would be well. As we sat and watched 6 p.m. come and go, we got a little more anxious. Calling back, the new deadline we learned was 12:30 a.m. Monday. Still we thought, OK, we can do this. We gathered up afghans, hats, mittens, and lots of socks, lit some candles and each grabbed a flashlight.

The temperature in the house was dropping like a rock, bettering my understanding of that phrase. We went from about 65 degrees into the 50s and then the 40s in a few hours, which, I can tell you, is darn cold no matter where you are.

Assuming that the electric company, after having given us bad information earlier,  wouldn’t give us bad information again, we decided to go to bed and wait for the heat to start flowing again just after midnight. But another quick call, this one at 11 p.m., told us that the estimate for repair was now set at 5 a.m. Monday!

It was too late, and we were too tired and bundled up, to go somewhere else. A long night awaited us as we tried to keep warm. Overnight the house dropped to 34 degrees (the coldest temperature that I know of recorded in my neighborhood I am proud to say). All night long I could feel this frigid zone around my face and head making it impossible to sleep. My wonderful Tempur-Pedic pillow turned into a concrete. I filled my old-fashioned hot water bottle up a couple of times during the night with hot water so I could lay my face on it to keep me from freezing.

Once again, the light company’s estimate came and went. At 5 a.m., we were still experiencing near freezing temps in the house. When I called – again -- and talked to an actual person at the company, he said power would be restored at 9 a.m. now that all the paperwork had been done. Yeah, like I was going to believe him. I drove to our brand new McDonald’s, picked up a coffee and went to an early morning doctor’s appointment, where I was glad to see that they had heat.  When I was finished I called a couple of neighbors to see if the 9 a.m. deadline had been met, but guess what? Now the tape was reporting that the lines would be fixed at 1 p.m., which would eventually turn into 5 p.m. I was furious at this point.

Coming home around 4:30 p.m. Monday from another escape from our igloo, I talked to a flagman at the site where they were fixing our lines who told me we would have power in 30 minutes. (Even still we didn’t cancel the hotel room reservation we had made for that night.) But miracle of miracles, the lights came on at 4:45 p.m. and the furnace began the long task of heating this old barn up, which took seven hours or more.

It took my fingers a lot longer to thaw. I should have tried that old trick of running warm water on them I guess.

Now that we are warm once again and have had time to reflect on this, we do understand that the light company can’t always determine to the minute when something will be fixed, especially when damage is caused by a storm. But how they could be off by a day and half is a little beyond me. And if the tape had told us that it might take that long, we would have set all the sinks to dribble water so the pipes didn’t freeze and abandoned ship. But by the time we realized the power wasn’t going to be restored Sunday night, it was too late to go anywhere.

Apparently “warming centers” had been established in our community for those of us on this hill who were without heat. But I have a question: How do we know there are such centers if we have no TV, radio or phone service? Our cell phones did work during the Big Freeze, but we didn’t have a good way to get the news. And couldn’t the power company put that information on their tape so we could have found out about it?

One of the oddest things that happened was how we began to feel that our home, that we love, was a hostile environment. Being in here when it was so cold was scary and unwelcoming and we knew we had to get out. We will never take electricity for granted again.

In the course of life, our experience was a minor blip and nothing compared to what people who experience tornados or hurricanes or other weather calamities suffer. But it does give one pause to remember that Mother Nature is in charge and we are only along for the ride.

Stay warm.

By Teresa K. Flatley

www.boomthis.com