Today = day 4 without power in Richmond

I understand that being without power is an inconvenience, and I sympathize with the people so afflicted.

But it is hard for me to get excited about three or four days with no lights in a relatively benign environment.

Try losing power when it's 20 or 30 degrees below zero sometime.

About 10 years ago we had a freak winter snowstorm (dare I call it a blizzard?) that hit in mid-September. This storm dropped maybe two feet of heavy, wet snow overnight onto trees that were still fully leafed and green. This was such an unusual occurrence that most of the above-ground pwer lines were affected -- we just don't normally get storms that knock trees down into powerlines here. Some homes were without power for as much as three weeks.

No power means no heat -- even oil furnaces require electricity to run -- and no heat means not only an uninhbitable house, but severe damage from frozen pipes. Many homes were simply abandoned untiil Spring as it was impractical to attempt repairs in the dead of winter.

I'm not trying to minimize the problems caused by hurricane Isabel. If we had a storm blow through Fairbanks with 80-100 MPH winds dropping the better part of a foot of rainfall, you'd probably need a GPS just to find where the town used to be. But loss of power with temperatures well above freezing? We'd just cope and not think it was anything all that hard to deal with.

tanstaafl.