A High Wind in Jamaica

A 1965 movie which you will not be able to watch because the electric power supply to your home and office has failed, so tough luck.

Here in Bonavista we are waiting for two-thirty tomorrow morning when the winds should be at their peak, and start tapering off. I shall peer out of my bedroom window and see my shed, which is NOT good news because for the past two months my eight-foot-high stand of artichokes has hidden the shed from my view. Seeing my shed means that my artichokes will be lying like flattened cornstalks, and my artichoke tubers will not develop.

Remember that the energy in a moving fluid (air or water) is proportional to the CUBE of the velocity ( The Cubed Law ), so that whereas the wind speed at 12:30pm is 25Km/hr, at two-thirty tomorrow morning the wind will be at 125Km/h, five times the velocity, so 125 times the energy! THAT is why your roof is vulnerable.

Note that is 125 TIMES the energy, not an energy of 125 “somethings”. How would you feel if next month’s electricity bill was 125 times its normal value? How would you feel if next month’s electricity bill was 1/125th its normal value? How would you feel if the price of gasoline jumped from $1.53 per litre to one hundred and ninety dollars per litre? See what I’m getting at here?

But anyway, back to you and your misery. The strong winds will come (blizzard, hurricane, tornado, whatever), and the power lines will go down, and you know what? An unanticipated power outage is always of indeterminate duration! It is easy to look back and talk about “the two-day outage” or the “twelve-hour outage”, but when the lights go out Poof! Like that (snaps his fingers), nobody knows how long it will be until the fridge starts whirring again.

You were unprepared last time, and you will be unprepared next time UNLESS you follow my advice and learn how to prepare for a power outage IN LESS THAN ONE MINUTE, and with no effort on your part. Here we go:-

Right now, before you reach the end of this paragraph, get up from your chair, walk to the electrical service panel, and turn off the main breaker that allows electricity to flow into your house. If you are still here you have failed. You are supposed to have killed the power supply BEFORE reaching the end of this paragraph.

Welcome back.

Now that didn’t take much effort did it? And you were able to freshen up your coffee on the way back.

Did you notice that the ‘fridge light didn’t come on? Also that you can continue reading this on your laptop, even though the electricity is off and the laptop battery is already being drained of power?

Makes you think!

Your smart phone playing that Spanish-language podcast from SBS in Sydney, that too is draining its battery power, and nobody knows how long it will be until the fridge starts whirring again. Least of all, you.

Now I urge those of you who have NOT raced back and turned on the main breaker that allows electricity to flow into your house, to take it easy, also a deep breath, and THINK!

Cutting the power manually for fifteen minutes is not the end of the world. You are in control. See? This is not an unanticipated power outage, so it is not of indeterminate duration. It is of fifteen minutes duration.

Relax. Let’s wait for the panicky ones to come back.

Ah! Here they are.

Now you should all take fifteen minutes to sit quietly and think. You are not dead. Your home-made iced-cream is not thawing. The raw chicken is not going off, and you still have forty gallons of hot water, plenty enough for a shower.

You are in the enviable position of finding out what the next power outage will mean to you, WITHOUT THE PAIN.

It is time for paper-and-pencil, because you need to make a list of the basic essentials, something like this:-

(1) Food

(2) Water

(3) Shelter

(4) Sleep

(5) Others

(6) Novelty

You have seen this list before, and if we skip immediately to “Others”, this might be a good time to gather the children for a family chat. Tell them that if they pay attention and help out, they can be back to their game on their laptop before their battery runs out.

(1) Food: You will not be able to cook food during the power outage, so once the meeting is finished we are going to inspect the contents of the fridge and the kitchen pantry. You will all want to help cook stuff the day before the high winds arrive, and you can make a sub-list. If you have home-made cookie-mix in the fridge, bake it into a batch of cookies now; you won’t be able to bake cookies while the wind howls, but if you have a tin or two of ginger-snaps, you will feel more cheerful. I maintain a pantry with home-made soups, stews, and baked-beans, so I just check that I have a dozen or so jars there and think that that will be enough. But any raw chicken in the fridge, you might bake that and use it as a meat-protein base for salads.

(2) Water: Scheme water is undrinkable where I live, so I harvest rain-water and maintain a four-week supply in 25-litre carboys. If you have never tried this, check out your roof. It is probably anything from ten to twenty feet from the eaves to the peak. A one-foot-wide tub placed under the eaves will harvest ten to twenty square feet of rain. If the downpour is 1 centimetre of rain – well, you can do the math on your laptop, once the power comes back on. And from now on, stop tossing those two-litre juice bottles into the blue recycling bin. Second Use For Everything!.

(3) Shelter: Obviously you have shelter. You are sitting in it right now. But consider that you may have unexpected visitors, like your next-door neighbours whose roof has blown off, or a couple stranded in their car when both creeks flooded. This suggests that spare bedding and clothing might be checked. Also board games like Monopoly and Scrabble.

(4) Sleep: I don’t get much time to sleep during high winds. This is a 75-year old house after all. Still and all I tell myself that power outages are unusual, and it is NOT a sin to crawl into bed and lie there under a duvet, conserving body heat while the house scuttles to the outside temperature of -10c.

(5) Others: This means people and pets, which is why it made sense to get the family together and explain what is happening. Team Effort, and Team Pride are my guiding principles, even though I am the only one on the team.

(6) Novelty

Remember that when the power goes, so does your router or satellite dish. You have six hours power in your laptop(s), but no internet connection. This means that you will be using smart phones to check-in via your phone line and data package to learn what is going on in your neighborhood. Right now is a good time to locate THAT web page and bookmark it, rather than waste phone power later on.

The TV is out, so make a short stack of books that can be read in bed. This means paperbacks, not one of the two hard-backed volumes titled “Complete Works of Mark Twain”. A stack of paper and a pencil will save you from draining your laptop with lists of things-to-do-once-the-power-comes-on.

Everyone marches through a hot shower twelve hours before the storm, giving the heater time to re-heat the water, and contrary to the practice at my high-school hostel, one CAN go three days between showers. And don’t forget, you won’t be working up a sweat twice a day because the power to your electric treadmill is gone.

You will miss your morning coffee, I know, but you could prepare a jug of coffee now, and even though you’ll miss your morning HOT beverage, you can laugh at the plight of your neighbours who don’t get any caffeine at all. Such idiots, being unprepared!!

Hard-boiled eggs are a source of animal protein, and if the power does not go out, you can add them to the salad you will make with the dandelion leaves you harvested from your garden before the storm hit.

If one of the kids is getting antsy during this fifteen minute exercise, send them off to the corner store with a twenty-dollar bank-note and instructions to bring back as many pounds of chocolate bars as they can get for twenty dollars.

If any other kid gets antsy during this fifteen minute exercise, they are assigned to washing all the dishes that need washing. Now. So that you will have the maximum number of plates available for finger foods. Face-cloths and towels.

Candles, saucers, and two cigarette lighters. Buy yourself an old-fashioned can-opener that you turn with your hand.

And with that, our fifteen minutes is up. Turn the power back on and make yourselves a hot cuppa tea. You have earned it.

Or if you want to learn more, leave the power off for a full twenty-four hours and see what else your team can learn before Lights Out!.

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