36 hours of the Apocalypse

So you may have read (or maybe not considering how "The Media" treats Puerto Rico) that we had an island-wide black-out. The details depend a little on which account you read, but the basics are a fire started at one of the electric authority's (AEE) generating plants. As a self-defense mechanism, the rest of the system shut itself down. It was 36 hours of the Apocalypse.

People lined up at gas stations like this was the last tank of gas they could ever get. It was like the 70s and gas shortages and rationing all over again. People stocked up on water and canned foods like a Cat 5 hurricane was coming straight at us. Traffic lights were out. On an island where stop signs and traffic lights are sometimes more suggestions than actual rules, people didn't know what to do when there were no lights at all. I must say, from what I saw, the police did an unexpectedly excellent job handling traffic.

It was difficult to get news since almost all news comes electronically, either on TV or via the Internet, so no one really knew what happened or how long power would be out. Really, there was very little to do but make the best of it and ride it out. It was kinda like camping.

I want to copy something here a friend of ours wrote and posted on Facebook:

For my English speaking friends I am translating a post from this morning regarding the blackout. Everybody specially the media and the government have been continuously saying since yesterday that this is a crisis. Well I'm here to say that this is not a crisis, this is an inconvenience, a big one btw and an uncomfortable situation. No, having to recharge our phones in the car is not a crisis. Not being able to turn on the a/c is not a crisis, no, having to eat out because you have an electric stove is not a crisis either. I'm afraid to break the "terrible" news but having to put away your groceries in a cooler with ice is way far from being a crisis. A crisis are situations like the one that our Venezuelan brothers and sisters are living where they have to make lines that can take hours and even days just to try to get something to eat, not to mention that they don't have medicine. A crisis is having a car and not being able to move it because there is no gas anywhere like what happened in Cuba at the beginning of the 90's. A crisis is having to wait for a water truck because there is no such thing as water in your homes like in Ghana. A crisis is loosing family, friends and even the bed you would sleep on because of a natural disaster like a tsunami, an earthquake or a huge flood. Nothing like that is happening here. Traffic is flowing without any problem thanks to the excellent work the police is doing, our grocery stores have everything as usual, nobody has died because the battery of the laptop died etc. Let's be grateful for all our blessings and stop calling any inconvenience a crisis.


Mimi is absolutely right. this was an inconvenience, and really, a small one at that. For all the bad-mouthing of "the system" in Puerto Rico - and goddess knows there are enough problems with the system - the folks working on the problem restored electric service to most of the island in 36 hours. I think that's pretty damn good. In Michigan we could go 36 hours without electricity in the wake of a winter storm. Back there, we depended on electricity to heat homes. Back there, it was below freezing, often below zero degrees. Here it was still in the 80s. Yes, it was hot without fans and air conditioners. But nobody froze to death.

As Mimi so correctly pointed out, we have SO much to be grateful for. A few hours without electricity is a pretty minor inconvenience.

And there was a bonus: the night sky was beautiful without all the lights!