On Wednesday afternoon the Washington area experienced a severe weather event that had a major impact. For us personally it was somewhat expensive, as our electricity failed as the weather rolled through at 3 PM - we were not home now but neighbors say that is when the power failed. Judging by clocks it came on at about 11 AM yesterday, a 44-hour gap for whose termination we are exceedingly grateful, as it was very muggy yesterday, and we will have a heat index over 100 today. It also interfered with the end of our school year, and with many events of normal life. And it caused us to take some time to reflect on how much we take for granted. This diary is a combination of looking back and of that reflection. It offers no profound insights. But perhaps you still might choose to continue reading? If you do, I welcome you.
I was sitting in my temporary classroom when two things happened at around 3:25 Wednesday afternoon. My wife called to say our tornado watch had been upgraded to a tornado warning for a region including where our school is located, and then immediately the loudspeaker announced that students for one event were being moved into the cafeteria. I paged the office to ask if they knew about the tornado warning. The assistant principal said they had just been informed. I asked if under the circumstances shouldn't they move everyone into the center of the main building? There were more teachers than usual out in the temporaries, some with students, grading end of year work or packing up books. The announcement was made as I went into the building to our new wing, where the classrooms had lots of windows. I suggested to those in that part to move further in because of the extensive windows that normally make those the most desirable rooms in which to teach. When I get to the front, I saw a lot of kids hanging around near the entrance, looking at the heavy rain and the darkening sky. I initiated a conversation with the building's #2, she consulted with the principal, and we decided to move everyone to the ground floor into the auditorium, which has no windows. As the announcement was being made, we checked each corridor to ensure there were not students hanging out or teachers stubbornly doing their end of school work. I sprinted out in the rain to parents in their cars to urge them to come into the building. Most chose to stay where they were.
The power in the building never went completely out, but we lost the school's computer network, and the television service was spotty. My wife, at her job in DC, used her computer and cell phone to keep us updated with the changing scenario. When our warning was lifted we began slowly to dismiss the 400+ students from the auditorium. The school staff remembered a tornado that had touched down at U of Maryland a few years back killing two people in a car, and one that had wreaked havoc in Charles County, just to our south, a year or so earlier. The administrators had emergency lanterns, which fortunately were not necessary. And despite the early confusion, our response had been adequate, although the principal and I talked briefly about ensuring we reacted a bit more quickly the next time - this storm front had been moving at almost 60 miles an hour, and in such a situation our warning time might be only 5 minutes. It had taken almost twice that to move everyone into the auditorium and check the building.
The day had not been especially hot, which was fortunate given how widespread the power failures were. Many trees and power lines were down, traffic lights were out, throughout the region. By about 7 PM two of the largest school districts, Montgomery and Prince George's (and I teach in the latter) had announced they would be closed the next day, although off-site graduations for Montgomery were still scheduled because the facilities they used had power. For my school Thursday had been scheduled as our last day of final exams, with Friday as a makeup. We also lost one day of makeup time for the state High School Assessment examinations. By late afternoon on Thursday we would be informed that (1) schools would be open on Friday, and (2) the school year would not be extended: the last day for students would remain Monday - I am guessing is that given the short notice the state waived the requirement for 180 days for students, especially since very few would be likely to show up even on Monday: families had made plans a long time ago, before the last day had been bumped past the weekend because of snow days.
We spent Thursday with no power at home. I did drive my wife to work. But no power meant no air conditioning, no wireless access through our airport wireless hub (and using cell phone cards runs down the batteries twice as fast). It meant no fans on a hot and muggy day. I had planned to do several loads of wash on Wednesday evening, but cleaning clothes was now impossible, except for the ability to wash a few things out by hand. Of course, it was pouring outside, and far too humid inside for things to dry properly. We do have a pilot light on our gas hot-water heater so we at least were able to wash ourselves. And while we have electronic ignition for our gas stove, it is still safe to use matches to light a burner in order to boil water or soup. We would not use the oven because without the exhaust fan the kitchen would, with only one small window (it is 70+ year old house), quickly become unbearably hot.
Still, so much of what we take for granted was missing. No air conditioning, no fans, most appliances not working. Only one small clock and one grandfather clock not on electricity. No ability to recharge cell phones or computers at home.
I grew up in suburban New York. We would get stretches of hot and humid weather, although from late June to late August my sister and I would usually be in Interlochen, Michigan for music camp, missing 8 weeks of the worst of the weather. Our house, built in the 1920s, did not have central AC, almost totally unknown for residences in the 1950s and early 1960s. We had two small room units, one in my bedroom and one in my parents, as both my father and I were quite subject to allergies, especially pollen. At camp the cabins had high ceilings and lots of windows and we were close to lakes, so it rarely became too uncomfortable. But even at home if here were no air conditioning people learned to adjust. And our entire lives did not depend upon massive amounts of electricity. And our community was not so dependent upon traffic signals to control the movement of vehicles as is the Arlington County of the 21st century.
Washington DC can be unbearable without air conditioning, impossible without electricity. Many of the houses are made of brick: during summery and sunshiny days the brick absorbs the radiation and heats up. Many houses do not have especially good air flow, unless there is a strong breeze, and sometimes even for that you need operable fans.
And of course we, like many, tend to buy lots of food that needs to be frozen or refrigerated. After 24 hours there is little that is salvageable, unless you could go and buy dry ice or block ice to put inside to try to keep things cool. There was a serious shortage of both. In the past our local utilities have made dry ice available, especially when hurricanes cause widespread outages. This time they decided the manpower necessary to logistically accomplish that was better spent restoring power. And bagged ice in supermarkets quickly disappeared.
On Thursday I was at my local Starbucks when it opened at 5:30 AM, with chargers for both my lap top and my cell phone. Within 15 minutes I had to unplug the latter - so many were coming in with their laptops that every outlet was needed for computer access. So many in this community are dependent upon computers and so many were without electricity.
Still, the outages were not as widespread as sometimes occurs with a hurricane. There were not as many lines down as I have seen in some situations with severe thunderstorms. But many had their lives disrupted because of their dependence upon electricity, and because our lines remain above ground, subject to the vagaries of wind, falling tree limbs, and the like.
People I know who live out in the country often have standby generators for situations like this. That is not really practical for most of us. Some nowadays have solar panels with inverters that can in the event of a power failure provide sufficient electricity to maintain refrigeration and perhaps one or two room air conditioners. Most around here are like us, dependent upon full access to the grid. In our case we deliberately chose to have hot water and stove on gas precisely because during a winter event, not uncommon with ice storms, many trees and above ground wiring, it is not unusual to lose power for an extended number of hours.
For us the most serious concern was our cats. We have five rescued felines. If the temperature on the main floor is 78, as it reached before the power came back on, then upstairs, absent the roof fan and with no breezes, it will be at least 10 degrees warmer, at a point which is not healthy for them, not for extended periods. This time we were lucky. The temperature fell Wednesday night, we were able to open windows all around and the front door. We could sleep on the ground floor, where it was cooler, and it never became too uncomfortable for the cats.
But what if this had been more than a near 2-day outage? What if this had been the kind of severe heat we will experience this weekend? What if many commercial places, like our Starbucks, were also out of power so that we could not recharge cell phones and computers, there we no cool places to which humans could retreat?
We have chosen to create artificial environments for ourselves. We live in areas that should require us to adapt our living, and instead we use our access to power to adapt our living space. We live in deserts, or swampy regions. We build structures so close together that we prevent natural ventilation. Our "cheap" power enables us to have lives transformed by labor saving and environment changing appliances and equipment. We are so accustomed to these that we do not stop to thing of two key points. First, how prepared are we for failures, even temporary ones such as those I have just experienced. And of far greater importance: in order to transform our lives, the power demands are also transforming our world, often in an irrevocably destructive fashion. Most of our power in the DC area comes from coal. The cheap power that enables us to live comfortable lives is at the expense of the destruction of mountains in a swatch beginning in Virginia and running through West Virginia and Kentucky. Does our personal comfort and ease of living justify the destruction of the planet on which we live? How moral is it for us to keep homes artificially adapted from the environment in which they are sited? How many mountaintops are necessary for all the convenience upon which we have become so dependent?
This week GM announced it was closing several plants that produce SUVs. With the escalating price of petroleum people are beginning to recognize that they will not be able to afford the wastefulness of vehicles such as Hummers and Yukons merely for convenience or for show. Hopefully the older technology of our Honda Civic Hybrids will soon become obsolete, with far more efficient technologies becoming more readily available and affordable. But that also worries me. In the short term some have cut back on their driving, but my experience in 6 plus decades on this planet is that such adaptations are usually short-lived, that we seek out technology to enable us to continue our wasteful ways of living. We will offset the rising price by more efficient use, then individually rationalize increasing our driving on the grounds of better MPG than we were previously getting. And the net result is ever increasing energy consumption.
So it is with our dependence upon electricity to transform our living. It is not just that many of us live and work in places that are quickly unbearable absent electricity. It is totally impossible for much of our lives to proceed without electricity.
I remember a Fourth of July in the 1970s. I was in Granite Run Mall, just outside Media PA. There was a power failure. The mall had emergency lighting, but no other standby power. On what should have been a busy shopping day, almost all the stores had to shut down, because their registers were electric, electronic, requiring power to even open in some cases. One shoe store remained very busy. For some reason they still had a mechanical cash register, so they could keep selling. Today? most malls have enough power to have lights to evacuate. So it is with schools, government and other offices. Those standby generators that are available are usually very inefficient in converting fuel to power, and really should be used only in cases of absolute necessity - hospitals and nursing homes, for example.
Katrina reminded us of one kind of vulnerability. Every severe thunderstorm, hurricane, tornado should remind us again that we cannot totally transform our living environment in a fashion that is resilient against all the forces of our natural world. And perhaps we need to seriously revisit how heavily dependent we are on technology to transform our world, how unprepared we are to go on when deprived of that technology even for a few days, and the full costs of how we do that transformation.
As I write this, I note that I am in a house with central air conditioning, that will enable us to be comfortable despite a heat index that will by this evening exceed 100 degrees. I write on a computer currently attached to a wall socket, operating on power that comes in part from mountaintop removal. I am well aware that the concerns I express in this diary, coming from my experience of the past few days, has elements of hypocrisy. I came too late to some of my realizations. It is not easy to escape from the damage my own life does to the environment, and mereby buying hybrid personal vehicles does not make up for the 50 miles I commute each day to school. In my own defense I will point out that I have not increased my driving since purchasing the hybrids, that we we have made adjustments in our use of power. It is insufficient, and we look for further ways our own lives will be less destructive. But we have some flexibility, and many in this nation have none - they lack the financial margin to significantly modify how they use energy. And I wonder if instead of tax rebates that we are encouraged to spend at the mall we could not use resources to enable people to modify how they use technology to be less destructive, and less dependent upon the technology for basic existence.
The 20 hours without power were for me the beginning of a realization of how much change I still need to make in order to be responsible in how I live. The experience also makes me determined to be aware of our use and misuse of technology merely for convenience. We want to see how much we can cut back upon our dependence upon power-driven technology. Tht is personal, that is clearly our individual moral responsibility.
Can this be part of a further discussion, one that can perhaps address serious issues of public policy? I can act on my own, and write about it. I can recommend the diaries of those who post here on environmental and energy issues. But it will not be enough.
After 20 hours, and then a bit longer to reflect upon the experience, I realize that unless we have serious discussions now about how we are living, we will too soon find that we - and increasingly the rest of the world - are locking ourselves in irrevocably to a dependence upon technology that is not only unsustainable and incredibly destructive of our world. It is also destroying our moral accountability, and removing from us our ability to adapt to the environment in which we find ourselves. Merely because we can transform our environment does not mean that we should. And until we wrestle with that basic principle all the carbon offsets in the world will not slow the pace of our destruction of the planet.
May we again learn to live in harmony - with one another, and with the world in which we find ourselves.
Peace.