We were benignly hanging out in our rooms idly pushing papers around (or at least I was!) when all of the sudden, the power dies. Beep! Go the computers, the AC unit's quiet hum cuts out and the kitchen lights go out. Well dang. At least the internet still magically works!
My first thought is "oh no, what if we're without power for a long time and have no water?! or if we have water, what if it's not safe because there's an issue at the filtration center we don't know about!" So one of my roommates and I begin crazy stock piling water into every container we have as the stream begins to slow to a trickle.
Well, perhaps that was a little over board, because the power came back on in 10 minutes. Sighs of relief all around. Unfortunately for us, the return of power meant that some idiot med student could then cook and viciously burn something. Good job future doctor who we will crazily entrust our lives to, you have now set off the building fire alarm. And this is exactly why our smoke detectors are beeping low battery all. the. time!
So with the alarm blaring in the background, we begrudgingly turn to our new problem. You see, when the power cuts off, the AC unit resets to off. This used to be an easy fix - just open the closet door and turn it back on, but some genius university official decided that locks should be on these doors so that students cannot "tamper" with the units. Gee thanks. MUCH appreciated. By the way, I think we'll do the same to your cushy home and let you sweat it out for a few days, as the people with keys now have to go to EACH individual suite, unlock the closet, and reset the unit. Last time the power glitched, this took several days. And we still had access at that point, so that was a 60ish fewer rooms to visit. There are 7 superdorms on campus and at least a dozen other small residence halls, not to mention all the other buildings on campus that will need to have their AC reset because for some reason all the defaults are to off.
Now what? We were standing there rather annoyed at the new situation, and declared "well lock picking can't be that hard, right??" Wrong. Well over an hour was spent between the 3 of us trying out different techniques, reading articles, watching videos on youtube, and making homemade tools out of paperclips and bobby pins with a key-chain multi-tool and pocket knife. No luck. Or rather, no skill. We stink. We even tried the supposed credit card trick and failed. The locking pin is in the front and prevents the card from sliding in to open the door. So we are not master criminals. We should probably stick to our day jobs, as we were clearly not meant to be criminals!
Oh yeah, and 10 minutes into our antics, the power went out again. Alarm still blaring in the background, I couldn't help but add a little more water to the collection! This time it was out for an hour. The internet also finally died about 20 minutes in as well. I tell you, there is no worse feeling than that of being completely alone and isolated on this island. Being cut off from the rest of the world is a very scary feeling. I'm not entirely sure why, but it is. At least we still had working cell phones today.
It was a good reminder of how woefully unprepared we are for any sort of disaster or crisis. Our water comes from the university filtration center, otherwise it wouldn't technically be safe to drink (though I'm not exactly sure what the risk is). We rely on electricity and internet to study and make contact with the outside world. Friends, family, etc - we are almost completely reliant on the internet for this stuff. Cell phones run on batteries, and what happens if the service suddenly cuts out? It's how we connect with each other and an extra lifeline (albeit very expensive for the receiving end) to contact people throughout the world. Food? All of our perishable products are in the fridge, and that's most of our food. We don't have a gas stove, so without power we can't cook anything. At our apartment, that means meals made of raw pasta, cold tomato soup, cookies, chips, dry cereal, and crackers. So admittedly we'd survive for awhile, but no power also means no water. I have a couple of flashlights on hand, and we would have been heavily reliant on those tonight starting at about 5:30p when the sun goes down if the outage had continued. Now what if it's not just a fluke but caused by a severe weather storm? We could be living like this for days. Could we do it? Of course. But it would be a frightening and eye-opening experience.
Just a week ago, we came very close to being hit by a near tropical storm or actual tropical storm. By some miracle, it passed over us without a drop of rain. We were teasing ahead of time as we watched it come closer and closer to us that if it was going to be a total wash out weekend, then it needed to be a tropical storm so that we could at least claim something cool. Seeing pictures from other islands that were hit by Rafael, I almost cried. The damage was significant. Cars were flooded under feet of water, trees and foliage were broken, buildings were damaged, the place looked like it was hit with a hurricane. Except that these are third world countries with infrastructure that doesn't hold a candle to what we have in the US. It scared me to realize that what I was seeing on other islands would have been us if the storm had come here. Hurricane Ivan was a category 3 back in 2004 and destroyed nearly 95% of the island. I can just imagine the damage a tropical storm could do to this little island.
Oops, this was supposed to be a light hearted post! It's nearly 78 degrees in here, and while that's not really unusual in my room (as the AC unit doesn't do much besides circulate air), it makes a big difference to have circulating air versus stagnancy! I will be sure to keep you apprised of how it all plays out!
Some of the water and a few of our "tools"
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