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I’m sad to report that blackout baby booms are an urban legend. I can’t say how urban people actually manage when the power fails. But out here at the fringes of electrical service areas? We make do. Here’s how.
Outages are pretty common in rural areas like mine, where there are lots of trees perfectly positioned to fall onto wires. Repair crews often travel farther to reach rural areas impacted by the loss of power. We never know if it will be back on in a minute or a few hours or longer. So it’s good to be prepared – even on those bluebird sky days. You never know when your new neighbor using his new chainsaw might drop a tree on a wire or a motorist dodging deer may take out a pole with a transformer. Preparations can include:
When a weather alert or a bad knee warns of conditions likely to disrupt the power supply, here’s what we do.
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For the first few hours of an outage, folks mostly just guard the refrigerator (“don’t open that”) and remind anyone who goes into the bathroom to not flush unless necessary. If the rain is coming down straight instead of sideways we sit on the porch and appreciate a cool breeze and tell stories – like the one about the outage where Dad brought baby pigs into the bathtub to keep them warm (Mom was not happy). If we can’t relax outside, kids build blanket forts in the living room. Books and board games come out. We used to have a neighbor who always showed up when the power was out to play Scrabble by the light of our hurricane lamps. Rural people also:
A few hours into an outage we start to get a sense of how extensive it is, how long it may last, and how resourceful we’re going to have to be.
Bill and I live farther from a YWCA. But we still have the solar shower we bought when we were building our house. That was a long three weeks without power. The solar shower came in handy not only for bathing but also for doing dishes.
When I worked the Census In 2020, I saw a surprising number of houses (vacation homes, presumably) without storm doors. I can’t imagine building a place where you can’t catch a cool breeze at night when the power is out and air conditioning isn’t available. Or a place without at least a small wood stove for heat in a winter outage. Because where we live, it’s not a question of if but when we’ll need to be ready for the power to be out.
Donna Kallner writes from rural northern Wisconsin where she is a member of the Wolf River Volunteer FIre Department. She says, “Those linemen always appreciate a bottle of Gatorade if you offer.”
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by Donna Kallner, The Daily Yonder June 7, 2022
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