Everyone has to deal
with power outages from time to time and it is something that we just
deal with and understand that they don’t happen too often. I know
when I was growing up we had power outages in Toronto that would last
for hours and we just got into the happen of dealing with them. Now
a days power outages don’t happen as frequently and normally they
don’t last as long except when it is due to major failures or ice
storms.
This is being
written just after we had a power outage in our neighbourhood and I
have to say that I am glad that we don’t get them very often. My
parents who don’t live too far from us get them more often but
again they are the ones that don’t last very long but just long
enough that all the clocks and electronics need to be corrected. I
understand that no everyone is going to be happy when there is a
power outage but it is something that you just have to deal with.
Our most recent
power outage happened on a Sunday morning and of course when you live
in an apartment building there are going to be things that just don’t
work as well without power and one of those is water. Yes, if you
live up a few floors the water requires pressure to come up to the
units so without power the water is going to stop flowing so one of
the first things you need when you lose power is to ensure that you
have some drinking water handy. For us as we weren’t sure how long
the power was going to be out we quickly filled a couple of the water
bottles that we take to the gym with us so we had some water handy.
Another issue is that the elevators go down to one elevator and that
is on the emergency generator so it is something you have to figure
may not last the entire outage if the outage is extremely long. These
are the common sense issues that you deal with when their is no power
in an apartment building.
This last outage was
about an hour and a half but shortly after it happened there was a
knock on our unit door and I figured it must be the women from across
the hall and sure enough it was. She was checking to see if we had
power but I am not sure why because she had just been downstairs to
check about the situation. As I was standing at the door of the unit
she was complaining that we only had one elevator and it was wrong.
Also she said that the assistance supers had said they might have to
turn that one off as well. The elevator would be staying on as long
as the emergency generator had power as it is required that one be
working even in a power outage.
Something else that
the women was complaining about was she couldn’t check the website
to see if Toronto Hydro was saying anything about the issue in our
neighbourhood because she didn’t have internet. Well, to have
internet you need power so yes it would be difficult to check it from
a computer even if it was a laptop or tablet. I had my mobile device
in my hand and from right after I saw the power outage I was checking
both twitter and the Toronto Hydro outage page for any updates so I
let her know that there wasn’t anything on either of these two
spots. She complained about how any power outages we had and some of
them are hours long. I am not sure what she was talking about
because we don’t have very many power outages compared to some of
the other areas in Toronto.
After dealing with
all of her comments we figured it might be time to escape as we
hadn’t had a coffee yet and by this time it was 45 minutes into the
power outage and we weren’t sure how long it was going to be. Yes,
leaving the unit we decided it would be best to just walk down the
stairs so that we didn’t have to deal with waiting for the one
elevator and also it was good exercise. We stopped by the first
floor to check if there were any updates and there weren’t but at
least we found about it was a larger area than just our apartment or
even our neighbourhood.
The end result was
the power was out for about an hour and a half, so yes longer than
lot of the power outages but still not bad. We got some running
around done that we were wanting to do and we had some coffee so
overall we accomplished things. Power outages are something that you
deal with when they happen and you also have to appreciate that
compared to years ago the power outages we deal with now are so much
shorter and less frequent.