Cyclone Gabrielle - The Power Economy
As we woke up on day 2, Wednesday, the reality of the situation started to hit us a little more. I boiled hot water on the little camping gas hob we have, checked that everyone was alright at home, fed the kids some breakfast (we still had milk in the fridge at this stage that was cold) and got out the radio. I'd dug it out on Sunday night, the old radio we bought in Syria, and put 4 x AA batteries in it. It works fine, some of the buttons are a bit sticky and I had to bash the volume key properly to get it to work, but it works. We listened to that to get a feel for what was going on, and started of course to realise just how bad everything was. Esk River sounded terrible. Sarah's limited mobile coverage enabled us to find out that Adrian had managed to locate his parents at the Hastings Sports Centre. He wasn't able to go and get them as we realised ALL bridges were out of action, but at least he knew they were alive and had quite the ordeal.
I went and spoke to Chris and Jonna, they were OK. Their toilet had stopped flushing due to no power. I went and spoke to Colin who was fine EXCEPT he had no heart medication. I asked him what happened if he didn't have it and the answer wasn't great. Peter Chats came over to see us, so I managed to organise Peter to take Colin up to Taradale. Colin hadn't realised just how bad everything was (he kept suggesting things and we had to keep reminding him there was NO power. NO phones that worked) and was too nervous/shaky to drive. Anyway Peter took him up to Taradale and chemist was open and filling urgent scripts, so Colin got his heart medication.
I grabbed my bike and rode into work - stopping on the way to check in on George's family. They were fine, they'd done some good prepping so had food/gas all that sort of stuff. The ride into work was pretty amazing, places where there's sometimes a little bit of water was up to the path, I had to serve around heaps of fallen trees. Everything was eerie.
I got outside work and there were hundreds of people? I stopped to ask someone what they were doing "Using the Free Wifi!" he replied. Of course! Our generator powers a bunch of gear inside and the Wifi access point and Mini Vodafone Cell tower are two of those things. So outside our work people could get Wifi and get Cell Coverage (Vodafone anyway). I went inside and chatted to people, we all recounted to each other what we'd been up to since the power suddenly went off and we realised what was going on. It was nice to be inside with power, I charged up my phone and go to work checking on the network, patching up some circuits around the place, helping out where I could.
The generator, once something I never really thought about, suddenly become KEY. It was powering our little datacentre, but also desks etc so that a Skeleton crew could operate. It's a massive diesel powered genny, so we had to form a plan to keep it topped out with diesel. It usally has to run for 2-3 hours during small blackouts. No one was quite sure if it'd run for days/weeks (it should) because we'd never had to do that before. I talked to a few people at work and said look I'm happy to come in and help but I'm not really happy to leave my family for big lengths of time especially as it's hard to get home. I'm on my bike, I want them to have the car in case they need to leave. The CEO said I could just take a pool car and use it as necessary, so that was nice. And that's what I did, I parked the bike up in the lockup and used the car for the next few days.
It's all a bit of a blur now, and of couse I couldn't really type anything up due to no power at home for my laptop. My work laptop stayed at work mostly. This is when of course I realised just how important Electricity was for, well, everything. Turns out half the emergency alerts didn't get out because no power. Notifications about how bad the storm was and how high the river levels were rising didn't get sent to people that needed them because the cell towers were out. Though I think that story is bs myself, we had power up until 7:20am or so. But who knows, maybe a tree knocked out that rural power a lot sooner.
Generators become a commodity. Everyone was jealous of those that had them. Reports started to flood in about Genny's being stolen from Cell Sites. Without grid power, the Telco's had started to deploy Genny's to give each Cell Tower power. And then some fucking 'unt would steal the Genny. One person taking away the Comms for so many people. It's a shame we're not allowed to murder some people.
We moved our BBQ up onto the deck and started to use that instead of the little burner thing, it's too hard and shitty to bend over it - I realised the BBQ also has a gas hob on the side which you can use to cook a pan, as well as the normal BBQ grill bits. The poor ol' BBQ is pretty knackered, but it kept us going. Sarah cooked some pretty good little meals on it. We had (defrosting) Chicken and Chips on it one night. I cooked some fried eggs for the kids one morning.
When I'd go into work I'd take all my power bricks, my 18650 batteries and charger, and charge them all up on the Genny supply. Work realised that most staff would want to do this, and setup a charging station for people to come in on Friday to charge their stuff up. This was used by quite a few people I think, not 100% sure as I was busy working with vendors still standing up some emergency alternate paths etc. And I gotta say some of the vendors that can drag their heels for months at a time came to the party and got some links turned up damn quickly. I was very impressed.
We were very lucky with food at works - lots of people were always coming and going, the Leadership Team would meet every day and post out comms to everyone. Their comms was fantastic. And Adoro, the cafe next door to work, had given us their fridge to put into our Server Room with its Genny Power. Told us we could eat/use what we wanted. There was chicken breasts, burger patties, bacon. So quite a few times I'd come in and Jules would BBQ lunch up outside and we'd have beautiful food for lunch. I felt very bad really because Sarah and the kids were eating pot noodles etc and I had really quite amazing meals.
All the while this is going on I was reading the news. And coming into work seeing the queues for Petrol. Seeing all the shops shut. Seeing people to mental, the guy out the back who tried to shove me to the ground because I asked him nicely if he was a work staff member (he was parked in a work carpark and we needed it).
In Jervoistown at night, the sound of Generators would ring out. Lots of people had them, or were able to get hold of them, which was good for them. They could keep their fridge powered up, keep the TV on, charge their devices.
Oh yes on Thursday morning Sarah and the kids came in - they were allowed to, I'd checked it with people and it was fine. Anyway once they were in here, it seems Vodafone and 2Degrees started to get their comms back up, because some tweet that has been stuck since power went off got posted saying the fucking Stopbank at breeched in Taradale! So everyone, Sarah and the kids included, left in a panic. Sarah mostly to go home and get Biscuit. Turns out it was a false alarm, a tweet from Tuesday morning. A huge fucking panic and heart attack over nothing, man I was angry. Anyway... I guess these things happen.
Thursday night it was my turn to come in at night and help fill the Genny at 10pm. We had a 6am, 2pm and 10pm top up routine, to make sure we alway had enough diesel for it. So I drove in, again in the pitch black, but I noticed that all the cars that had been waiting by the roundable near our house to get onto the SH2 Hastings Expressway (it was still closed) had gone, and the Expressway was opened. So people just wanted to GET THE FUCK OUT of Napier - no power, no food, no petrol. Hastings and beyond had power, food, bread. All those normal things. Anyway I got into work and helped Jules do the Genny top up without issue, charged a few things as quickly as possible and came home again. Everytime I went into work the first thing I did was put stuff onto charge and the very last thing I did was remove it from the power.
Friday night I cleaned ou the beer fridge freezer and found in there, praise the lord, a huge lamb leg roast! So I put that in the kitchen and Saturday night Sarah cooked it on the BBQ. Holy hell it was amazing, it was cooked to perfection and she did some beautiful boiled potatoes and carrots as well that she'd managed to buy at the otherwise barren Supermarket the day before. We had mint sauce and gravy too, it was the first proper meal we'd had as a family in ages which was nice. I heard that Jordan had power the night before, so I took around the leftover lamb (and more devices to charge) to his place that night to go in the fridge. Well we offered him some but he had a foodbag delivered from Wellington so was good to go! Knowing he had power, normaility seemed a little bit closer. Though everything still also felt quite apocalyptic with helicopters always flying overhead, things still dark, the supermarket shelves always empty (I did manage to snafle a 6pack of warm beer on Friday night from New World and used the last remaining ice in the freezer to get 2 cold cans of beer)
I'll talk about Sunday in a seperate post.
Tim