What an interesting couple of weeks we’ve had.
First was the wind storm. No immediate damage but we did have to take down a couple trees right after it as their root balls began to pull out. It’s always better to drop them where you want to rather than let nature decide, especially when they are close to the house.
Next was the blizzard. Fairly unusual for this area. Now granted it’s not prairie level blizzard but for our climate it was officially classed as “nasty”.
The big impact this one had was it whipped the fibre cable serving the entire island into the high voltage lines. Net result was 7 days no phone, cable, or internet and local cell towers isolated.
Kudos to the phone company. They brought in a cell site on wheels, upped the power of other sites, and redirected some antenna beams to improve coverage. Next they installed a new microwave link to restore service while they arranged to replace the fibre.
In the meantime we have had 4 separate power outages. Two storm caused and two restoration related. Turned out not only did the fibre cable fry, snap, and fall into the ocean but two of the three power lines were damaged to the point they could not be re-energized until they were replaced. They have to de-energize the remaining one while helicoptering new spans to our island. Tomorrow will be the 5th outage and then hopefully all is good.
Whew!
So today we sit in the dark, wood stove heating the house, and wait for the power to come back at 6pm. My day has mostly looked like this:
My Elysium 