Blackout 2014

Cold. Cold. Freezing. Cold. To everyone who lives in the Northern Hemisphere you might get to know what cold is. But to me cold isn’t just a mild low digit number in Celsius, cold to me is when you are waiting for your bus at your local bus stop and it’s 7 am and it’s -24 degrees celsius. I don’t know if you can understand how cold this is but well mind you it is very, very cold. So cold in fact that I could not feel my legs while waiting for the bus to come. I live in a very cold place during the winter, where some people think that having a little snow is troubling. How about you imagine that you have so much snow the snowbanks are taller then you could ever imagine to be.

At the same time I do really love Newfoundland, it’s a very nice place filled with lovely and friendly people but damn is it cold during the winter. This weekend a massive storm hit Newfoundland, where it sent this province into a frenzy. We had rolling blackouts since thursday, and on Saturday my home lost it’s power for a whooping 15 hours in total. With the weather being as cold and as stormy as it was the heat in our house was dissipating quickly. Obviously we survived this little set back or I wouldn’t be able to write to on a laptop but you see it’s not something that was fun. But thankfully because of everyone’s efforts been able to pull through. The power plant workers are trying to get everything back together through our power systems. We had 190,000 “clients” without power on Saturday, thankfully there are only 30,000 homes which are without power now.

But what I would like to say is the kindness of the people, everyone has come together and helped out, there were some businesses open yesterday in order to aid in getting supplies such as candles, lighters, batteries, anything that could help you in these situations. Schools have been postponed after the christmas break. We would have started today Monday but they did not want the power grid to surge again so they decided it’s best to keep everyone safe and not in school.

I’m thankful for the people who are working so hard to get us power and heat, without them a lot of us would still be in darkness. Thank you to every person who has helped a neighbour or family member when necessary. I am so thankful to live in the province. 

Thanks

J