V 9 N. 38 How Track Blogger Survives Without Power in Northern California

My co-blogger Roy Mason sent this account today of how he is surviving in Ukiah, CA while there is no power in several counties due to wildfires.  I have not read anything this good about the fires.  He is an artist when he so chooses.

From Roy to all:

Sort of like camping out, ho, ho, ho. No, it is not. When you camp, you are prepared for certain hardships, you have an idea of how long the ordeal will last and if discomfort overcomes your love of nature you pack up the Subaru and go home.

Ukiah has a population of 16,000 but in a five-mile radius from the center of town there are at least 30,000, all of whom are without power as I type this.

I have a generator. More on that later. Most residents do not. Within a mile of the road that goes up the mountainside on which I live there are a dozen apartment buildings. These people do not have electricity. Without a lantern they are in darkness by 6:15. They can't cook. Dinner consists of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by the light of a lantern. Whatever is in the refrigerator becomes less refrigerated by the hour.

Well, they can always go to McDonalds. Wrong. McDonalds, Burger King, In and Out Burger and every restaurant in town is closed. Nope, not even pizza places. The one spot you can get hot food is Costco. I saw a lady pushing a flatbed shopping cart that had at least 20 large pizzas. (My breakfast yesterday was a Costco hot dog). Large groceries are open to some degree. Safeway is 24 hours, Lucky's was open from 2-4 yesterday, Food Max was 10 hours.

Need some sort of mechanical gizmo to make your world turn? Not to worry, Friedman's Hardware is here for you....sort of. The door is blocked by 6-8 employees. Yesterday I told the gestapo that I wanted a propane canister. No problem. I left feeling superior to all those who power their generators with gas. First on my list today was exchanging an empty canister for a full one. Shoulda been here yesterday, pal. All out.

Still and all, I felt ahead of the game. Yesterday Costco was out of gas but I saw the truck refilling the tanks. For those of you familiar with my route to Costco, imagine this. I turned right off State Street and got halfway down the 3/10 mile straight before reaching backed up traffic. Two more turns with straights of 1/10 mile put you on Airport Boulevard. Take a right and in at least another half mile you reach the Costco gas station. Cars were backed up a nearly a mile to get gas. This was compounded by the fact that Airport Blvd was backed up before anyone in this line would turn right so once you reached the final straight you took turns at that intersection, so what looked like an afternoon in your car listening to Sean Hannity morphed into a lifetime. I was there at 3:30 and saw folks who were not to reach the pumps before they closed at 8. Fortunately, your little buddy was not in this line. I know the short cut down the backroad with the NO TRAFFIC barrier. This got me to Friedman's but would have earned me a beating had I tried to cut into the gas line at the driveway.

Sign over freeway in Santa Rosa in 2017 thanking firefighters.

I drove State Street (the main N-S street) looking for warm food. Not even Denny's was open. Ukiah was empty. The courthouse was closed. No business – auto repair, book store, lawyer's office, hardware store, tire shop, bank, hair salon - was open. Everybody had gone home. No traffic lights. No intersection has lights. Each is now a four way stop, which amazingly everyone observes.

Things here at Camp Fircrest are better than most homes thanks to the generator. When we lost power at 7:30 in the middle of the third quarter of the Michigan – Notre Dame game, I took my Elmore Leonard book and read in bed by flashlight until I dozed off. Not knowing how long a propane canister would last, I saved whatever power I had for another day. Fired it up Sunday morning and had lights in the bathroom, den, bedroom, living room and part of the kitchen. That part was the refrigerator. Thought the contractor and I were in accord that the part of the kitchen that included the stove, microwave, toaster and coffeemaker would be wired as well. Obviously there was a failure to communicate. The toaster and coffeemaker now reside in the bedroom. For a short while I had the toaster in the bathroom, a location which allowed me to toast and butter my English muffin while taking a dump. Practical as that was, the hygiene issue initiated the move to the bedroom.

Until the outage I hadn't realized the importance of the internet in my life. Without electricity, there is no wi-fi. Without wi-fi there is no internet....or TV. How can I order from Amazon? How to look up Allie Reynolds lifetime ERA? How to follow the adventures of Donald Trump? Fortunately I have several half-finished books lying around. The Elmore Leonard book will be finished before I doze off tonight.

The advantage I have over the majority of Ukiah residents is the woodstove. Rely on electric heat and you better bundle up well. I keep the stove going from the time I am up until bedtime. It is one thing to be in a dark house. It is another to be in a dark, cold house.

This was 2017 during a visit a Roy's.  Note the handy woodstove.

I am typing this Monday evening. It will go out tomorrow from the health club where there is wi-fi for all. Spent an hour and a half there this afternoon catching up on emails.

Speaking of the health club, the power outage has been very good for business. There is an industrial-sized generator on a flatbed trailer parked by the front door. Sunday and Monday the parking lots have been filled as I have never seen them. Little to do at home without electricity. Let's go to the health club. School is out for the week. What to do with the little ones? Who wants to go swimming? Fortunately for me, this influx of the unwashed has no effect on the weight rooms or the exercise bikes. The lobby is full of folks on laptops. Looks like a college cafeteria.

Thank God for cell phones so we can all stay in touch. Whoops, not so fast. Cellphones need cell towers. Cell towers need electricity. There are 17 counties with power shutdowns and many of those have nonfunctioning cell towers. Ukiah is not among them. Yesterday I was in my driveway when a slow-moving pickup pulling what I learned was a generator stopped. The driver asked if this was the way to the cell tower. Told him Fircrest dead ended in a quarter mile and that he would have to go down to Dora and over to Oak Knoll. He was pretty sure this was the way. Well, it is if you go through Dexter's property where he has a cable blocking passage. This didn't discourage the guy. As he didn't come back I assume he made connection with Oak Knoll and then reached the top of the mountain, assuring cell phone coverage for all.

Roy, the dogs and his trusty propane tank.  No that is not an electrical generator on the table.

Speaking of phone communication, I have none. My service is Ooma which runs off wi-fi which is fueled by electricity. (Yes, a cellphone is in my future.) Fortunately Colleen stopped by so I was able to call Tom and Merwyn and cancel their visit planned for Sunday. The Santa Rosa Airport has canceled all flights due to smoke. Even if that weren't the problem, there is no guarantee that I will have power by that time as PG&E shutdowns are based on wind velocity. (The Healdsburg area had a wind reading of 103 mph early Monday morning.)

No one in Mendocino Co. has had to evacuate but the last number I heard who have had to do so in Sonoma Co (our southern neighbor) was 190,000. Where do you go? Radio and TV tell of the fairgrounds, churches, parks, recreation areas where you can sleep on a cot in several hundred others but this is impractical for numbers of this magnitude. Where do the elderly go? What if you have special needs? What to do with your dogs, cats, horses? Though it is a mandatory evacuation order I suspect a great many homeowners have stayed home either because this is my house God damn it and I'm not going or they simply had nowhere to go. Can't imagine where I would go with my dogs, especially Toby who is incontinent and therefore poops whenever the need arrises and has to wear a diaper to soak up the pee.

Now to turn off the generator and settle into bed with my newly purchased cap with headlights to read until I doze off. Yesterday when I started the generator I was stunned by the noise. How can I function with this incredible racket? Now it is the soothing purr of a kitten.

Roy and George in better times. 

This from Geoff Pietsch 

Comment:
It is, of course, terrible that so many Californians have to deal with this situation. But I'm glad you posted this. I just wish this and similar accounts would reach the eyes - and minds and hearts - of people all over the country. Including Congress and the White House. We who live far away can read the papers and watch the news coverage, but this sort of detailed account brings the reality home. As did last night's PBS Frontline report, with incredible videos, of last year's Camp Fire that essentially destroyed Paradise CA.  Too often discussions about Climate Change and its impacts focus on the flooding that impends in coming decades. That concern is real - and the consequences can/will be catastrophic. But extreme weather events are happening more and more frequently now.
Geoff Pietsch   Gainesville FL

Good News.  The power is back on in Ukiah after 4 days.