And Now The Exciting Conclusion (Hopefully) of Our Drama

This is, I hope, the last installment of the Parental Power Outage Saga.  If you need the background details, scroll back a few posts.  Start here.

So around 6pm I checked the status report again, hoping to at least see an estimated time of restoration.  No such luck.  

A few minutes later my mother calls.  She had tried calling the house, and she got the answering machine!  The power must be back on!  She was pretty stoked, no lie.

I volunteered to go over and see if the power was really back.  They had already gotten the house as warm as they could, then headed out for the evening. I was also kind of hoping to see if the crew was still there, to thank them for the hard work, and to see if they were local or had traveled from afar to help.

No sign of the crew when I arrived.  Who knows how long the power might have been back before my mother tried calling the house.  There was definitely light, however.

The outside light is on!  

OMG the power is really back on!  I went in to turn up their heat a bit so it would be warm when they returned later, but also to make sure the furnace would start.  I also had to check and make sure the oven was off.  You see, my mother has been worried this entire time that because she had the oven on when the power went out (trying to cook Thanksgiving dinner), that it was going to come roaring back to life when the power was restored.  It did not, but I did call her to tell her that.

I'm not sure what exactly the problem was, but they had obviously done some work at the pole at some point.  All of the snow was neatly cleaned off.

Pretty clear pole, and the trees look sparkly with ice

I am so thankful that they got their power -- and more specifically their heat -- back and functioning! It is getting freaking cold out.  

Feel like 16!  And it is only going to get colder!

A great big, enormous thank you to whichever crew got the power back on!  I would buy you all coffee and hand warmers if I knew who you were!  I am so relieved that their power is back on before this super cold night.

And just for the record...

We are finally in agreement, Central Hudson. 

*I'd like to think this is because you realized there was an error in your system somewhere and made haste to correct it.  However, it is possible that it is because I was a bit pushy a giant bitch.  I'd apologize, but I'm really not sorry.  Nobody screws with my parents.*

And So It Continues -- Power Outage Part II: Electric Bugaloo

As you might be guessing, my parents still don't have power.  Not up to speed on this whole deal?  Check out my previous posts.

I went out for brunch and a bit of shopping (to the grocery store -- which is empty the day after Thanksgiving people!  Best time to shop!)  with my mother.  My father opted to stay home and keep the heat sources running in an attempt to keep the house at least a little warm.

It was exciting for a bit this afternoon.  A little before 3pm the status check said that their power had been restored.  Hurrah!!

So I called them on the landline.  They might not realize the power was fixed until they heard the phone ringing.  They didn't answer, and when the answering machine never kicked on I knew the power must not really be back.

So I called my mother on her cell.  The power was not fixed.

She called Central Hudson, and they informed her that it had been fixed last night.  No.

Fucking no.

My mother asked if they thought she and her neighbor would both still be running generators if it had been fixed last night.  Whomever she spoke to asked if she wanted to file another work order.  Seriously?  They have no power or heat, do you really have to ask if they would like to have that situation resolved?

And then she went next door, to tell her neighbor the exciting news.  As you can imagine, he was as delighted as she had been to discover that they supposedly had gotten their power restored last night.  He was also going to call Central Hudson to correct them.

And now, when you check the status, it is back to this:

You might be thinking, "It's annoying/inconvenient not to have power.  It will get fixed.  Calm down."

No, I'm not going to calm down.  We are possibly going to have record-setting low temperatures tonight.

I logged on to Facebook, and saw a post from Central Hudson giving themselves a big old pat-on-the-back for all of the hard work they have done, and how they have restored 95% of the power outages. They are closing the warming centers and the dry ice distribution because everything is awesome now!

That is when my residual "niceness" about the situation finally ran out.  I wondered how many of these people really got their power restored, and how many they were claiming had been restored but, like my parents and their neighbors, were actually still out?

So I decided, just for shits and giggles, to message Central Hudson on Facebook and see if I got a response.  I'm more than happy to give them credit where credit is due: whomever was answering their Facebook messages did they best they could with the information they were given.

I explained the whole situation, how the status check had said their power was restored when it obviously was not, how my mother had called and been told it was restored when it wasn't, and then had to file another work order.

The first answer I got was the standard explanation about how sometimes when they fix a bigger problem, they can't tell that there is still a smaller problem further down the line.

I can see how that could happen, but that obviously is not the case here.  I informed them that it was only ever the two houses -- there was no bigger issue.  They can see the twisted wires on the pole -- there is nothing visibly evident as "down" if you are looking at the ground. 

A while later they wrote back and asked if she had reported that, about the twisted wires.  I had to call my mother to consult.  She told me she had reported that when she initially spoke to them yesterday (she even knew the name of the person she spoke to), and her neighbor had told the person he had spoken to several times (he knew that name as well).  When my mother had called this afternoon to report that, in fact, the power had not been restored she did not get the person's name, nor did they ask for any information.  All they had asked was if she wanted to open another work order.

The last message I received was that there was an open work order for both addresses since "a few hours ago".  I just gave up and said thank you.  It's obviously a complete load of crap since "a few hours ago" they were under the misapprehension that the power had been restored.  No one even called them to file the new work order under a little after 3pm.  

And so the power outage continues.

I understand that communication problems can easily take place in a situation like this. I do not, however, enjoy having smoke blown up my ass.  You screwed up.  You cannot simultaneously believe the power was restored and have an open work order on it.  You marked a problem as fixed when it clearly was not.  My guess?  Someone drove by, saw that no tree branches or wires were down, and marked it as fixed on the assumption that another crew had already been there.

In Which My Parents Still Don't Have Power

As I mentioned in my last post, my parents lost power at their house yesterday morning.  It is just their house and their neighbors' house -- only the two of them on the entire street.  That never bodes well in terms of how quickly you are going to get repaired.

I checked the status on the Central Hudson website last night, and it gave an estimated time of restoration.  Huzzah!  According to the website, their power was due to be restored around 12:30 this morning.  Even if it was a little later, at least they were going to get power and heat back soon.

I cropped it somewhat.  You don't need to see their address.

The first thing I did when I woke up this morning was to check and see if my parents had their power back.  I had sent my mother a text last night telling her that her power should come back overnight.  She had replied this morning.  I was expecting to see a message that said that power had been restored.  I did this before I even had coffee, which was a mistake.  I'm not a "morning person", and those who know me know better than to piss me off before I've had my coffee.  Her message said they still did not have power -- and this was several hours after the "estimated restoration" time.

Now I'm was annoyed.

So I went back to Central Hudson's Storm Central, and this is what I see when I check their status:

Seriously?  You went from 12:30am to "We don't know"?

I made some coffee, before I got any more pissed off, and called my mother to tell her the news.  She had already called and spoken to a live person at Central Hudson, and they gave her an estimation of 4:30 this afternoon.  I told her that I hoped that was correct, as the online status check had no such news.

And then she told me the part that really just pissed me off.  It probably didn't help that as she was telling me the story I was checking Central Hudson's Facebook page to see them talking about how hard they are working.

Post by Central Hudson.

That's great.  Really, I appreciate all of these people who came to help, many of whom I sure left their families on Thanksgiving to be here.  I appreciate it, I honestly do.

However, this all could apparently have been avoided --or the possibility of a power outage could have been decreased.

Their neighbor -- the one other house that has no power -- had been keeping an eye on things.  He also lived through the last go-round when their houses had been without power for four days.  He had reported to Central Hudson several times over the past few months that it appeared to be a bare wire running from the main electric line to their post.  It didn't look to have the same thicker cover over it that went from the main line to the other connections.  He had been proactive and reported this to them several times trying to avoid this exact situation.  Did anyone listen?  No.  And here they are, with no power once again.

I really should not be that surprised that they ignored him.  There is a streetlight out on my road, and I have reported it multiple times.  Two and a half years later they still have never fixed it.  Might as well bang your head against a wall as report an issue that they consider unimportant.

We shall see how this progresses.  I'm still holding out hopes that the Canadians will save the day and get their power back on quickly.