Feeling powerless when shutoff looms
On Tuesday night, I was on a group text with family members about the upcoming PG&E shutoffs.
As a San Francisco resident, I’m one of the lucky ones. PG&E didn’t include my county in one of the 34 in which it’s decided to flip the power switch.
So I’d started messaging Bay Area loved ones who aren’t so lucky, to offer them annoying and likely useless reminders about lastminute preparations for the possibility of living up to six days without power. “Do you have food?” I asked. “Yes,” came the answers, along with the worries. “Not that it’s going to matter after a few days, since it’ll all be spoiled.”
In this kind of group text, the second and completely necessary part of the conversation cycle is a series of fistshaking rejoinders about what a garbage company PG&E is.
We did our part, with great relish. Before the insults got too baroque, I broke in with my next questions.
“What about water?” I added. “And were all of you able to fill up at the gas station?”
Everyone had at least some water, even if it was just the sunwarped plastic bottles in their earthquake kits. They regaled me with stories about pulling up to the gas station after work, only to join a line of cars that stretched around the corner. Then someone asked me a question.
“Wait, don’t you have electric gates? PG&E is a trash monopoly, you can’t trust them. What are you going to do if there’s a power outage there?”
As the instigator of this whole preparation thread, I should’ve had an answer. Instead, what everyone saw from my side of the text conversation was one of those little gray bubbles with ellipses, the ones that show someone is lingering over their response (and probably deleting it a few times, or trying to get out of the conversation, or in some other way provoking anxiety in the recipient on the other side of the exchange).
I wasn’t lingering or deleting anything, though.
Like a naif, I’d never considered how I would get into my building during an extended power outage. I’d never received any information about it, never thought to ask. And all of a sudden, I was terrified.
Along with everyone else in the Bay Area this week, I was learning that electricity is like plastic — you don’t realize how deeply embedded it is in every aspect of your daily life until you’re forced to avoid it.
“I need to find that out,” I replied, and immediately messaged the building manager. Wednesday dawned. People were reacting to the PG&E outages with confusion and despair. A friend in Wine Country, who’s currently in the midst of “crush,” told me about bedding down next to his generator the night before. There was work to do, of course, but he was also worried someone might try to steal the generator.
Meanwhile, PG&E barricaded the doors to its company headquarters in San Francisco, citing “frustrated customers.” Someone, presumably a customer who had moved past frustration, took a shot at a PG&E worker in Colusa County.
The building manager replied to my message, claiming that “we” have physical keys for use in the event of an emergency.
I asked who the “we” was, and what would happen in the likely event that the latter was not available at the time of a blackout. I added that there was a strong likelihood everyone in the building would appreciate knowing the answers to these questions. I did not receive an answer. Thursday dawned. PG&E shut off power to parts of Contra Costa, Alameda, San Mateo and Santa Clara counties — 600,000 customer accounts in all. A friend in one of the affected areas texted, wondering if I could store perishable medications for her. She wasn’t sure if she would need the help, she said, but wanted to know anyway. I told her I would be happy to help.
The exchange inspired me to take stock of our own emergency materials before leaving the house. I was saddened to realize that while I have restocked our supply of N95 masks, we don’t own dry ice or a cooler. My own imagination for disaster had been outstripped by California’s ability to provide new possibilities.
One of my neighbors is elderly, and I made a mental note to knock on her door when I got home. Maybe she would know the answer to the mystery of how we would all get into our homes when and if the power went out.
Maybe she, having coped with similar challenges in the past, would know something I hadn’t yet considered. The only thing I knew for sure was that our new normal was on its way, and when it comes to what that means, few of us are in any way ready.
Like a naif, I’d never considered how I would get into my building during a power outage.