Tuesday 16 May 2023

The Porcupine Saga, Part 3: When The Lights Went Out, Part 2

Will Harper, Thursday, July 20, 2028

In the middle of the night Will woke up with a full bladder. As usual he took care of that without needing to turn on a light and disturb Sue, but on the way back to bed he realized the attic fan wasn't running. He flicked on the bathroom light, just to confirm his suspicion. Nothing—the power was out again. But he was only half awake and said to himself, fuck it until morning, it's probably just a hiccup in the process of getting the provincial grid pieced back together, anyway.

In the morning the lights were still out. Coming back from the bathroom, Will sat on the edge of the bed, picked up his cell phone from the night stand and called Joe.

"'lectrical Maintenance. Joe speakin'."

"Hi Joe, it's Will Harper again. What's up with the power outage?"

"You won't believe this one," Joe replied, "All but two of the tower lines leaving the Bruce site fell down in the wind last night. Several towers down in a row on each line, just a couple of miles off site. Hell of a mess."

"I didn't think it was that big a wind," said Will.

"It wasn't," said Joe, "it appears that all the towers that went down were sabotaged so they'd fall in even a moderate wind."

"Shit!"

"It gets worse," said Joe, "same thing happened at Pickering and Darlington, and at three of the ties to the US. And the event in Quebec that started yesterday's outage now appears to have been sabotage too."

"Wow, you folks have got your work cut out for you," said Will, "any guess as to when you'll be turning the province back on?"

"Well, some areas are going to be out longer than others," said Joe. "And with all those 230KV and 500KV lines out and the nukes disconnected from the system, we'll be relying mainly on hydro power and at this time of year there is a limited amount of water available. So we're asking all industrial customers to stay shut down for the duration and there'll be rotating black outs for many residential areas.

"The good news is Unit 8 at Bruce B didn't trip off and is running on condense now, heating the lake while waiting to be connected to some load. The tower lines to Owen Sound and Hanover are still standing, and there are ties to the rest of the system from there. That nuke unit can't respond quickly to changes in load, so we need to get some more dispatchable generation on line as well before we can turn any lights back on. Combustion turbines, natural gas units and/or hydraulic units would do. Even then, though, there still won't be enough generation to carry much load, so we'll have to leave most people turned off, and the system, such as it is, will be pretty unstable. It'll stay like that until we get some of the big lines back up to connect more nuclear units to the system."

"So, what are we talking here—days... weeks?" asked Will.

"For this end of the province, where the load is light, probably a day or so," replied Joe. "But expect random interruptions for weeks after that, until we get the downed lines back in service. As soon as the power does come on, I'd stock up on gasoline for that generator of yours."

"Sounds like a good idea, Joe," said Will. "And other things as well—this is going to play hell with supply chains."

"That's not in my wheelhouse," said Joe, "but yeah, things are going to be a mess for the next few weeks."

"Well, I guess I should let you go," said Will, "try not to work too hard."

"Right now I'm just sitting here in my Hydro truck, looking at the mess," said Joe, "but before long we're going to get real busy. Talk to you later."

"Later."

Will was outright shocked. Nothing like this had ever happened before, and it blew his feeling of having things under control right out of the water. He got dressed in something of a daze, joined Sue down stairs in the kitchen, and told her the news.

"Wow, that's quite a disaster, if I read it right," she said.

"I think you do," said Will. "Gas stations and grocery stores are the first worry. The minute the power comes back on, we need to get out and get stocked up on quite a few things."

"OK, sounds good. You think any of the stores will try to open up without power?" she asked.

"Maybe so, or they might have generators," answered Will. "We should scare up some breakfast and then go see what's what with Inverpen's retailers."

"You want to set up the Coleman stove out on the deck and I'll cook us some breakfast or do you plan to start up the generator right away?" she asked.

"I'll get the generator going and cool down the freezers and fridge. The generator will run the microwave too, and oatmeal is good enough for me." Will said.

"OK, I'll get the oatmeal ready to go and check on the ice in the fridge. Maybe put some more bottles of water in the freezer to freeze."

A repeat performance of the afternoon before ensued. Will had just gotten the generator running, and was wondering what to do about his neighbours when Rick Brown from across the street showed up, with an extension cord in hand.

"Mornin' Will," Rick said.

"Mornin' Rick," said Will. "Can I lend you some electrons?"

"You'll just want me to give them back right away."

"That is the way it works," said Will with a chuckle. Rick was a retired highschool shop teacher, one of the few people around that Will could swap electrical jokes with. "You hear what's going on with the power outage?"

"They've been talking about it on the radio," answered Rick, "sabotage, lines down just outside all the nuclear stations?"

"Yeah, that's about it," said Will. "I've been thinking that I probably should be taking steps to make the gas I've got stored in my shed last longer."

"Hell, it's your generator, I'm just along for the ride, and glad to get it." said Rick, "What are you thinking of?"

"Well, if we only run the generator for a couple of hours in the morning and the same in the evening, it would help a lot," said Will. "That would keep the freezers cold and allow us to use them to make ice to use in our refrigerators. Normally a fridge warms up in a couple of hours after the power goes out, but if you put a few plastic jugs of ice in it, it'll stay cold while the generator is off in the middle of the day and at night. If you don't stand around with the door open, anyway."

"Sounds good to me," said Rick. "How long will your supply of gas last if you do it that way?"

"Well," said Will, "that will be interestng to see. The gas tank on this generator holds 20 liters, and it's rated to run 8 hours at half load on those 20 liters. It's a 5500 watt generator, so half load is 2250 watts. I'm talking about running it 4 hours a day, and I don't expect to every use close to that much power, so let's assume we get 12 hours from a tank, at a guess. That's 3 days per tank of fuel. I've got 3 jerry cans full of gas, 20 liters each, and an empty one I hope to fill up today. So, along with the gas that's in the machine, that would be 15 days altogether. More if we don't use too much power."

"OK, how much power does a fridge or freezer use?" asked Rick.

"Depending on the size, between 100 and 150 watts, running" replied Will. " Quite a bit more while starting, but that surge only lasts for seconds. I've got a fridge and two freezers, which use around 350 watts if they are all running together. But they don't run continuously, of course—they shut down once they get cold enough and start again when they warm up. And Sue's using the microwave right now, which is 900 watts, but it'll only be on for a few minutes."

"We've got a fridge and a freezer," said Rick, "and I may hook some lights up in the evening."

"Me too," said Will. "One thing—be sure not to try to liven up your whole house, say with a double male extension cord. If you forget to open your main breaker, you'll by trying to liven up the whole system. Probably trip my generator off, but it can be pretty hard on any linemen who happen to be working at the time."

"And if I don't forget?" asked Rick.

"It's still against code, but on your head be it," said Will. "Really though, anything you want to run, just unplug it from the receptacle it's plugged into now and plug it into the end of that cord. I see it's a triple ended cord, so that should be good enough. Anything that's wired in solid rather than plugged in, I can show you how to put it on a plug and receptacle so you can easily switch it over to the generator. Someday down the road you might want to get a transfer switch installed."

"Yeah, this'll be fine, for now" said Rick. "So you're expecting to be without power for over two weeks?"

"Well, you know, my buddy in the switchyard crew at Bruce says they might have power back to this area in a day or two. He doesn't think it will be very stable though, lots of random outages, and maybe weeks until things are completely back to normal. How many weeks—who knows."

"Pretty hard to plan a response when you have no idea what's coming," said Rick.

"Yep," said Will, "in many ways, this situation poses more of a challenge than a long term outage. And with power out all over the province, I have some concerns about supply chains, like how long local supplies of fuel and food will last."

"So many relatively short outages, but no chance to top up your fuel supply in between?"

"Something like that. Groceries may be a problem too, and possibly water and sewage" said Will. "Anyway, why don't you plug that cord into my ground fault receptacle up front, just like we did yesterday."

"OK," said Rick, "and you just go ahead and shut down when you figure the time is right."

A few minutes later Will had cords run to his other two neighbours' houses and grabbed his empty jerry can from the shed. He went up front and got the spare, and currently empty, propane tank from the side deck and put them both in the back of the car. He then joined Sue inside at the breakfast table. She had a steaming bowl of oatmeal with chopped dates and a cup of coffee ready for him, just the way he liked it.

"Thanks, Sue," said Will, "as my bother Tom would say, you are a gem! What's on the radio?"

"Talk about the outage, mainly," she answered, "all kinds of speculation about who is responsible for the sabotage. Based on exactly zero facts."

"But no word of anyone actually being caught in the act, eh?"

"No, and no one claiming credit for all the damage either," answered Sue.

"It's early days yet," said Will, "pretty hard to keep anything this widespread secret for long."

"You got that right," said Sue. "So you want to drive around town and see what's open?"

"Yep. At the very least, I'd like to fill up the empty jerry can, the propane tank and the car too," answered Will. "And if any of the grocery stores are open, we should stock up on any basics we're short on. I guess we should do a quick inventory before we leave, and grab the emergency cash stash...."

They had no problem getting gas and propane at the Co-op Gas Bar on the corner of Broadway and Queen, cash only. The Gas Bar was operated by The Country Depot, situated in back of them, which was also open, generator purring away in the background. The Circle K convenience store, kitty corner across from the Gas Bar was open too and glad to take cash for a 4 litre bag of milk. As long as supplies lasted. And they too had a generator running, so the milk was cold.

A short cruise down the main street revealed no open stores, so they headed out to the mall. Nobody there was open either. It sounded like No Frills had a generator running to keep their coolers and freezers working, but their doors were locked, and a hand lettered sign said they weren't ready to try selling anything without a working internet connection.

Out on the highway, Sobies, Inverpen's other supermarket, was also closed, as were Canadian Tire, RONA and Home hardware, along with all the other retailers and restaurants in that part of town.

Back home an hour later, Will sat on his side deck and mulled over the mixed results of their retail survey. It occurred to him that none of Inverpen's three pharmacies were open. Fortunately neither he nor Sue had an prescriptions that need to be filled right away. But it would no doubt be a problem for some people. Still, if the power came back on in a day or two, with the stores open and deliveries coming in from out of town, none of this would be insurmountable. That's a pretty big if, though, thought Will.

His brother Tom always said, "the only question you ever have to answer is what to do next."

Well, he needed to shut off the generator soon, and then put up some sort of tent over it so he could leave it out and running if it started to rain. Then he felt an urge to organize some sort of get together with his neighbours, maybe a pot luck or "stone soup" supper. But first, it would be good to see what Tom thought about all this.

Tom answered on the third ring, "Hi Will, how's it going?"

"To hell in a hand basket, seems like," replied Will.

"Maybe so," said Tom, "but are you and Sue OK?"

"Oh, we're fine," said Will, "you and Karen ?"

"We're good," said Tom. "we talked to the kids and they seem to be coping. The power is off, but our generator is working, we've got lots of gas and food—we're hardly even inconvenienced."

"Same here. Most of the stores are closed for now." said Will. "But Joe Manelli at Hydro One says they should have the power back on in a day or two around here."

"OK, so what does Joe say about the sabotage?"

"You've heard about the sabotage?" asked Will

"Yeah, I have my sources," said Tom.

"Joe says most of the tower lines are down just outside all of our nuke plants, and at the main ties to the States, as well" said Will.

"Yes and I understand something similar is happening in the States, and that some of the oil and gas pipelines in both countries have been hit as well," said Tom.

"That so? Sounds like it's even worse than I thought," said Will.

"You've always been an optimist, little brother," said Tom, "so, yeah, probably."

"Ha, ha," replied Will, "what's this all about anyway—why the sabotage, and why now?"

"Looks like some people finally lost patience with the lack of action on climate change and other environmental problems," said Tom.

"And this is going to solve those problems?" said Will, his voice rising with disbelief.

"Well, there is a lot of money sunk in the infrastructure for fossil fuels and consumer culture, and it's still making the owners a lot of money, even though it's fucking up the planet in the process," said Tom. "The argument goes that we'll never change until we're forced to abandon that investment. Like by having it sabotaged repeatedly, and eventually rendered unprofitable."

"Repeatedly?" ask Will, "you mean this is likely to happen again after we get things pieced back together?"

"There are lots of targets that haven't been hit yet, so it seems likely that it will keep on happening," said Tom, "and then, yes, when stuff get's fixed it's likely to be hit again, and again. Maybe until we give up on fixing it. Not my idea and not something I support, but there are a lot of people who have had it up to here with business as usual."

"That sounds pretty extreme," said Will, "isn't there something that could be done to stop the sabotage?"

"You spent your whole career in the utility business, Will," said Tom, "you know how spread out and exposed all of our energy infrastructure is, and how many people it would take to post a guard on all of it, right?"

"I'll give you that Tom," replied Will, "And I guess if you can't guard the whole length of a pipeline or power line, there's little point in guarding it at all. The saboteurs would just find an unguarded section and do their thing there. Tough and expensive to find competent guards, too."

"Exactly," said Tom, "If there is any hope of stopping this, it's in finding the people who are doing the sabotage and putting them in jail. Eventually they'll trip up and give themselves away, but who knows how long that will take."

"So far they have been pretty quiet," Will said. "which unfortunately is a good first step towards not getting caught."

"Not much we can do about that anyway," said Tom. "I am more worried about how the economy is going to react the shock."

"You're be thinking that this is going to lead to a recession?" asked Will.

"Damn right," said Tom, "more likely a depression, and a long one. We've been teetering on the edge of one since the first couple of years of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I think this may push us over the edge. The economy runs on energy and energy systems are what's being hit."

"Yeah, I can see that," said Will, "So the economy will slow down and businesses will close. Lots of people will lose their jobs, and have no money to spend, and it will snowball."

"Yes, all that will likely happen," said Tom, "but you know what really scares me?"

"No," said Will, "what?"

"The system we've set up to supply us with the necessities of life. Energy for sure, but also water, food, medicines, clothing, housing, you name it. There's two issues really. One is the fragility of the production facilities and supply chains. All highly exposed to sabotage. And also hugely dependent on a reliable supply of electricity and diesel fuel at a reasonable price. Not too say raw materials and spare parts that come from far away...."

"Isn't that enough of a problem?" said Will. "What's this second issue?"

"Well, we've let capitalism take over the responsibility for supplying us with all this stuff," said Tom. "The whole system is owned and operated by capitalists. Even though we are totally dependent on them, they aren't in business for our benefit—their only goal is profit. During a depression, as business becomes less profitable they will do a poorer job until finally they just quit. With no thought as to the consequences for the rest of us."

"The 'poorer job' consisting of higher prices, lower quality, less variety and worse service until they finally shut down altogether," said Will, "I've been reading your blog for years, Tom. And I think you've got things figured out just about right. But as you always say, the only thing that matters now is what do we do next. So, uh, what do we do next?"

"Well, what we need to do is adapt to the changes that are coming," said Tom. " First we need to cope with capitalism in crisis, as it gradually crumbles. While we're living through that, we need to be planning ahead for when they finally give up, and have something ready to replace them."

"A bit late to start preparing at this point, isn't it?" asked Will.

"No, I don't think so," said Tom."Fortunately, things aren't going to fall apart all at once, not everywhere, and not for all people. Some particularly unlucky people will be hit really hard—some already have been, for years now, in some parts of the world. But most people not so much. Their power will be out for a few days, they'll be scraping the bottom of their pantry before the grocery stores open, and their gas tanks will be empty. And then it will be back to something like normal for a while.

"For the sharp ones this will be a wakeup call—the incentive they need to get them working on adaptation. I intend to be one of those people and I imagine you will too. Those who don't catch on during this first pass will be given repeated opportunities to do so. And of course there will be some who, years from now, decades maybe, are still saying, 'just another year or so and everything will be back to normal.'"

"All that's pretty abstract," said Will. "what the hell can I do today?"

"Well, the power is off and most stores are closed," said Tom, "so for the moment you're stuck with the preparations you've already done. You can put those preps to work, take notes on how they work, and what you'd like to change or add when you can. I imagine we'll all decide we need deeper pantries, more gas on hand for our generators, maybe some solar panels. So far the municipal water and sewage are working, but we should probably make sure we are ready for those services to fail as well."

"We've still got the composting toilet you left when you sold us this place," said Will. "And the jugs of water in the root cellar. I even change out the water regularly. We've got a small stash of cash, but so far hardly any place to spend it. So I'm thinking that maybe not so important..."

"Now you're getting closer to the crux of this — you can't rely on capitalism so much for what you need," said Tom, "Get more skeptical about any solution that consists mainly of buying things. Get used to living without shopping and most of the other forms of canned entertainment the we've all grown so used to."

"That will be a big change, and a hard one," said Will.

"Damn right. I know old collapsniks whose houses are full of 'preps'. Prepping is what they've been doing for fun for years now. That stuff might last them a year or two at best," said Tom. "Then what are they going to do? They don't even know the people next door to them."

"I guess it's time to reach out to our neighbours and start working on the mutual aid thing," said Will. "I've been thinking about inviting some of the people around here to supper tonight. Also got to put a tarp over the generator."

"Is it going to rain any time soon?" asked Tom.

"Doesn't look like it," answered Will.

"Then I'd say talk that supper over with Sue and if she's keen, go do the inviting first," said Tom. "When you've got a crowd gathered, and you've just filled their stomachs, you can probably get some help with putting that tarp up. Might be the start of a more long term solution."

"You know, I think you're right. I should get going on that," said Will, "And I should let you go so you can do something similar. 'Bye for now."

"'Bye Will."

Will Harper, Saturday, July 21, 2040

"Anyway, we did have a big pot of 'stone soup' that night, with a dozen of our neighbours contributing. The start of a mutual aid project that is a whole other story," said Will Harper, wrapping up the story he'd been telling Alan.

"Well, I'd like to hear that story," said Alan, "but it will have to wait for another day, if you're going to get that tour."

"We can get to the tour in a minute," said Will. "But first, I've got to ask you a question."

"Yes?"

"The sign over your gateway out there—it looks like a cave painting. What's that all about?"

Alan laughed out loud, "It's a reminder of something that happened when we'd only been here a few weeks, and many of us think we ought never forget. The first bunch of us were all moved in, the truck unloaded and taken back to the rental place, and we were sitting around talking, trying to figure out where we were headed. I guess you could say I stuck my foot in it and Dad kinda flipped...."

Coming soon, The Porcupine Sage, Part 4: The Sign Above Our Gate, Alan Harper, Tuesday, April 9, 2030


Links to the rest of this series of posts:
The Porcupine Saga

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