"Power on yet?"
"Nope. They said tomorrow at eight."
So you wait ’til eight and then revise your gameplan when it’s still not on.
Such is life when the power is off for a more than a day at a time. Those power outages used to be satisfied to go out for a night but now they need something stronger… like three days. What happened? By the third day I was starting to get a little cranky — clearly the novelty of candle light was over. Not only do things in your fridge start to smell but the routine elements of your life that you put on hold until the power comes back on suddenly can’t be left any longer.
And I think I cope better than most. I don’t have a well or septic system with a pump that needs power to operate. I don’t take regular medication where a missed prescription might affect my health nor do I rely on a wheelchair lift to get up my stairs.
The morning after the storm I travelled back from Powell River to find blow downs like I’ve never seen before. How much line has to be down on the 10 kilometre section between the ferry and the golf course before you have to say the entire line is down? I’d guess a 100 or more trees were crossing the road and I heard the road to Egmont was even worse.
So when I passed line crews near Sakinaw Lake I was impressed that they’d even made it that far. Then I passed more near Kleindale and still more on Francis Peninsula Road. There was a small army of helmet-clad, safety-vest-wearing guys beavering away on the side of the road. Theirs is a dangerous and unpleasant job — standing 35 feet up in a bucket, leaning out with a chainsaw cutting off chunks of wood from tensioned wires while semi-trailers rumble underneath — in the rain. Working double shifts through the night for days at a time, you must have a little respect for the precision required just to come home without injury.
So I can’t fault the response and think it’s actually truly impressive the power came back on when it did.So what else could I blame?
Are the storms that much stronger now than before? Are the trees getting weaker? Or, as a psychological botanist might suggest, are they committing mass tree suicide in a desperate bid to end their own suffering?
It’s a scientific fact that trees that border hydro lines lead much less fulfilling lives than their forested cousins. They’re exposed to wind and car exhaust and the pulsating electrical currents must cause tumours — further reducing a tree’s quality of life.
Do we not have a moral obligation to end their suffering? Clearly it’s time we euthanized those poor trees along our hydro lines and put an end to their misery.
I’ll even pitch in to help cremate their lifeless tree bodies.