Power outage

[redbird]

!markdown Our power was out last night, because the thunderstorm knocked down a tree, which took a light pole with it.

Fortunately, we have flashlights and a camp lantern, and Belmont light is efficient: they cut up and removed the dead tree, put in a new pole for the wires, and got that old pole back to near vertical in about an hour and three quarters.

Belmont Light called this a "planned power outage." I think that means the tree didn't break the wires. But after sending the crews out, they turned off the power to a few blocks so the repairmen could work safely.

cattitude and I went outside and walked around while the power was out, after seeing that the traffic lights and the closest convenience store on Trapelo Road had power. After almost walking into a *different* wire, cattitude told the Belmont Light employee who was standing at the "road closed" sign about the near-miss, and advised caution tape, which was there when we passed by again about ten minutes later.

I miss having buried power lines, but overall am pleased with Belmont Light. (So far, the town agencies I have dealt with are Belmont Light and Animal Control, both of which I'm pleased with, and the Department of Public Works--which *audited* everyone's recycling last month.

Comments

[julian]

How do you audit recycling? Do they tell you what you *could* have recycled but didn't? Or tell you how much you did recycle?

[redbird]

Other way around: they were checking to make sure that the recycling bin didn't contain things that it shouldn't, and that it wasn't overfull.

This is annoying because they will only collect from the town-issued barrels, one per household, and only every other week. This is a large part of why our apartment contains so much cardboard: we're unpacking more slowly than we would like, but faster than we have room to recycle the cardboard. A neighbor we were just chatting with mentioned that Belmont occasionally has days when residents can drop off cardboard for recycling, but that requires a car.

[julian]

Wow, yes, annoying is a good word. Also invasive.

[minoanmiss]

I'm really glad you avoided that power line!

[otter]

I've never lived where the lines are buried, but it does make a lot of sense to build that way. IIRC, most of Europe has powerlines underground.

[cjsmith]

Wow, good for them getting that power repair done quickly... and for putting up caution tape when the danger was pointed out! Glad that didn't go far worse!

[thnidu]

:-( After tapping to expand the cut, I saw nothing but the "image" icon. When I long-pressed that for a link, I got "Image xxx cannot be shown because it has errors", OWTTE (or words to that effect).