The end of 2008 has been a trying time for people in Laie. We barely had the flood waters under control and people were ripping out carpeting and removing water wrecked furniture and other belongings when the lights went out. The day after Christmas there was a little lightning and it hit a couple of power poles and unbalanced the whole power transmission grid. The entire island of Oahu was suddenly powerless for about 24 hours.
There were a couple of interesting things during that blackout time. Our Stake had planned an after Christmas dance (actually two, one for adults one for youth) to replace the New Year's Eve dance activity this year. The food had been prepared and the decorating done when the power went down. We went over just to see what was going on instead. The adult activity looked like a soup kitchen with people sitting around eating the refreshments of clam chowder, homemade rolls, chocolate fountain (no power made it a dipping experience instead) and other good stuff. Lots of talk but no music. Battery powered boom boxes were not loud enough in the gym. It was a really fun camp-like get together.
The other interesting things was that Friday and Saturday when the power was down were the last two days that the temple was going to be open for the next 18 months because of renovation. A lot of couples had planned to have their weddings on Saturday. The temple generator worked a while on Friday to complete the in-progress session but then it too went down. Twenty-one weddings were conducted on Saturday by flashlight. Now that would be a memorable wedding, I suppose.
Even when the power came back there were a few remaining issues. Tim's office only came half back on. The side of the room with his refrigerator did not come back and we didn't know that until he lost his Lean Cuisines and other frozen lunches. Fortunately, Amber and Sandi gave him about 10 Indonesian homemade meals for lunches for a Christmas gift and they were in our home freezer. The other problem was that the blackout had burned out the Internet routing switch to our building and several others in the townhouses so we couldn't get online for a few extra days.
Lucky for us, the Hawaiian style of "no worries living on the beach" helped everybody get through these natural disasters coupled with the holidays. A little aloha helped us all get along.
2 comments:
That sounds like quite the adventure! Especially the weddings by flashlight!
Wow, Laie/Oahu are really getting some serious mother nature action. With all the natural disaster type things happening lately in the country it's almost like we are being reminded that no matter how in control we think we are we are no match for nature. Everything is just wiped out in a tornade, hurricane, flood, fire, ice storm, etc. I'm glad you are all still safe and sound. Hopefully you get a break for a little while.
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