64 Hours Without Power

Joplin was once again hit with a bad storm.

Not as bad as the tornado of 2011. But the sirens did go off, and winds of up to 100 mph were reported.

Me, I slept right through it. I woke at 2 am, Saturday night/Sunday morning to go to the bathroom and realized the power was out, but thought nothing of it. When I woke again at 7:30, the power was still off. But when I left at 11 for mass, I saw that one of the main business roads in town, which I live a block south of, was fully functional, traffic lights and businesses running, so I figured it wouldn’t be long. Except when I came home from mass, where the power was also on, home was still dark.

I checked social media. As many as 40,000 people in the area were without power. Yet one of the biggest proud announcements in town was that they got the pool back up and running. That’s when I started asking questions, but we’ll get to those in a minute.

Now I’ll be the first to admit, we are way too dependent on electronics. However, it’s how we grew up, it’s what we do, there’s no changing that. Twenty years ago, I didn’t have a smartphone, my laptop was a joke, and I spent a great deal less time online. Now? You know the score.

About five pm, with still no power, I started to worry. Everything in the fridge and freezer was starting to waste. The worst, though- my housemate’s insulin. She’d been in the hospital since the preceding Thursday, so it wasn’t an immediate risk, but, for those who don’t know, if insulin is not…