I'm really not sure if it's such a good idea to name storms. I'm not sure how I'm going to feel the next time I meet a human being called "Elliott." I might feel...wary, at least.
Elliott kicked my ass. Winter Storm Elliott, I mean. I survived, of course, and that's good, and I'm not as bad off as some people—I'm not trapped in a car on a freeway with no gas left, and I'm not without power after two and a half days with no help in sight. I didn't die, and some people did. So I'm grateful it wasn't worse.
We had intermittent brownouts all day Friday, and the home backup generator cycled a bunch of times throughout the day. On Friday night, the rest of the neighborhood was without power and I was sitting there feeling smug, with the lights and the heat on, listening to the generator chug away, thinking, aren't I lucky to have a generator. Then I heard its little engine go berserkoid for ten or 20 seconds and fall silent. The house went completely dark and quiet save for the momentary beeping protests of all the electronic equipment shutting down. Uh-oh.
This isn't good.
It was not good. It was one outside. I mean 1°F (that's –17°C for you Europeans). The wind was howling, 21 miles per hour sustained and gusts to 47 mph. What used to be called the wind chill (now called the "feels like") was –20°F, and felt every bit of that. Bitter cold. Snow was blowing everywhere and the roads that were wet with rain that morning had frozen. I live at the bottom of steep hills. There was a travel advisory. And it was eight o'clock at night on the day before Christmas Eve.
The guy from the company that sold me the generator said he wasn't going to try to get somebody to me that night, so I should try calling him in the morning. So I piled up all the blankets I could find and burrowed down. Kinda like Winter camping, but without the wind and the wet. (I went Winter camping once as a Boy Scout and woke up with my hair frozen to the floor of the tent. That's a little more inconvenient than it probably sounds. This wasn't as bad as that; but I didn't sleep much.)
The rest of the neighborhood got power back at 7:00 Christmas Eve morning. But not me. That's when it dawned on me that the problem with the generator, whatever it was, was what was keeping me dark. The generator was somehow stuck in its "generator is supplying power, keep grid off" position.
I went to town for breakfast and a little warmth. The nice man from Home Power Systems arrived about 9:00, worked for a while, told me he had bad news for me, collected a check for $240, and left. As I understand it—and I don't really understand it—first the generator fried its own transfer switch (a $2,000 repair), filling the basement with that sickening aroma of "something electrical is burning"; then the fried transfer switch and/or the bitter cold and/or something else destroyed the motor in the generator. Upshot: the home backup generator is totaled. Worse, in the moment, was that there was no way to get me back on the grid. It was very cold in the house, and I was dressed in my full Winter gear but still cold—my body doesn't seem to generate heat like it used to. And it was Christmas Eve.
The HPS guy told me I needed an electrician to "bypass the transfer switch," and that any electrician would know what that meant. Using my phone, I tried to find an electrician...and found a long list of "CLOSED, reopens Monday morning." I started worrying about the pipes freezing and all the rest of the damage that could occur to the house if it spent a sustained period below freezing. And what were Butters and I going to do for two days? I kept my cool, but to be honest I was not in the best state of mind at that point.
Long and short: I finally did find an electrician, by the name of Richard Bruno, a strapping young go-getter about six and a half feet tall who is 21 years old and had started his business at age 18. He says he works on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day "every year." Meaning, I guess, the three years since he was in high school. He arrived, bypassed the generator panel, and I finally got power again at about 3:00 in the afternoon. Big relief! It had gotten down to 37°F in the house, and the pool shed hit 19°F. Richard collected a check for $540—emergency call, the holiday, all that—which I was glad enough to pay, and grateful to be able to pay. It's going to cost another $500 if I decide to make the bypass permanent and go back to living without a backup generator. All told I was without power for 19 hours during the worst part of the storm.
I kept the heat up and all the lights on all Christmas Day! Just because I could. In my 12-step program, we're supposed to start our morning prayer with a "gratitude list," and I do what I'm told because I want to stay sober. As you can imagine, "a warm house" started my gratitude list on Christmas morning. My prayer was more fervent than usual.
Like I say, other people had it worse than I did, some much worse, so I'm not complaining. My homeowner's insurance might pay for a new generator or at least the cost of removing the old one and making the bypass permanent. We'll see.
The whispering cold
You know the two worst things about the experience? One was the irony. I mean, I have a generator to give me a backup in case of emergency. The irony is that it was supposed to provide power in a blackout, and instead, it was what was locking me out of the grid after clean power to my neighbors had been restored. Irony of that sort does not sweeten life.
The second was that I had a sort of existential crisis in the silence and the darkness. I live alone, and I don't mind it so much usually, but I depend on my electronic devices for a sense of company. I still had my phone during those 19 hours, but I didn't want to use it more than was absolutely necessary because I didn't know when I could recharge it again. Sitting and lying there in the dark through that very long night, hour after hour with nothing to do, with the house getting colder and colder and the wind howling through the trees, and relief uncertain...let's just say it was pointing out to me how alone I really am. Not pleasant.
There is a poem, number 37 of the 200 or so Cold Mountain poems by the legendary hermit-poet of China, Han Shan, who anonymously left his poems written on rocks and bits of tree bark at the foot of the mountain he lived on. It goes like this:
I think of all the places I've been,
Chasing about from one famous spot to another.
Delighting in mountains, I scaled the mile high peaks;
Loving the water, I sailed a thousand rivers.
I held farewell parties with my friends in Lute Valley;
I brought my zither and played on Parrot Shoals.
Who would guess I'd end up under a pine tree,
Clasping my knees in the whispering cold?
Han Shan
(translated by Burton Watson)
I remember being moved by that in college, and the book is still on my shelves all these years later.
But I'm back to normal now, and all is well. No complaints; these things happen. I just need a couple three days before I have to meet anyone named "Elliott," is all.
Mike
Flickr page / New Yorker author page
(Inset: Han Shan by Yan Hui, 13th century)
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Featured Comments from:
Bob Keefer: " Does this fancy generator system come with a warranty? I mean, what a disaster, though it's good you appreciate the irony. Living in the woods in Oregon we're well accustomed to power outages, and last year we finally broke down and bought a generator ($1,000, delivered from Amazon). Nothing as fancy as yours—we have to haul it out and plug it into the main electrical panel (our non-automated transfer switch cost us about $200 to have installed on the panel) and fire it up. I think we've used it four times already, and have been very pleased with it. You're making me really glad we didn't spend the money on a higher-tech operation! Glad you survived.
"Merry belated Christmas, and wishes for a great 2023. Thanks for all the work you do to make photography fun and interesting for the rest of us."
John Berger: "Just to note: don't minimize your little Acura Survival Pod that should be available with at least half a tank of gas all year long...and very capable cell phone recharger as well. Hmmmmm...."
Daniel: "Could be worse...you might have a plug-in electric car."
James Bullard: "My name isn't Elliott so you are safe reading this. During the Ice Storm of '98 (I think it was '98, correct me if I'm wrong), my house went without power for an entire week. We survived it because we had a wood stove. The state (NY) wants to phase out wood stoves but if you have the space to have a small wood burner it can run when the grid or a local thing like your bypass switch fails and they are simple enough that you don't need a degree in engineering to stay warm. Here's hoping your heating system isn't tested by nature again. Happy New Year."
Juan Buhler: "…And here I was thinking I was going to read some story about Elliott Erwitt with my coffee this morning. Glad you’re well Mike, and greetings from California! It was sunny and in the 50s yesterday where I am."
Anton Wilhelm Stolzing: "Not a nice Xmas story. And so revealing. Backup generators—I would not say they do not exist in Europe, but indeed they are the exception, not the rule. My idea would be: Step down: Opt for a camping equipment for emergency situations, one that provides warmth for one room, light, and a one or two flames hotplate for cooking. A huge battery pack to recharge smartphone etc. does no harm either."
David Brown: "I feel your pain! We have occasional ice storms down here in North Texas. Actually, they used to be a lot worse. Ice will form on every surface, especially tree limbs and power lines, until a tree limb and/or a power line will snap! The worst for me was January 1979 (that storm is famous and still remembered down here.) I was without power for five days. When the power finally came back up on my block, my neighbor only then discovered that his electrical service panel had been pulled off of his house by the ice. He still did not have power. Suffice it to say, that I now own a very good and dependable portable generator. It will not power the whole house, but we can have light and heat from natural gas. I have considered getting a whole house generator, but now I’m not so sure.… "
Mike replies: In fairness, my electrician said my whole house unit was a inexpensive one, and he pointed to the motherboard in the transfer box and said, "that's older than I am." He said the new units are much smarter than mine, and that they can distinguish brownouts and cope with them.
Geoff Wittig: "Sincere sympathy, Mike. We have lived on a rural hilltop an hour west of you for the past 37 years, at the end of a 1,000-foot-long gravel driveway. It's gorgeous in Summer and especially in Autumn; and Winter has its own austere beauty. I have made many lovely photographs and paintings here. But the downside is not trivial. We were snowed in for three days by massive drifts 10 feet high after the 1994 Nor'easter. We lose electrical power typically 4–5 times a year, usually just for a few hours after a high wind. Last month it was because a runaway downhill truck took out a transformer pole. After the 1991 ice storm it was two weeks without power. We long ago decided not to bother with a generator, after hearing numerous tales just like yours, along with carbon monoxide horror stories. We're now very experienced at lighting the candles and oil lamps, and gathering around the wood stove until the power returns. Kinda like 19th century life.
"Generators are complicated devices with many potential modes of failure, built to meet a price point. Manufacturers have surely run the numbers and know precisely how unreliable they can be before profits take a hit."
Robert Roaldi: "Makes you respect all the more those pioneers from centuries ago."
Chris Dale: "It is a hell-of-a-thing to be without power and thus without heat in a part of the country that gets cold. I live in Minnesota, perhaps one of the few places that is consistently as cold as northern New York. You story made me cringe; of course, I was thinking about your pipes all through the story. So glad to hear you didn't have to deal with that nightmare. I have been considering a generator. Now, not so much."
Mike Ferron: "This so reminds me of two years ago when we in central Texas got hit with first an ice storm, then six inches of dry powder snow with a temp that was 2°F in the morning and the temps never went above the freezing mark for five days. Understand, I moved to Texas from Maine, and these conditions are no big deal. In Maine that is. In a latitude that = Northern Florida it is a big deal. We went five days unprepared with no power or water. Four pots of water on the gas range kept the house in the 40s and I filled the bathtub with water and then snow for flushing water. I now own two Dyna-Glo kerosene heaters with a few days' supply of fuel, a small inverter generator, and four lights that run off of power tool batteries and lots of those batteries that remain charged. Fool me once!"
Kye Wood: "As a writer, you'd hope to elicit an emotional response in your readers minds. Well, sport, you did. Your post immediately took me back to every dark, long night of the soul I've ever lived through. I don't think I've ever seen swearing here, but SH*T MIKE! What a horrible horrible no good bummer crap of a series of things to happen. Glad to hear you landed on gratitude. That's where it's at. May your trials be trivial and first world problems at best, from now on. Kind Regards, Man who lives in 22°C during Christmas zone."
Tom Burke (partial comment): "Sorry to hear about your misfortune but glad to learn that you had power for Christmas Day. That was potentially very serious—long periods of exposure to cold really aren't good for humans. Here's a rather alarming account of what just getting cold can do to the body."
Mike replies: Yes, I noticed the long dose of cold seemed to take a toll. Interesting article.
