Power Outage in San Francisco

Angelika By the way, two astounding events occurred in San Francisco shortly before Christmas. One of them was even reported on German television: There was a power outage in San Francisco for several hours because an employee from the energy supply company, called PG&E, flipped the wrong switch at a power substation near San Francisco. Nothing worked for hours: no computers, no buses or streetcars, as they run on overhead lines, no subway, no traffic lights, no ATMs, etc. However, there was no doomsday atmosphere, as was often claimed on television; people took it rather calmly. It's important to know that in America, power outages for short periods are relatively common, but several hours is extremely unusual even by local standards.

I found it interesting that there was no emergency power system at all; not even at the airport, and this in a city prone to earthquakes, where everyone knows that the power easily goes out when the earth shakes heavily. We were lucky that our room heater still worked, as it runs on gas, and the hot water functioned perfectly. Michael didn't notice any of the excitement anyway, as he was on the East Coast at the time. I was a bit worried about my refrigerator (but it held up bravely and didn't defrost) and suffered greatly from not being able to make coffee all day, but otherwise, it wasn't too bad. I somehow found the story that a wrongly flipped switch was to blame for everything quite endearing, following the motto "Small cause, big effect!" You could really make a movie out of it.

The second sensation was that it snowed in San Francisco. You might not find that exciting, as you are used to German winters, but here it was the first snowfall in 20 years. Of course, the snow didn't settle, but the children still found it amazing because many of them had never experienced real snow before.