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Electric Grid Employee Neighbor Sounds Alarm
Two of the tenants at White Gables used to run a ranch in Eastern Oregon until things collapsed for them and their family financially. Before that, they lived in Colorado, and they still have family there. Over the last few years, they've been watching their previous way of life disappear. I'll call this couple “George and Joanne,” who moved here to our building and are set to settle for a while. They used to have good money, you can tell by their expensive pick-up trucks and furniture– but they've sold most of their assets and Joanne is looking for gainful income of her own as George has gone fulltime into what used to be a part-time vocation for him: running the grid subsystems for the electric utilities. They're purposely living below their means not only to help pay off debts (I suspect a very recent bankruptcy) but to have more wriggle-room for life in general. Their relatives in Colorado are now considering moving HERE after all the fires and crazy weather they've had to deal with (ranch people, so you can imagine the nightmares they've had.) George's brother Geoffry visited here for a couple of weeks recently looking into just such a move.
All this we've known for some time. Economic and climatic refugees will become common things in the years ahead, and sometimes I think its better to move if you can sooner as opposed to later. Because later it will get much harder to pull resources together to make such a move and you can become trapped in a region that will not work for you. Believe me, I know the hard way! But I'm actually oddly grateful to have gone through my own version of hell and survived a wiser being (and more importantly my PARTNER got a clue at last!!) We've moved to an area that I believe will see an easier transition downwards than most places. Certainly, the aliens steered us here pretty decidedly…
We talk to our neighbors in passing all the time– small talk stuff. Naturally, one of the topics of discussion is our garden. Its starting to produce now (OH MY GOD I'M EATING A LOT OF SALADS LATELY– like 2 a day!) — and everyone seems happy to see it. Almost like our garden makes them feel a little less nervous about things-? Again I caught that vibe recently when George remarked on how healthy and BIG our garden is and he said something along the lines of, “… its a good thing to have going. You guys were certainly right last spring about the food prices going through the roof later this year! Man-! That nation-wide drought is terrible. Eating is going to be expensive this winter.” We agreed, and talked about all the canning and preserving we intend to do in order to have a nice stash of food set aside this year. (We are intending on sharing some with our tenants, though- to be good neighbors and to encourage them to join us in gardening next year.)
That's when the tone of the talk changed.
George said, “Well, you know I work with the electric company– and I tell you what you're doing is something everyone should be doing.” Then he started talking about how fragile the electrical grid is, even in the Pacific Northwest where we have excess power (we sell to other states) and a newer infrastructure than most of the country. “We're still dealing with small blackouts all over Portland all the time simply due to systems wearing out. Its a constant patchwork fix all the time, bandaging things that need re-built entirely.”
Of course, Gerick and I are both aware of this sort of thing and agreed it was an issue.
Encouraged, George went on to talk about how to keep his certification, he has to attend classes and conferences every couple of years, and he just went to one this year where they talked about solar events and what they would do to the grid. He mentioned the event in the 1800s (and I said, “1854?” and he looked at me, like he couldn't believe I knew that!) and how if it hit now it would take 7 YEARS to get the electric back up again. He said all the people he works with are convinced the grid is going to go down at some point soon, either from a solar event or hacker computer attack or just from overuse of an old system- like what crashed for millions and millions of people in India this last week.
I said, “The problem is that in 7 years time– all chaos would break out because EVERYTHING is dependent upon electricity. Sewage systems, fuel pumps, water systems– things would get crazy bad and become survival-based mighty quickly.”
Again, George just looked at me, like he was surprised that I grasped the situation so quickly. But he seemed relieved, too, to have people understanding the ramifications of what he was saying. He looked at us and then at the ground, “I gotta tell you that the people I work with are all scared. We don't say it in public or anything, but I don't know one person who works for the electric utilities who isn't trying to figure out a Plan B when things go down. Because we're all pretty convinced its gonna happen sooner as opposed to later.”
He laughed and said he wasn't a doomsayer like “those 2012 people” or anything. But he knows what he knows and– yeah, putting some supplies aside and starting to become more self-sufficient was the way to go. I mentioned that I grew up with Mormon relatives who always did have extra food and supplies, so I didn't grow up thinking it was all that strange, and I knew that he'd know what I meant since he and Joanne USED to be Mormon, but obviously are not anymore. (One has to wonder about the story behind that…)
Then we parted ways after discussing the 100 degree temps expected (which we got yesterday) and how we were damn lucky the climate change thing wasn't hitting us like it was the rest of the country. A very few hot days we could all deal with.
Afterwards, I was left thinking to myself on the conversation– yet another person remotely connected to us feels like informing others that from his perspective as an insider in the electric industry, we're all on the brink of some seriously scary shit– that he fully expects to happen soon! Not that this comes as a surprise, I've been reading about the vulnerabilities of the electric grid for years, but its yet another sign of how something's got to give here before too long. Every week we have of semi-normal life gives us all that much longer to prepare, but for so many its not going to be enough.
Its not going to be enough…
2012-08-23 15:13:30
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