Still in the dark

Well, so I wrote last time about not having fallen off the edge of the world, and then the world went dark on us. Last Sunday, at about 4:30 p.m., the remnants of Hurricane Ike buffeted us with 75 mph winds and left in their wake a path of destruction that virtually shut down my small college on the hill and its surrounding areas.

While the college was mostly all back up and running by week's end, the section where we live, which was the worst hit of our immediate surroundings, remained just as Ike left it on Sunday. As of right now, as we speak, things around me look pretty much as they did in these pictures that I took Sunday, except for the fact that yesterday a crew finally came and cleaned up the downed trees that blocked the road for almost a week.

I've been shocked, appalled and downright furious at the slowness of the electric company in restoring service to our street, especially since their website says that they give first priority to downed power lines. Although our small area was littered with downed trees, downed power lines, and downed electricity poles that leaked cancer-causing transformer fluid onto the road, we were placed at the bottom of their priority list.

"Next Sunday," the uncaring AEP operator said when I called that Monday after the storm to report the fact that no one had come to check out the serious damage on our street. And they've kept to that schedule. Supposedly, we'll have power again by midnight tomorrow. Supposedly.

And before anyone feels the need to remind me, I'm well aware that (as many of my Anglo colleagues and friends noted), at the height of the storm AEP had more 1.5 million people without power, and many trucks had gone to Texas to help and Ike devastated Ohio to the point that the governor called a state of emergency. I am aware of all that, thanks.

What makes me most ashamed of myself is that when I lived in Puerto Rico I complained about the service provided by PREPA, although in comparison to AEP, they are exemplary. I remember how our Guaynabo house was located in a small pocket of houses that used to lose electricity often for no apparent reason, and was always the last one to get it back when hurricanes barreled through the island.

I also remember that I wrote a letter to PREPA, and had all the neighbors sign it, and sent it off and how they eventually came and fixed the recurring problem. I also remember how the PREPA crews would show up at the wee hours of the morning and start working once we had finally made the top of their priority list. And how they would work incessantly until they had restored power for everyone. They worked as if someone they cared for was among those without power.

I also regret thinking that it was wrong for the government to own and operate a utility company. That was before I'd met AEP. At least when the government owns the company that provides electricity, they're also invested in making sure everyone gets power soon. And PREPA restored power to Puerto Rico in only a week after Hurricane Georges in 1998 wiped out the entire electric grid, which services more than 4 million people in a mountainous island.

So I apologize to PREPA for having been so unfair in my ignorance. I had no measure of comparison since I never had similar blackouts while living in Boston or D.C. But I now know better. Many Puerto Ricans think that everything is better because it's American. Of course that's absolute BS, but it's most clear in situations like these. In Puerto Rico, many Puerto Ricans care for other fellow Puerto Ricans and they work their asses off for each other. I got the message loud and clear here that my electric company didn't give a sovereign shit about us but they did love posting the big numbers on their website of how many people they restored power to by getting to the easier jobs first.

Another thing that was become very apparent to me during this event has been the cultural divide between me and my Anglo friends. Invariably, when I've bitched and moaned and ranted and raved against the electric company's failure to address our area as a priority, my Anglo friends tried to reason with me and pointed to the many and valid reasons AEP had for leaving us without electricity for a week and with a potentially dangerous situation on our street, despite the fact that sick elderly people live there. Not surprisingly, only my one fellow boricua colleague-friend understood my rage and raged with me.

I think it must be my rebellious African, and Corsican and Irish blood. I'm just not able to make excuses for those who have the power and the resources to respond in an hour of need for those who can't do anything for themselves. And while I can acknowledge all the reasons the electric company might have had to ignore us, in my eyes, they failed to meet their own promise: that they would tackle the areas with dangerous downed power lines first. In law school, they teach that as basic negligence.

The best thing about this whole event has been how our small community has pooled together to improve our collective lives, as my wonderful Canadian colleague-friend recently reminded me. Dr. S, whose apartment got power back early last week, pitched in her grill for a camp-fire style dinner that evening, just before her power came back. My husband and I got rid of all our thawed food from the freezer, and I put together some black beans that he cooked on the grill, and with some freezer-burned bread and some fresh veggies we all had a meal to remember in the pitch darkness.

Ever since she got power, the very generous Dr. S gave us her extra key and insisted that we use her refrigerator and freezer and my husband has been able to make his can't-live-without coffee there in the mornings. Yesterday, the college brought us two gas-run generators, one that powers our 4-apartment building, and another one for the other 4 that are still electricity-less, and now we can use our laptops and watch the news on TV and have light in the bathroom, which is crucial for an ostomate like me, especially when I have to change my pouch. That's one thing you definitely can't do while holding a flashlight or by candlelight!

Every time the tiny (but very loud) generator runs out of gas everything goes dark again, but something is better than nothing and it was very good of the college to remember us. Many of our neighbors on this street aren't so lucky. All in all, things have started looking up (we might even have someone interested in renting our large lonely house in the tiny city -- which has electricity, of course!).

But I'm still raging against the Machine, specifically the Machine that is supposed to provide our electricity but doesn't. And the worst part is that I can't dump them and find another provider. At least in Puerto Rico the government is responsible for PREPA so they have make sure that the company provides good service because their own record depends on PREPA's performance. Here, they can get away with anything and what can people do? Only rage against the Machine, I suppose.

In the end, AEP has been lucky. No one on our street had a medical emergency that an ambulance was unable to get to because of the debris they didn't clear up until yesterday, and gringos around here tend to view events in their lives with a degree of resignation that must hearken back to their Calvinist cultural roots so no one (other than me and my boricua friend) has made much of a fuss about this. Not even the sick elderly people who could have!

I, on the other hand, still have fantasies about pelting AEP with my rotten food. I know, of course, that it's not the AEP workers' faults. They, like the PREPA ones, are to be commended for all the dangerous work they do. It's just their huge monopoly of a company that sucks. And please save your breath and energy, because no amount of reasoning with me will change my mind. Let me continue to rage on against the dying of the little light I have.