We hope you aren’t reading this editorial by candlelight. And, for the most part, we think you aren’t. By Wednesday, B.C. Hydro and the New Westminster Electrical Utility hope to have everyone back on the grid. But Mother Nature sometimes has a second punch behind the first, so we hesitate to assume that all is back to normal.
What we do know is that there are more lessons to be learned by this first tumble of the season than we can fit into this small space. But let’s start with the big ones:
1. How stupid can people be? In the middle of the windstorm, folks decided to take walks through parks and bicycle down tree-lined streets. It was bad enough seeing drivers speeding through intersections oblivious to the fact that the lights were frozen or completely off. But to see walkers checking their fitbits as twigs and large branches sailed by their heads was a bit much. A twig travelling at 50 kph can punch a pretty ugly hole into someone’s head. And a three-inch wide branch is a lethal weapon when it falls on your head from 30 feet above you.
2. You know all of those emergency disaster planning stories and ads we run advising folks to have 72-hours of food and water for themselves and pets, and to make sure they have flashlights and cash? Well, it appears very few people take them seriously. Let’s hope this wakes them up.
3. Without power your phone won’t work if it’s a landline. However, your cell phone will still work. But it, too, needs power eventually. Now may not be the time to use it all up by taking selfies of yourself under that big tree that is leaning in the wind. And, yes, you can charge it in the car. But burning gas to tweet how you are in your car burning gas so that you may tweet that you are in your car burning gas may not be the best use of your time or the environment right now.
4. B.C. Hydro. What we say now is definitely not directed at the workers. The workers who were up trying to piece together the crippled electrical network or the inside workers who were listening patiently to callers asking the same questions again and again – or yelling. But someone in the executive offices needs to get his or her head shaken. Your website was its own disaster zone, and your communications people were caught flat-footed. Folks need to know what is going on. They don’t all deserve a personal reply. But they do deserve a place to find information. Fix this.
And finally, the biggest lesson for all of us – while it may have felt like we were all alone in the dark during this storm, the reality is that our neighbours were in the same boat. When you go and restock your emergency kits, perhaps put in an extra pair of socks and a granola bar for someone else.
