Blizzard of ’06: Part II

It’s about 3.30 pm on Sunday, October 15, 2006. And it has been more than 60 hours since we had electricity in our home last time, and for that matter hundreds of houses in and around Buffalo. All of this due to the snow storm that struck the region a couple of days back, and dumped more than 22 inches of snow in less than 22 hours. The news papers have coined the term ‘Freaking Friday, the 13th’. I think everybody knows that 13 is considered an inauspicious number, I don’t need to go into the details. If you haven’t read about the part I of my experiences, you can do so here: Part I.

By Thursday night itself we had realized that this is bad, but still had no exact idea of how ‘bad’ it is. So, after waking up on Friday morning, we again took a look outside the window. Everything was quite now, but the view outside looked like a ‘war zone’ and the city had been bombed badly overnight. And the major and most victims of all these were the trees; the asset and pride of Buffalo and its inhabitants.

As I had mentioned earlier most trees in all the areas (90 % in some case) had at least one branch broken. And in past 3 days we’ve seen a lot of this. News papers have reported about people crying over their beloved trees. And anyone with a heart would cry, it was that bad and grim. Some of them were more than 3 centuries old. The maple and oak trees are (or should I say ‘were’ ?) the jewels of Buffalo-Niagara region. But they are no more now. The destruction has left a big scar on Buffalo’s face. The entire landscape of the city has changed the roads and street look ‘naked’ now without their tree buddies. Everybody is wondering if Buffalo will ever be as beautiful as it used to be until last Thursday, or may be it will take generations to recover..!

Couldn’t stop writing about the trees, but I feel sad and so does everybody else here. Anyways, back to Friday morning, I made several calls to my work place, to see if they were open. Naturally everything was closed in Buffalo now. And a state of emergency had been declared in the region. In some places driving was completely banned and in others it was not recommended unless absolutely necessary. Since there was no work that day, I was happy..! There was nothing else to do now, even if you want to, you can’t do much without power. So, I slept and slept for most of the day, except the time it needed to write the Part I of this series..;). However, now we were getting hungry, and it was past 5 pm now, so we decided to go get some food. As we were driving around, expectedly everything was shut, and the roads were mostly deserted. However, we were still in search of an open grocery store. Also, I thought of checking if the car dealer was open, so that I can get pick up my car, however that was a ‘dumb expectation’, or at least get the car charger from my car. Anyways, so we decided to ‘visit’ the Transit road and, we were on I-90 east bound. At the exit they didn’t even take the toll, even if it was a mere 15 cents. I don’t know why, may be the emergency. So we were passing, the dealer was closed, a mile further down we saw a long line at a gas-station. They were lucky, that was one of the few pumps which was operation even without power. For our grocery needs we tried Wal-Mart nearby, but it too was shut.

Now, we were disappointed and were just heading back. Suddenly Purvin spotted a shining red ‘Tops’. Wow, we were more than happy. Finally bought some food from there and headed back to the ‘darkness’. Made some sandwiches after reaching home, and mitigated the hungry stomach. Once again nothing to do now, so I decided to take shower, just hoping that would ‘kill’ some time.

But, that was kind of tricky, it was total dark, and you can’t even see anything, how can you bathe ? So, lit up a small candle in the bathroom and enjoyed the hot-water in the bathtub for the next 30 minutes, of course with the door open. Luckily, we had hot water available. That was the only solace that we had in all this misery. By the way, I have something to share here. Please excuse my language in next few sentences. Peeing in darkness of bathroom was a tough task, and an experience in itself. I mean it was very difficult for me ‘to aim’ in the toilet bowl. It was real hard..;)! Anyways, that was about the ‘rest room experiences’..!

Next morning, Saturday, now totally surrendered to the situation, we didn’t care for anything, we were kind of ‘used to’ living without electricity. But got very bad news in the morning. Purvin mentioned that we didn’t even have water now. Shoot..! What would you do without water, especially when it’s morning and you have just woke up..! Just imagine. To my good luck, I generally don’t have any kind of ‘pressure problem’ in the morning, but still needed to empty the bladder. I thought, what the heck if there is no water. And I peed, and then sprayed a lot of sanitizer/bowl-cleaner to clean the toilet bowl, so that it doesn’t get bad. I was relieved now.

And we were off now to get some coffee and some breakfast. This time, there were some signs of life on the roads now. We spotted the convenient store open just around the corner, even though he didn’t have power. Anyways we bought some coffee, candles, playing cards and news paper. Just take a re-look at the list of things that we bought. We had believed by now that its going to last longer now, so we were getting prepared. However, we still needed to recharge the drained cell phones batteries.

Driving further down, found a Starbucks open with ‘electricity’. Wow, couldn’t get better than this. It was around 10.30 am now. Luckily found an unused electric outlet there and without waiting too much just plugged in our cell phones chargers. Spent about 1 ½ hours there and returned home about 12.00 noon. Again it was boring now. But spent most of the afternoon in UB and watched the movie ‘Dor’ with some acquaintances there. Then had dinner at Olive Gardens.

It was about 9.00 pm now. And we were driving back home, on our way home, we saw most places have power back now, and so will we. So, we were happy, it’s finally over now. But as we reached our complex, it was still dark there. That was sheer bad luck. Never mind, we can continue one more day. Went inside… and eventually to sleep around mid night.

Next morning is today. And we still don’t have power, at least when we left home about 5 hours ago. Meaning, for over past 5 hours we have been inside the Panera Bread on Niagara Falls Boulevard and using the free Wi-Fi here. It’s about 4.30 pm now, and I am almost done writing the part II as well.

In the end, I should say, past 3 days have been very different for me. No power, no internet and ‘no nothing’, just me and myself. I have had ample time to think about nothing. Just stay idle, do nothing. I have enjoyed this time. And at least once I have wished that it will be good if electricity still doesn’t come back.

In all these years I had always read about floods, storms, earth quakes, hurricanes hitting cities and towns. But I was never a victim of them, but this time I am. I have been throught it, and I know how bad or good it could be. Anyways, now I have lots of stories to tell everybody for the rest of my life.

Kaushal