We cannot work, the power is out.

My job is Information Technology. I am one of those guys who lives behind the locked door and feeds the gerbils enough to keep the data flowing and to make sure you can access that web page (assuming you are allowed to) and get the work of the day done.

So, when the power goes out, it is pretty interesting to watch the reactions. At my current office, a federal building with four discrete power grid access points, we lost one around 8AM today, affecting all the ground level circuits. Those are the ones that PCs and associated gear are plugged into. It also seems to be the circuit that the ventilation and heating systems are connected to as well as some of the loading dock facilities. So we had lights, and toilets and some security systems and phones but we could not work. For the better part of two hours, a large number of people were wandering the halls, some looking lost, some not sure they had ever been in this part of the building before. For two hours, no one could work.

Which brings me to an interesting observation. Many of us have commented on how poorly trained cashier staff is, especially if they have to make change. In today's example, if the power goes out, like it did here, there is no threat to health and welfare, but what exactly are you supposed to do? In the case of my job, I sit around waiting for the power to come back on and then make sure everything restarts correctly. So I get time to read. Fortunately I am the type that has a lot of books, so finding something to read is not a big deal, but more and more, we are becoming a society that reads and relies on information from on-line sources and when those sources go down or are lost, we are at a loss.

As today is Tornado Awareness Day here in Virginia, I want you to think about this. If you lost electricity tomorrow and it was out for several days, what would the impact be? To you. To your family? Could you survive? Are you prepared?