by Lady Liberty
08/25/2003

Not too long ago, I wrote about welfare. In that particular commentary, I lamented those who felt no shame at taking government handouts, and I wondered aloud what had happened to personal responsibility. After this last week, I've learned two more things that are reflective of the current sad state of affairs. First of all, I've discovered that more people than I had imagined are more dependent on some form of government authority than I thought. Secondly, I regret to say that, had circumstances altered just a little, I might very well have been one of them.

On August 14, portions of the northeastern US experienced, along with parts of Canada, the largest blackout in history. More than 50 million people in locales ranging from New York City to Detroit found themselves without electric power. The lucky ones saw their power restored in a matter of hours. The less fortunate had to wait days.

In our modern society with its dependence on computers and powered machinery, blackouts are serious business. For example, tens of thousands were without drinking water in Cleveland, Ohio because the city supplies its residents using electrically powered pumps to siphon water from Lake Erie. The outage occurred on a day when the temperatures and humidity were soaring throughout much of the blackout area, and an adequate amount of water wasn't merely a convenience but a necessity for survival.

As soon as the power was disrupted, 9-1-1 dispatchers were overwhelmed with calls from citizens asking if the authorities knew the power was out, and wondering when the power would be turned back on. When those people who had real emergencies could get through, a good number of the calls required the resucue of people trapped in elevators. In my own office building, we were lucky that the elevators were empty at the moment the power was cut off, and fortunate as well that we only had seven floors to descend.

When we decided the power wasn't coming back on anytime soon and we left for the day, we witnessed a near-accident at an intersection where traffic signals were dark. One man shouted at another, "It's a four-way stop, you @%*!" In other communities, police - who could have been better utilized helping with more important matters - were relegated to traffic duty to ensure cars moved along smoothly and safely in the absence of red and green lights.

As daylight faded, fire departments began receiving large numbers of calls from people who had resorted to candlelight in the darkness and had inadvertently started fires. Most grocery stores locked their doors, but those few that were open saw customers grabbing what provisions they could off the shelves in the fear that power might not be restored as quickly as hoped.

In my own house, it was dark, quiet, and very, very hot. I couldn't recall whether or not my water supply was dependent on electric power, so I played it safe and left the faucets off. I racked my brain to remember exactly what was in my freezer and refrigerator. Though I didn't think groceries would last too long in the heat if the fridge wasn't working, I did know they'd last a little longer if I didn't open the doors to check on the contents. I decided to sit on my back porch where I had a faint hope for a breeze while I considered my options. Leaning against one wall on the back porch was my little hibachi grill. It would have come in handy under the circumstances except for the fact I had no charcoal.

In fact, I didn't have a lot of things. I didn't have any jugs of water in the refrigerator, or anywhere else for that matter. That meant that, although I could have managed a day or two drinking what was in the fridge (which happened to be a small amont of beer and soda), I had no way of flushing the toilet. I didn't have any granola or candy bars, or even any other kind of snack food. Everything required cooking, and neither my electric stove nor my microwave were much more at the moment than very heavy paperweights. In the end, I discovered that I only really had two things that were of any use. I had a large oil lamp (it's decorative, but functional), and I had a solar-powered radio (with a hand crank for charging on cloudy days or dark nights).

The oil lamp, of course, didn't have any oil in it. But due to a fluke of fate, I'd been given some lamp oil recently and was able to fill the lamp while there was still daylight for me to see what I was doing. The radio had been charging from a wall socket when the lights went out, and so had a full charge. But none of that was due to any kind of advance planning on my part. In fact, the only advance planning I'd made for that Thursday night was a get-together with a friend to have dinner and watch a video.

In the end, my friend and I got together anyway. Fortunately, she had a gas stove so we were able to cook dinner. I brought my radio, so she, her husband, and I listened to the wall-to-wall coverage of the blackout while we ate. After dinner and with no relief to either the heat or the power outage in sight, we decided to go for a boat ride. Out on the water, the night was comfortable, but the view was eerie (though I live on Lake Erie, there's no pun intended) as dusk fell unbroken by any artificial lighting within sight. But just as we were returning to port, a light shone in the distance. And then another. And then the whole town lit up.

The power had been out for almost exactly four hours. And yet, from the reaction we had when we saw the lights come back on, you would have thought it had been days. Given our lack of preparation, we were very lucky it wasn't.

In considering everything that happened that afternoon and evening, I realized that, had the the power been out too long, I would have been in much the same position of those irresponsible and unprepared people I often condemn. I would have had little choice but to make my way to some local water station for a hand-out, or a temporary soup-kitchen for lunch. (I did have a full tank of gas and could have driven south until I was out of the blackout zone, but I didn't know that during the power outage, and probably wouldn't have had the outage continued long.) Sure, I can have some small sop to my pride by noting that I wasn't needlessly flustered enough to dial 9-1-1 for no good reason and that I actually know how four-way stops work. But that's not very much in the face of such basics as, say, drinking water.

I'm as guilty as they come when we assume electricity and running water will simply be provided as needed, and certainly guilty as well of failing to prepare for those moments when they aren't. Those of us who don't prepare for such events are going to find ourselves more dependent than ever on government hand-outs. As such, we'll also be utterly within the government's power and will have to do as we're told no matter what it may be.

Sure, you can believe the authorities will only act for the good of the rest of us, and that of course they'll take care of us until the disaster du jour has come and gone. And yes, this time it was just a power outage and all's well that ends well. But in a post 9/11 world, I trust you'll understand I'm going to buy some charcoal and make a few plans anyway, won't you? After all, along with personal responsibility I've also been known to nag about learning from mistakes. Consider me educated.

Lady Liberty