Spaniard through blackout
I'm scared. It's been an hour since the blackout started. It caught me at the office and we thought it was an issue in the building, but there was no phone signal and a few minutes later a coworker said it was bigger than that and Portugal and France were affected too.
Everyone was leaving the office and I did the same, fourteen floors down the steps, and started walking home like some other days. I'm lucky I can make the way to my flat avoiding any busy crosswalk and I could go through the relative chaos of traffic without much trouble. Good thing I just came back from Rome which counts as training for this kind of things. Almost a normal day when I choose walking over taking the bus for health sake or because the day is so nice, only this time it was not about that. I walked home because I didn't feel safe taking the bus. I didn't feel safe at all.
I'm writing this now at home, and I'm so worried, not so much about what's happening (I'm not witnessing any incidents) but about the possible causes. I hope it doesn't have anything to do with war. Listening that Europe should be prepared for war and then something like this happens, and we are practically intercommunicated... not nice. On the way home I heard some people mentioning Germany. It it got to that, this is a big fucking mess. I don't get how most are so careless. People are having coffee on the terraces.
I don't know enough about power supply networks to make any kind of guess, but it feels so strange that no fallback mechanism has taken care of it. This could mean something really bad...
I don't know what to do. I don't wanna think about a collapse. I don't want to think about survival. I might not have what it takes...
I must keep myself in the present , in reality, rather than possibilities. I'm lucky I don't have anyone in the hospitals. There is no immediate danger.
(Here I stopped writing and would come back later)
It all felt so weird. Looking from the balcony, people walked down the street as if nothing was happening, if only because traffic light are not working and the police are managing the transit. Even after this long, I couldn't read any restlessness in their movements, pose, or way of taking. Up here I was feeling so isolated, nothing physically around and phones not working. There was an instant of connectivity, not even a second, that allowed to receive a few messages. My sister telling me to buy water and food, and my girlfriend panicking, also thinking the worse was happening. I texted back but my messages would take hours to be delivered and, to this moment, they haven't reached my girlfriend.
I couldn't bear it anymore so I took a bag and went out hoping to hear some update on the issue. On the way back I saw supermarkets were closed, but now I came across with people carrying water, so I followed the trace to get some stuff, even when I couldn't carry much. In the meantime, I could only hope my girlfriend is fine and She decides to come to my place.
I got back with the supplies, but I didn't get any info on the power supply issue. Looking from the balcony again, I saw this elderly couple sitting on a bench with a black box in between their heads. A radio! I went down again immediately to ask them if they knew anything.
He: "They don't say what's the problem."
She: "Or they don't want to say."
Fuck, that were my thought. No need it to hear it from her lips. At that moment I was scared again, maybe even in shock and I could only sit there on another bench, doing nothing for a while. Then I took out my e-reader and did my best to distract myself, and wait to see if my girlfriend showed up.
(...)
At 18 I go up to my flat again (when I would continue writing) and I have another moment of connectivity. All that time I was trying to make calls or send messages with no luck. Now I can read a group chat where it is said the issue is being worked on and power could be back in 6 or 8 hours, from that moment or from 12:30 I don't know, but it is enough to calm me down. Bad thing is, my girlfriend is still out of the grid, her iphone probably out of battery (thanks to apple for their great and honest batteries).
It is 20:38 and electricity is back in my neighborhood. People are cheering on the balconies. Traffic light come back a few minutes later. I will be able to talk with my girlfriend a bit later.
Looks like we are good. But we still don't know what failed.
Time will tell if we are safe