Storm watch 2006

"Working" without power by Corinne S.

That's what they called it on TV. The Thursday before Christmas, the Puget Sound had a huge wind and rain storm that knocked out power in much of the region for days. Personally, I was at work at the time.

Friday the 15th was a big deadline for me to get something entered into a national design competition. It was the "late entry" deadline so it was our last shot for that particular competition. A coworker and I worked 17 hours on Thursday trying desperately to get our entry ready in time (yes, we started working on it before the last day, but it was a lot of work).

As it happens, this was also the day of the big storm. Brian and I were working at Microsoft late into the night, with the power flickering periodically and the wind howling outside. There were reports they would close the 520 bridge (my way home) between 9 and 11 PM to avoid wind damage. I was supposed to get a ride home with my vanpool driver, who was also working late that night. But, like a sane man, he went home before they closed the bridge. I stayed on, knowing that the Guaranteed Ride Home program would take care of me with a taxi voucher.

At maybe 11PM, the power went off, but came right back on. Brian and I looked at what he had left to do and agreed to give it 2 more hours and then break for the night. Of course the servers were now down, but we'd at least been smart enough to copy everything local earlier in the evening.

We were near stopping when the power went off at 12:50 AM and didn’t come back on. At that point I tried to use the Guaranteed Ride Home, but I couldn’t print the voucher since there was no power. Doh. No problem. The instructions say to call security if you can’t print the voucher, so I called them. Unfortunately, they said it would be at least an hour before someone could bring me a voucher, and no one was in the office so I couldn't go get it myself. After a moment's hesitation, I decided I couldn’t wait that long (it was 1:15 AM, after all) so I called a taxi myself and paid with my corporate AMEX. Hopefully my boss will approve that when I expense it. :-)

The cab ride home went via I-90 since the 520 bridge was indeed closed. It was slow and there were a lot of trees down and very few street lights, but I got home safely around 2:30 AM. The power at my house was on when I arrived, after having been out briefly for perhaps an hour.

The next day I drove into the office (520 bridge still closed) and discovered that the power was still out with no estimate when it would be back. Due to the circumstances, we were unable to make our deadline (after all that work!). It was very disappointing, but we can still use the same materials to enter a couple of other design competitions over the next couple of months, plus I get to use it in my own design portfolio. Silver lining.

I posted a few photos from the storm on Flickr, but nothing dramatic happened at our house.