as a working class person, my entire life

After hurricane Helene we didn’t have electricity for 6 days. But I’ve been completely powerless for 34 years.

When I was eleven (1988) we moved to a rural property with no power. I left when I was eighteen… So… Seven years.

After the power company (PG&E) got blamed and sued for some big fires that destroyed entire neighborhoods in 2017, they got salty and decided to cut power whenever there were high winds predicted during red flag (high fire risk) days. The worst one was 15 days. I’m on a well with an electric pump, so there was no water for those days either.

Also, I lived off grid for about four years with only enough solar to either charge a phone (no service though) or run a light bulb in the evening. I did go to town to check my email and read the news every week or so.

A few weeks, as i’ve spent some time abroad in some village where they literally didn’t have electricity.

Probably one winter where the power went out for maybe a couple weeks. It was kinda annoying because at one point the people on the other side of the street got power because they are on a different part of the grid. I can remember sitting in the living room watching a video when suddenly the lamp turns on. Immediately called my parents to let them know the good news.

2 years. Lived in a village of about 400 people in West Africa.

I’m still waiting for power over my life

Huge tree fell across our one lane road in the mountains when I was growing up. We had a big snow storm and we got something like 6 feet of snow in two days.

Thankfully everyone out there had wood stoves for heat. Plenty of fresh snow to melt for water. After the snowing stopped everyone trapped behind the fallen tree worked together to cut the trees and get it off the road. It was a pretty big pine tree so it took like 15 people with several chainsaws all day to get it cut apart and off the road.

Still took like a week for a plow to come out and make the road clear enough for the power and telephone people to come out and fix it up for us.

I’ll never forget how unbelievably dead silent it was when I was laying there in 5+ feet of fresh powder. Because the power lines were down there wasn’t even that faint buzz/hum of electricity that you don’t usually notice but it’s always there. Absolute pure silence. You could hear your own heart beating and every little sound your clothing made when you did so much as even breath.

Truthfully I loved that week. The whole family slept in the living room by the fireplace. We had candles around at night since we didn’t have a ton of flashlights and batteries. My mom would send me brother out to get snow with the biggest pot she had. We would like it as high as we could while still being able to carry it. It would melt down to like half the pot haha. We cooked on the wood stove which took some adjustments. I think my mom treind to make spaghetti squash by wrapping a whole squash in foil and tossing inside the fire place on the red hot coals. Ended up burning it pretty badly but we had fun anyway. Played lots of board games and just kinda hung out as a family. Went on some hikes to see what our usual paths looked like with so much snow on them.

10/10 would get snowed in again.

Almost 2 months.

Lightening struck near my house once, blew up the transformer on the power line, exploded a giant oak tree in the back yard, and killed a wire leading from the power line into the circuit box. Also the circuit box blew up. It took over 7 weeks and 4 professionals looking at it before we could figure out what needed to get fixed.

We did use a generator occasionally so it wasn’t 7 weeks straight, but we would go as long as we could between uses because iirc gas was very expensive at the time, and technically the house had no power for that long.

Outside of camping, the massive blackout of 2003.

https://www.cbc.ca/archives/the-great-north-america-blackout-of-2003-1.4683696

One week, in my own house. We were part of the ones that lost power during ‘snowmageddon’ in the south a couple years back. Thankfully due to some light prep I’d done during the initial COVID outbreak I had plenty of canned meals for the fam and a nice butane cooking stove. Hardest part was keeping the house warm but we basically had some candles and plenty of blankets. Honestly could have been really bad, but looking back it was a nice little respite.

3 weeks without mains. Bad storm, very rural. We ran a generator to keep the freezer and fridge going. Had antique tools to work with so we were fine. Thankfully it took place in the summer.

As another commenter mentioned, longest period of time without electricity for me would be about two weeks in Algonquin Park, Ontario Canada. A couple of our canoe trips were ten days at least… the drive back to civilization is always a bit strange, 40 km/h feels really fast at first, it’s a bit scary getting onto the highway and the lights everywhere are very distracting for the first couple of hours.

Longest period of time at home would be about two weeks without power during the 1998 Ice Storm. We had a wood stove, so we did okay for heat and managed to cook on the flat metal top. It hit in several rainstorms over the course of about a week, and took years to clean up afterwards. Power went out on the first night and didn’t come back on until at least ten days later, not sure exactly now.

I remember being 8 years old, watching the rain come down in waves, gently, onto bent over tree branches that were sparkling as they swayed back and forth in the wind, thousands of gems on the tips of the branches, reflecting orange glow from the streetlight beside.

By the third day of that, there was cannonfire in the back fourty. Branches were breaking under the weight, falling to earth with a thundering “boom” as they made the 2” sheet of ice over the snow vibrate like a giant’s drum. A tinkling sound, like tiny bells, would follow as the shards bounced upwards and settled across the surface.

Strange times. Lots of candles. Gets boring at night when you start running out. Wasn’t allowed to go outside for a long time because of the falling branches.

When we finally did go outside, I almost died because we went sledding. Turns out plastic “crazy carpets” go, well, crazy fast on that kind of ice. Luckily I went through a patch of small trees instead of smashing into one of the big ones. In retrospect, we picked a really bad spot to go sledding. Learned pretty quick that just sliding down on our bellies like otters worked better. Didn’t go back to school until almost the end of January so we had lots of time to practice, it was great.

The bush was a mess for years afterwards. Just a tangle of fallen branches and small trees shooting up between. The rabbit population exploded as a result, it was perfect habitat out there for them. I found a patch of snow at the end of June that year, hidden away under a whole pile of pine branches. We tapped the trees that spring but shouldn’t have even bothered, we only got about 5 litres of maple syrup instead of the usual 20 to 25

A 2 week canoe and camping trip in the US / Canadian boundary waters near Minnesota. Not only did we not have any power, other than batteries for an emergency radio and some flashlights, the five of us never saw another human being the whole time, from drop off to pickup. In was amazing