It was a very interesting afternoon / evening in the Dreams' household. As for us, we had about eight hours of no power, but because of the widespread nature of it that meant MUCH more than just no electricity. We don't realize everything we rely on that gets electricity from somewhere. Since the outage covered/covers such wide areas, service providers were affected as well. That meant the last 8 hours:
- No power
- No internet from computer (wireless set up, modem, router, no power)
- No internet from iphone as the service in the area was patchy at best due the power loss at the signal source
- Cell phone service was patchy at best due to issues with provider / towers power source being lost (took 30 minutes to get a call through to my DH at his office, call dropped after five minutes)
- Text messages were not going through or going through VERY slowly (probably for same reason above AND overloaded systems). Took 10 minutes for a text to get to my neighbor who was at work.
- Internet via cell phone was BEYOND slow, almost to non-existant
- House phone (the really old one that doesn't run off any electricity that we keep in the closet in case of emergencies) worked for about two hours. Then the phone provider lost power and phone service was gone. Parents and friends got a "Due to power issues..." message.
- No phone. No 'net. No motorcar.... wait, no, we had that one. BUT --- the line at the gas stations were UNBELIEVABLE. 20-30 some-odd cars with lines spilling into the streets. And no, they could not take credit cards.
- Bank could not process anything.
- AAA office closed because they could not run DMV payments/services, couldn't check in customers, couldn't access travel modules for planning, and on and on
- Local restaurants either completely closed or stayed open selling sandwiches and cans of soda only
- Drug store, grocery store, nail salon, hair salon, just about everything else, closed. (This was starting around 4pm. Same with above businesses.)
- People have NO CLUE how to treat an intersection when the traffic lights are out (4-way stop, people, it's that simple, really!) It took DH triple the time as usual to get home from work because of lights being out and the results of that.
Knowing from text messages from various friends what we weren't drastically far from powered areas, we left the area and drove to find the nearest restaurant that had power. Turned out to be farther than we thought, but we just drove (that way) until we finally saw lights off the freeway. Walked into a 45 minute wait because the place was packed with others with the same idea! (Guess it's like stopping at the first open turnstile!) But it gave us not only food, but also A/C on a very hot evening and TVs with football on for DH! (hahaha! Seriously, his number one worry! I ALMOST found a way to end football from starting!)
Just an update, I live in south Orange County (Lake Forest) and we DO have power here and almost everywhere north (including DL). From reports from friends it is mostly extreme south orange county (Mission Viejo and south) that has no power. Everything south of that is out at well.
The outage turned out to be (and still is for some part) from Ensenada, Mexico to Yuma, AZ, to Mission Viejo, CA. (You just escaped it! WTG!)
Makes you think about how disasters were handled before cell phones doesn't it!
It wasn't hard. Radio, that's really all a cell phone is anyway. There are HAMs everywhere.
Well, maybe it would have helped today then because I am here to tell you do NOT rely on your cell phone as being 100% able to help you in event of an emergency.
- It took 10-20 minutes to get a text to get through.
- It took about 30 minutes of trying over and over and over to get a call to go through. And then they had lots of trouble understanding me. If your service provider is having problems, you phone is only as good as their ability to keep the connection for you.
- I could have stared at the internet on that phone for hours waiting for a news page to load. Never did until we got to a powered area.
Again, have a Plan B for communication in case your cell can't get the call/text through. Just my first-hand advice.
Ha. I'm posting from my phone using 3G... Just charged up in my car lol. Thank god for iPhones!!!
We couldn't get a signal long enough to post even FB updates -- even from our iphones. Good for you! But we did drive around for a while simply to charge the phones. Hope you are doing okay. We got very lucky and are back up tonight. Hoping it holds. All the candles are on stand by though. Just in case.... Stay safe and get a good night's sleep.
As of now:
- Our power is back on, but we seem to be the anomaly in the area. In almost every direction you can see most of the surrounding housing tracks are pitch black.
- Certainly a lesson in appreciating the little things in life. It's just power, right? LOL Well, and opening day of football... with no TV or internet.
- Dreams
P.S. DLR and the Anaheim area are not affected at all. They are further north and west than the large affected area. They also do not get power from SDGE, which is the company that had the issue.
P.P.S. Random trivia for anyone who cares: Apparently as soon as the power went out, the plant in San Onofre automatically shut down, exactly as designed as a safety measure. Personally, we were happier when we heard this.
. I hope all the animals will be ok! 
