Every time we’ve left the house, coming back held a little glimmer of hope that the power would be back on. Only to disappoint us. Yesterday was no different.
A week is a long time to stay in a state of suspended anticipation. Like the tree branches encased in ice, we are frozen in the moment just before the power comes back on. We don’t know how long that moment will take, only that it will come at some point. Hopefully before the temperatures drop significantly but there are no promises being made. Only that “we’re in the queue”. Each day of this week has been a part of that moment and today is no different.
Of the 300,000 homes and businesses that were without power, almost 280,000 of them are back online. We’re now in the remaining 8% still waiting.
The @TorontoHydro twitter feed keeps giving out statistics like this, don’t they realize how disheartening it is to know you’re in an ever diminishing group of people? It’s much more constructive to say where the crews are currently working (which they do from time to time). It would be even better if they said where they will head to next. Instead all we get is reminders to be patient and vague promises about the crews not stopping until everyone gets their power restored. A week of hearing that promise makes it sound very hollow.
We are in a cluster of about 20 houses, waiting for them to come to fix one transformer on top of a pole. None of us have downed wires that I can see, no tree limbs came down on the wires between us and the feeder. We’re just in the queue somewhere. Waiting, frozen in time.
My biggest concern is this: the warmer weather has things melting, the forecast is for the temperature to drop 10 to 15 degrees and there are likely some branches or other hazards waiting to take out power somewhere in the city. Will we then be waiting for that to get fixed before they remember we’re still without power?
Seven days is a long time to hope for something to happen that you can’t control or make happen.
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| From TorontoHydro.com |