I have two and a half goals when we have a major storm.
First, have power. Our neighborhood has buried power lines which means no trees to fall and break a connection in the neighborhood. However, eventually the lines go above ground outside the neighborhood and therein lies the problem. The neighborhood seems actually to connect in two separate places (I am sure I am describing this incorrectly). The result is that even when one part loses power generally the other one does.
In 2010, our half lost power, but we have some close friends (well, Ellen has close friends, as my daughters remind me I have no friends) in the other half, so we stayed with them for three days until power was restored.
This time, evidently PEPCO’s investments seem to have paid off. No power problems thus far at all.
Having said that, even in 2010, PEPCO would display on their web page which areas were out of power, how big the areas were, and give estimates of when they would at least arrive to fix each problem. Accepting that they were not always correct, sometimes physical circumstances make such predictions hard, it was at least something.
And that brings me to my second goal.
Second, keep the Internet. That also was going well until yesterday, Sunday morning, when Comcast went out. Comcast, now Monday morning is still out.
My problem with Comcast is that when you access their web page, when you send them the text message OUT, when you call their customer service representatives, they are able to tell you absolutely nothing of value. They confirm there is an outage (duh). The web page says, your area has an outage we are doing our best to fix it. How big is an area? Is there any estimates of any kind? It would seem to me that either Comcast has knowledge of at least the scope of the problem, in which case they should share it, or they do not have any knowledge of anything, in which case they need new management.
Grump.
Oh, my last half of a goal, I would at some point during the January/February timeframe like Montgomery County to plow the neighborhood streets. We have had our driveway shoveled out. In fact, it was dug two feet into the street, where it ends in a two-foot-high pile. It is not clear it makes sense to dig away the two-foot-high pile, since when the streets are finally plowed they will cover the end of our driveway again. Having said that, if we had both power and the internet while we are waiting for plows it would be a plus.