The Big Bad Boxing Day Blackout of 2008

Yesterday, December 26, is celebrated as Boxing Day in the UK and the Commonwealth, thus the title of today’s post.

Also, everyone on Oahu was affected in some way by an island-wide blackout.  In fact, as I write this, some areas on Oahu are still without power.  Even President-Elect Barack Obama wasn’t spared from this experience.  This is the second time an island-wide blackout has occurred, with the first incident occurring back in October 2006.  And it ruined my friend’s birthday party, which was planned for Stuart Anderson’s in Waimalu.  But it didn’t ruin the night as we still had great company; plus, this will be a birthday we won’t soon forget!

In light of all this, today’s scheduled post has been preempted.  Instead, I’ll share some photos and a special Props and Slops list on the blackout.

PHOTOS

About 10 of us having a candlelight dinner

Two of our more enterprising friends trying to play poker

Likelike overpass on the way home

Near the Vineyard St. exit

View of Keeaumoku St. at midnight from my lanai

PROPS AND SLOPS

Props:

• Times Waimalu for staying open long enough for us to buy some dinner.  And they were still taking credit cards!
• Twitter for being an information lifeline.  And a big mahalo to all the Hawaii Tweeps (that’s “Twitter folk” for the rest of you) that provided updates far and wide, and especially those that used the “#hipower” hashtag on Twitter.  You can actually read everything that was said using that hashtag on Twitter.
• KGMB9 for all their updates.  While iPhone users couldn’t access their streams, they provided constant text updates on their website and via their Twitter feed.  Go Jared!
• Ryan Ozawa (@hawaii on Twitter) who is Hawaii’s Blogger-in-Chief for starting the “#hipower” hashtag (and even giving me credit for suggesting we use one!) and for writing his blog entry in the middle of an island-wide blackout.  Now THAT is a true blogger!
• iPhone…to the rescue!  While my voice calls were spotty, I had perfect high-speed 3G service all night long  Thank goodness I bit the bullet and bought the car charger.  If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have been able to be on Twitter and email as much as I was.
• KSSK for keeping people informed via the radio.  And for the appropriate moments of levity they provided.  The best for me was Michael W. Perry reminding people that while food may spoil, beer tastes good at any temparature!
• My friend @avharris who hadn’t eaten by midnight and was still up.  We used it as an opportunity to have an impromptu micro Tweetup at Foodland, which ended up being closed.  In reality, it was just the two of us, but next time I’ll actually Tweet it so people can join us.  And hey, I gave the guy some food!

Slops:

• HECO for letting this happen again.  I think it’s abundantly clear that they really need to look at upgrading their systems to prevent this in the future.  Many people were wondering if they should pay their electric bill this month (BTW, yes you should, or they’ll turn it off for more than 12 hours!)  And I say all of this as a shareholder of Hawaiian Electric Industries (HEI), they’re owner!
• Bad drivers who didn’t know how to deal with this situation.  Just a reminder, treat all intersections as four-way stops!

This is the proof in the poi that Honolulu really needs to work on our infrastructure problems as Mayor Mufi Hannemann indicated when he travelled to Washington, DC to request Federal funds.

Mahalo!

Tagged as: #hipower, blackout, Hannemann, heco, honolulu, infrastructure, mufi, oahu, obama, outage, props and slops