Power Outage

I’ve spent most of this morning trying to get a working laundry card for the washing machines in my building. This is harder than it sounds. After much toil, I finally located the machine I could use to add money to my laundry card, but it wasn’t working due to a power failure that affected the entire street. I returned to my apartment (the electronic card reader was down so I had to go in through the back) and entered my darkened kitchen. Just then I got a call on my cell phone. My friend Erica asked, “Is your power out?” I said, “Yeah. Is yours?” She said, “I’m actually down in University Village, but yeah, it’s out here. I’ve heard it’s out all over the city, and there are riots and stuff. The guy here says terrorists sent a tape to Fox news yesterday threatening to destroy Los Angeles.”

Suddenly my laundry card woes didn’t seem so pressing. Nothing like a little terrorism-inspired riot to put things in perspective. (This general area is razed during each major riot, so the prospect of a riot is of more than academic interest.) As she continued chatting, I double-locked the door, scanned the alley below for looters, and slid the windows closed to prevent exposure to fallout and/or biological/chemical agents. I contemplated how long my food and water might last. I contemplated what heavy furniture could be stacked against the door to prevent a break-in (though, given the crime around here, that’s actually a fairly common pasttime). With no TV and no power, I couldn’t get any news, so I said goodbye and called home to try to find out what was going on. It turns out that power was out throughout the city, and there was a terrorist tape threat against L.A. yesterday, but there is not actually any rioting, or any reason to believe the outage is terrorism-related. Well that’s a relief.

Now about that damn laundry card…

Update: From CNN: “About 700,000 electric customers in Los Angeles lost power Monday afternoon after a worker mistakenly cut a wrong line, triggering a cascade of problems in the city’s power grid.”