My Chronology of Hawaii’s Power Outage

How’d your night with the recent Oahu-wide power outage go? Here’s my story, first in pictures then in words.

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6:10pm. Driving to dinner at In-Laws in Kaneohe. Lightning brightens the drive over.

6:15pm. The sky goes bright for a second then followed by a lot of darkness. The street lights have all gone off but come back on after a minute or two.

6:30pm. About to eat dinner when the power goes off – now in complete darkness. Start to hunt for flashlights, candles, and even a gas lantern. Hey, is the gas lantern supposed to burn like that?

6:45pm. Can’t stop dinner which was fortunately already prepared. Warm club soda and Chicken in a Bisket supplemented dinner.

7:00pm. Finished eating dinner. Now what? You play with the kids’ battery powered toys! Autobots, roll out! Bumblebee was here to protect us in the darkness.

7:07pm. Remembered my 3G-powered (and charged) iPhone. Twittered about the power outage in Kaneohe. Start following the #hipower tweets to see what’s going on. Power outage is wide spread.

7:25pm. Start thinking about Barack Obama’s security and how all of this might be a far fetched test.

8:15pm. KSSK’s Perry and Price say outage will be at least 12 hours and is island-wide. But kinda already knew that from Twitter (and some Facebook).

8:26pm. Since we’ll be without power for some time, might as well eat the perishable items now. Anyone for ice cream?

8:40pm. More kids toys. Wow, just noticed that some candles we’re using were bought from Pay ‘n Save! That’s seriously old school. But they still work!

10:30pm-ish. Head back home in the darkness. Police stationed at major intersections to direct traffic.

11:30pm. Excited kids finally go to sleep.

5:16am. Power is back at home with a bunch of lights waking me up. Bummer, Oceanic Internet still offline.

12:12pm. Power is restored for most of the island. We go hiking.