Ask Lemmy

as a working class person, my entire life

After hurricane Helene we didn't have electricity for 6 days. But I've been completely powerless for 34 years.

When I was eleven (1988) we moved to a rural property with no power. I left when I was eighteen... So.. Seven years.

A few weeks, as i've spent some time abroad in some village where they literally didn't have electricity.

After the power company (PG&E) got blamed and sued for some big fires that destroyed entire neighborhoods in 2017, they got salty and decided to cut power whenever there were high winds predicted during red flag (high fire risk) days. The worst one was 15 days. I’m on a well with an electric pump, so there was no water for those days either.

Also, I lived off grid for about four years with only enough solar to either charge a phone (no service though) or run a light bulb in the evening. I did go to town to check my email and read the news every week or so.

Probably one winter where the power went out for maybe a couple weeks. It was kinda annoying because at one point the people on the other side of the street got power because they are on a different part of the grid. I can remember sitting in the living room watching a video when suddenly the lamp turns on. Immediately called my parents to let them know the good news.

2 years. Lived in a village of about 400 people in West Africa.

I'm still waiting for power over my life

Huge tree fell across our one lane road in the mountains when I was growing up. We had a big snow storm and we got something like 6 feet of snow in two days.

Thankfully everyone out there had wood stoves for heat. Plenty of fresh snow to melt for water. After the snowing stopped everyone trapped behind the fallen tree worked together to cut the trees and get it off the road. It was a pretty big pine tree so it took like 15 people with several chainsaws all day to get it cut apart and off the road.

Still took like a week for a plow to come out and make the road clear enough for the power and telephone people to come out and fix it up for us.

I'll never forget how unbelievably dead silent it was when I was laying there in 5+ feet of fresh powder. Because the power lines were down there wasn't even that faint buzz/hum of electricity that you don't usually notice but it's always there. Absolute pure silence. You could hear your own heart beating and every little sound your clothing made when you did so much as even breath.

Truthfully I loved that week. The whole family slept in the living room by the fireplace. We had candles around at night since we didn't have a ton of flashlights and batteries. My mom would send me brother out to get snow with the biggest pot she had. We would like it as high as we could while still being able to carry it. It would melt down to like half the pot haha. We cooked on the wood stove which took some adjustments. I think my mom treind to make spaghetti squash by wrapping a whole squash in foil and tossing inside the fire place on the red hot coals. Ended up burning it pretty badly but we had fun anyway. Played lots of board games and just kinda hung out as a family. Went on some hikes to see what our usual paths looked like with so much snow on them.

10/10 would get snowed in again.

Almost 2 months.

Lightening struck near my house once, blew up the transformer on the power line, exploded a giant oak tree in the back yard, and killed a wire leading from the power line into the circuit box. Also the circuit box blew up. It took over 7 weeks and 4 professionals looking at it before we could figure out what needed to get fixed.

We did use a generator occasionally so it wasn't 7 weeks straight, but we would go as long as we could between uses because iirc gas was very expensive at the time, and technically the house had no power for that long.

Outside of camping, the massive blackout of 2003.

https://www.cbc.ca/archives/the-great-north-america-blackout-of-2003-1.4683696

One week, in my own house. We were part of the ones that lost power during 'snowmageddon' in the south a couple years back. Thankfully due to some light prep I'd done during the initial COVID outbreak I had plenty of canned meals for the fam and a nice butane cooking stove. Hardest part was keeping the house warm but we basically had some candles and plenty of blankets. Honestly could have been really bad, but looking back it was a nice little respite.

3 weeks without mains. Bad storm, very rural. We ran a generator to keep the freezer and fridge going. Had antique tools to work with so we were fine. Thankfully it took place in the summer.

A 2 week canoe and camping trip in the US / Canadian boundary waters near Minnesota. Not only did we not have any power, other than batteries for an emergency radio and some flashlights, the five of us never saw another human being the whole time, from drop off to pickup. In was amazing

I stay at a building with no electricity or running water for a week about once a year so there’s that, but not by choice? Longest I can remember was a little over two days. Friday evening until Sunday night.

When I lived in a lower income area, I lost power frequently, but not for long. Two years in that condo and I think I lost power at least once every 2-3 months? Sometimes just for a few minutes but frequently for a few hours.

As another commenter mentioned, longest period of time without electricity for me would be about two weeks in Algonquin Park, Ontario Canada. A couple of our canoe trips were ten days at least… the drive back to civilization is always a bit strange, 40 km/h feels really fast at first, it’s a bit scary getting onto the highway and the lights everywhere are very distracting for the first couple of hours.

Longest period of time at home would be about two weeks without power during the 1998 Ice Storm. We had a wood stove, so we did okay for heat and managed to cook on the flat metal top. It hit in several rainstorms over the course of about a week, and took years to clean up afterwards. Power went out on the first night and didn’t come back on until at least ten days later, not sure exactly now.

I remember being 8 years old, watching the rain come down in waves, gently, onto bent over tree branches that were sparkling as they swayed back and forth in the wind, thousands of gems on the tips of the branches, reflecting orange glow from the streetlight beside.

By the third day of that, there was cannonfire in the back fourty. Branches were breaking under the weight, falling to earth with a thundering “boom” as they made the 2” sheet of ice over the snow vibrate like a giant’s drum. A tinkling sound, like tiny bells, would follow as the shards bounced upwards and settled across the surface.

Strange times. Lots of candles. Gets boring at night when you start running out. Wasn’t allowed to go outside for a long time because of the falling branches.

When we finally did go outside, I almost died because we went sledding. Turns out plastic “crazy carpets” go, well, crazy fast on that kind of ice. Luckily I went through a patch of small trees instead of smashing into one of the big ones. In retrospect, we picked a really bad spot to go sledding. Learned pretty quick that just sliding down on our bellies like otters worked better. Didn't go back to school until almost the end of January so we had lots of time to practice, it was great.

The bush was a mess for years afterwards. Just a tangle of fallen branches and small trees shooting up between. The rabbit population exploded as a result, it was perfect habitat out there for them. I found a patch of snow at the end of June that year, hidden away under a whole pile of pine branches. We tapped the trees that spring but shouldn’t have even bothered, we only got about 5 litres of maple syrup instead of the usual 20 to 25

Like 2 hours

Just doomscroll on Reddit (this was before the enshittification) using mobile data until it came back on.

Now I just have a bunch of power banks fully charged just so I feel "safe" from the FOMO.

Something like four days, the state used to get a lot of power from a neighbouring one and they cut us off (not maliciously).

Then they built the (at the time) biggest lithium ion battery in the world: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hornsdale_Power_Reserve

9 days due to a hurricane. Internet was out for another 5. I also use a CPAP to sleep, so I was mostly awake until we got our generator working on day 3.

Man, all of these responses are crazy to me. They sound like living in some corporate cyberpunk dystopia instead of a developed economy. Been living in Sydney for 35 years. Grew up on the outskirts that were minutes from bush and farmland. I have essentially never experienced power loss for more than a day. I don't think the powers been out for more than 6 hours in the last 2 decades. I don't even think the power's cut out once in the last 2-3 years. There may have been 1 or 2 occasions that took longer than a day, after severe storms, when I was a child, but the memories are so vague I'm not sure they even happened, and definitely not more than 48 hours.

I grew up with computers and cable, so I would remember if I were forced to raw dog existence for fucking days. It would of been trauma.

2 weeks. I resolved it by tracking the exact area of the power outage and calling the power company:

"Look, I know it doesn't do any good to call you guys and go 'wah! my powers out!' so here's the deal, it's out from x street to y street East to West, and from 0 street to z street North to South."

"WOW! That's a big area!"

"Yes it is."

Power was back on the next day.

In a home, 10 days because ComEd is bad at what they do.

Personally, a 30 day hiking trip. Those are very different circumstances though.

Two weeks after a hurricane. Couldn't get out of the driveway for a few days either. Fortunately we were renovating a bathroom and had an empty bathtub in the yard that filled with rain and were able to use a gas stove to boil water.

7~8 days while camping (boy scout winter camp).

1~2 during a bad power outage.

I spent the first 2 years of my life with no electricity. But i dont remember that part, so it hardly counts.

Since then, I camped often. Sometimes for weeks. Longest consecutive was about a month in the Uintas.

Longest with no electricity at home was 10 days due to a winter storm taking down lines all over. We didnt have a generator at the time.

Worst though, was no electricity at home with an infant, in the winter. That only went two days and one night, but it felt like eternity.

About a week. There was a very early season snowstorm. Deciduous trees still had leaves and caught a lot of snow. The weight broke limbs which took down power lines everywhere. In older neighborhoods with above ground lines and mature oak trees, nearly every line and every house had to have crews working them.

I was in Houston for Freezageddon. I was without power for 4 days and nights. Luckily I had a gas fire place and didn't freeze.

3 weeks after Wilma.

Ice storm of 2004, we didn't have power for 13 days, 10 of those days the road conditions were so bad that we couldn't get off the farm.
We had switched over to gas heat about 5 years before and didn't have a wood burner anymore so we had to resort to boiling pots of snow on the gas stove to keep the house above freezing.
The whole family slept in the downstairs living room adjacent to the kitchen with the gas stove in our sleeping bags and camping gear to stay warm.
On day 10 when the roads were accessible again we went to town but most places were still closed in the ones that weren't were picked pretty clean.
We we're able to find kerosene for the kerosene heaters and kept the house a little warmer for the next three days until the power came back on.

10 days after an ice storm.

2-3 days. Where we used to live in the mountains we'd loser power half a dozen times during the winter. Kind of enjoyed it. Everything slowed down, you hunkered down, and appreciated lost activities.

Still, we were never really without all power as my dad could run some appliances off his welding machine acting as a generator.

Week long camping trips mostly.

Otherwise, I was alive during the coal miners' strikes in the 1970s in the UK which lead to widespread powercuts on a regular basis but I don't remember them myself. Though I do remember that my parents always kept some candles and a couple of oil lanterns around the house.

one day.

1.5 days

Somewhere on the longer side of a few hours. Just casual third world country things.

We lost power for a week when I was a kid after a hurricane. Our house was in a neighborhood out in the country, maybe a ten minute drive from what was more inside the city limits. I didn’t fully experience it, though. I was 13 at the time (I think this was 1996) and mom took me and my siblings into the city and we crowded into my grandmother’s house, which only had one guest room (I can’t remember if I slept on the couch or an air mattress, something like that). Dad stayed out at our house, I guess to guard it. I’m not sure why I went back out with him after a week; maybe the weather was cooling off? But as we were driving out we were listening to the radio and people were calling in, excited to have the power back on, and as we drove out we kept seeing lights on the houses as we got closer to home and were very happy to find the power was back on when we got home. I think everyone else came back home the next day.

Electrical power? I mean, not including camping, I think 4-5 days after a major storm.