barriomulas.com - Come Back, Jeane!

The electricity and water go out every once and a while here in Puerto Rico. Maybe not as much as say, Santo Domingo, but in comparison to my Georgian upbringing, one could classify utility outages as occurring "often". I have no qualms, though; having your utilities cut with no advance obligates you to be prepared at all times. Families often keep sealed gallons of water under the kitchen sink. Some have electricity generators in their carports, water tanks on top of the house, or even a solar panel to assure hot water during a power outage. If Y2K were to have ever really happened, Puerto Ricans would have lived through it.

Hurricane Jeane was the coolest. The Puerto Rican government had thought that it would be best to turn off the nation's electricity grid prior to the arrival of Jeanne only to turn it back on once the storm was clear. They though that this could minimize damages. Seemed like a great idea. That's until the grid didn't turn back on, that is. Puerto Ricans were left with no running water and electricity for anywhere between two weeks to an entire month as the island's heavily bureaucratic agencies worked hard at booting back up the system.

Families held barbecues as to not loose refrigerated meat, grandmothers ate ice cream so that it wouldn't go bad, folks gathered around the radio, politics took a back seat, work for everybody was canceled, roadways were down, and everybody co-existed in a sort of post-apocalyptic setting (minus the zombies or outbreaks). Sure, folks complained and hissed, but I was having the time of my life. I would sleep each day until my back hurt, read two books a day, and explore my backyard. I always say that at least once a year our electricity and water systems should be shut down without notice for a period of two weeks. This wold be our "break time" from civilization.