John Rapley - Foreign Focus I WAS sitting in a sweltering airport lounge, along with a crowd of others trying to get home to Jamaica, when we heard that our flight would be cancelled. The airline was shutting down operations. We were told to find our own accommodation, then wait to hear when flights might resume.
While airport attendants rolled out crash pads for stranded passengers, I managed to get a ride into the city where I stayed with a sister of mine. This alone was a task. With all the traffic lights out, and public transportation idled, traffic was moving slowly.
Toronto, along with other cities in Canada and the U.S., had been shut down by the biggest power outage in North American history.
Accustomed as we are to coping with power failures, it is difficult to appreciate how debilitating an extended loss of electricity can be in a society grown dependent upon it. There are few electricity generators, few candles, no larders stocked with tinned goods, no stores of water under the sink.
And everything is powered electrically and, increasingly, electronically. Cars run on gas, but the gas is pumped electrically, so the filling stations shut down. Office towers equipped with heating and air-conditioning are hermetically sealed. Windows cannot be cracked when the power goes, so the buildings soon become unusable.
With elevators frozen, office workers were left to walk down 60 or 70 flights of stairs to street level. Once there, they faced limited options.
Trains powered by electricity had stopped running. Road traffic was reduced to gridlock. Consequently, the bus drivers for the evening shift were stuck at home.
Faced with the prospect of staying in the city, workers could not even drown their woes in a cold drink, since refrigeration was gone. In any event, the interiors of the bars were blanketed in darkness. Few hotels could offer comfort, though. The many which used electronic keys found their rooms effectively sealed.
Guests had to sleep in corridors, or on the steps outside where the air was cooler.
Cellular phone networks failed, and the mobile phones which are increasingly popular became unusable, dependent as they are on electricity. Many people were thus cut off from loved ones or employers.
Water supplies began running low. Many cities had maintained only a 24-hour supply, having assumed (quite reasonably) that no power outage could last longer than that. With the water pumps no longer functioning, the spectre of water shortages suddenly loomed. Cleveland, for instance, began immediately to truck in water.
Food stocks also ran low, since all perishable goods went bad. In any event, many stores were shuttered, since employees could not get to work, and there were no flashlights available for clerks to find wares in large, cavernous and now pitch-black supermarkets.
TRINI CONNECTION
There was no milk left for my sister's baby girl, and none of the shops in the area were open. So I improvised a solution. Using a telephone which was functioning, albeit unreliably, I called a Trinidadian friend of mine in a part of the city whose electricity supply, for unknown reasons, was still on. I asked her to drive down with some supplies. It took her over an hour to negotiate a journey which, in ordinary circumstances, would have taken 15 minutes.
Still, you can count on a Trini to make light of any situation. Not only did she bring milk, but fresh fruit, sweets for the children and enough cold beer and ice for a small party. "Never miss the chance for a lime," she chuckled.
VULNERABILITY
Then, sitting out on the steps, where Torontonians were able to see the stars for the first time in memory, we pondered just how vulnerable such a technologically advanced society had become. This power failure was not the result of terrorism, but hardly anybody could fail to note just how devastating a well-planned terrorist attack in the future could be.
In the weeks ahead, discussions will centre on the need to upgrade the power grid to prevent such events happening again. Yet it is quite possible that America, at any rate, may change the way it generates and transmits power, reverting from the hyper-efficient, highly-integrated grid system it now employs to a more local, decentralised structure. It would be modernity ceding to post-modernity, and its implications for daily living may be profound.
John Rapley is a senior lecturer in the Department of Government, UWI, Mona.
