Holy Moly, Great Balls of Fire!
I've been meaning to clean out the pictures on my camera phone for a long time. I've already got them saved online and everything. It's just that it takes a long time to delete each picture, a real chore. Anyway, finally fiiiinally last night I managed to force myself to delete more than a dozen pics, because I wanted to take some new ones.
Wanna know why?
BECAUSE THERE WAS A HUGE MOTHERTRUCKIN' EXPLOSION TWENTY METERS AWAY FROM MY DOOR STEP, THAT'S WHY!
And not just one explosion, but a series of explosions that grew in size and smell for over twenty minutes, at 2:47 AM, in the dead of night, with nary a firetruck in sight for the first fifteen long chaotic minutes.
Fifteen minutes before the explosion, our neighbourhood block was celebrating the first return of SOME electricity (still no fridge or stove) for the first time in a week. Then suddenly the lights began to wave in and out of darkness, something that hasn't happened thus far in the debacle.
Then I heard Josh yell from our bedroom window. I found him sticking his head out the window, looking at a hole in the ground that the electric company, Con Ed, had been working on for the last few days. The hole was alive with flames and a series of loud explosions. I craned my head out further and heard this:
"Get the fuck out of there! Are you crazy! Get out of there!"
Which is very scary because that suggested that there were workers inside the hole.
"We've got to get out of our apartment," Josh said. We ran around like crazy monkeys gathering phones, keys, money, ID, comfortable shoes for running --like background actors in a calamity-hits-New-York movie. Then we run out of our dark house and into the dark streets. I got right up to the electric fire before I realized that I had to delete a ton of pictures before snapping away.
I looked behind me and the whole street had gathered outside, piling up at each door step, watching helplessly as the flames got higher. We slowly started to edge backwards ourselves.
"Get away from the manholes!" someone yelled. We laughed nervously and got away from the manholes.
Fifteen minutes later, firetrucks came and began to douse the fire with water. About an hour later, we all slowly creeped back into our apartments and tried to fall asleep.
Today at around 4PM, our block lost 100% of our electricity.
The frustrating thing about this is not really the physical suffering of those without electricity. Don't get me wrong, it's hot. It's dang hot. And it's dangerous for people who must stay at home, the very old, and the sick. But relatively speaking, I can't really get too worked up about the physical discomforts of the situation.
What totally ruins my picnic, however, is the total lack of disrespect shown by the electric company (Con Ed), by the city (Bloomberg has been praising Con Ed up the wazoo for its efforts in this affair), and by the media (this did not make the news until four days into the outtage).
No one has come to any of us on the block and explained what they know or do not know. No one from Con Ed has officially reassured us that we're not going to get blown up by a random manhole electric fire when we walk on our block. In short, no one has offered any sort of respect.
Let's do the "if this happened in the Upper East Side" game. Well, Con Ed would have sent out public relations foot soldiers to reassure us that everything was okay, they would probably offer local electricity stations where we can watch the news, recharge our cell phones, check our email. They would offer batteries so that we can rely on our alarm clocks to work. They would offer candles. They would distribute flyers telling us that we would not have to pay for electricity for X amount of time. They would be afraid of our dissatisfaction.
But Astoria, being a lower-middle class multicultural enclave, doesn't have that sort of clout that the tonier residents of Manhattan. We don't even have the crime that would threaten to boil over and cause a media relations disaster. We don't have the race card or even the nationality card, since we are so evenly multicultural that no embassy will adopt us as a cause.
Show the people some respect. Just because you're keeping us in the dark literally, don't mean you gotta keep us in the dark figuratively as well. Speak, and not just on television or the radio. Because that speech is not for us, it's for you, to save your asses with the concerned television viewers. We don't have electricity, remember? Come and speak to us on the ground so that we can hear you.
This is ridiculous.
More pictures to come when I've charged up my phone.
Wanna know why?
BECAUSE THERE WAS A HUGE MOTHERTRUCKIN' EXPLOSION TWENTY METERS AWAY FROM MY DOOR STEP, THAT'S WHY!
And not just one explosion, but a series of explosions that grew in size and smell for over twenty minutes, at 2:47 AM, in the dead of night, with nary a firetruck in sight for the first fifteen long chaotic minutes.
Fifteen minutes before the explosion, our neighbourhood block was celebrating the first return of SOME electricity (still no fridge or stove) for the first time in a week. Then suddenly the lights began to wave in and out of darkness, something that hasn't happened thus far in the debacle.
Then I heard Josh yell from our bedroom window. I found him sticking his head out the window, looking at a hole in the ground that the electric company, Con Ed, had been working on for the last few days. The hole was alive with flames and a series of loud explosions. I craned my head out further and heard this:
"Get the fuck out of there! Are you crazy! Get out of there!"
Which is very scary because that suggested that there were workers inside the hole.
"We've got to get out of our apartment," Josh said. We ran around like crazy monkeys gathering phones, keys, money, ID, comfortable shoes for running --like background actors in a calamity-hits-New-York movie. Then we run out of our dark house and into the dark streets. I got right up to the electric fire before I realized that I had to delete a ton of pictures before snapping away.
I looked behind me and the whole street had gathered outside, piling up at each door step, watching helplessly as the flames got higher. We slowly started to edge backwards ourselves.
"Get away from the manholes!" someone yelled. We laughed nervously and got away from the manholes.
Fifteen minutes later, firetrucks came and began to douse the fire with water. About an hour later, we all slowly creeped back into our apartments and tried to fall asleep.
Today at around 4PM, our block lost 100% of our electricity.
The frustrating thing about this is not really the physical suffering of those without electricity. Don't get me wrong, it's hot. It's dang hot. And it's dangerous for people who must stay at home, the very old, and the sick. But relatively speaking, I can't really get too worked up about the physical discomforts of the situation.
What totally ruins my picnic, however, is the total lack of disrespect shown by the electric company (Con Ed), by the city (Bloomberg has been praising Con Ed up the wazoo for its efforts in this affair), and by the media (this did not make the news until four days into the outtage).
No one has come to any of us on the block and explained what they know or do not know. No one from Con Ed has officially reassured us that we're not going to get blown up by a random manhole electric fire when we walk on our block. In short, no one has offered any sort of respect.
Let's do the "if this happened in the Upper East Side" game. Well, Con Ed would have sent out public relations foot soldiers to reassure us that everything was okay, they would probably offer local electricity stations where we can watch the news, recharge our cell phones, check our email. They would offer batteries so that we can rely on our alarm clocks to work. They would offer candles. They would distribute flyers telling us that we would not have to pay for electricity for X amount of time. They would be afraid of our dissatisfaction.
But Astoria, being a lower-middle class multicultural enclave, doesn't have that sort of clout that the tonier residents of Manhattan. We don't even have the crime that would threaten to boil over and cause a media relations disaster. We don't have the race card or even the nationality card, since we are so evenly multicultural that no embassy will adopt us as a cause.
Show the people some respect. Just because you're keeping us in the dark literally, don't mean you gotta keep us in the dark figuratively as well. Speak, and not just on television or the radio. Because that speech is not for us, it's for you, to save your asses with the concerned television viewers. We don't have electricity, remember? Come and speak to us on the ground so that we can hear you.
This is ridiculous.
More pictures to come when I've charged up my phone.
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