Power Outage in Old North

This morning, I awoke in the dark hearing the sounds of large trucks encircling my block. Concerned, I got up to find that the power was out in the house. I went to the window and saw the now-familiar sight of a fire engine with a roving searchlight looking at power lines. Old North St. Louis was pitch dark as far as the eye could see; in fact, the only lights I could see were headlights and the downtown skyline.

The outage lasted for over two hours -- pretty short nowadays. Oddly, I had a strong intuition that a power outage was coming. On Thursday night, all of the street lights in my part of the neighborhood were out through the night. Over the weekend, a friend mentioned the stress of the previous outages.

An occasional blackout like this is not outrageous, but in light of the events of last year and Ameren's supposed stepped-up maintenance program and desire for a rate increase, a little disconcerting. There is no lesson or theory at work here -- just concern.

Once Again, Ameren Plunges St. Louis Into Darkness

Over 120,000 AmerenUE customers already have lost power due to the overnight ice storm. With the storm expected to continue and worsen tonight and tomorrow, that number could exceed the number of outages during the last ice storm in November and the severe storm in July.

After the past two massive storm outages, Ameren has arrogantly gone forward to pursue its rate increase. Then, this week, they received an award for preparedness from the Edison Electric Institute, an association of publicly traded companies (surprise, huh?). Meanwhile, it seems that their lines are no more stable than before the summer storms that alerted this region that our electric utility had put profit ahead of preparedness.

Obviously, we all need to kick our fossil fuel habits. We all need to think about ways to conserve energy. To avert a global tragedy, we need to rethink what we consider necessary.

Still, AmerenUE's terrible performance is about to plunge the region into its biggest blackout in decades -- in the middle of severe cold weather. For millions of human beings, and for a metropolitan area trying to redeem its national reputation, this is unacceptable. For the employees of the company, it's unjust -- should they expect to work grueling marathon shifts several times a year just because their bosses won't spend money on storm-proofing the system?

Then again, when something like basic electric service is a publicly-traded commodity, the only customers who count are stockholders.

Storms in St. Louis, Again, Less Than Six Months Later

Power went out at 12:00 a.m. AmerenUE line busy.

Neighbors burned fire in a barrel using wood from vacant church across the street, 3:00 a.m. AmerenUE line still busy, as was 911.

Fell asleep, 5:00 a.m.

Got up, still no power, 8:00 a.m.

Went to gas station at 14th & Salisbury, 10:00 a.m.

Started using oven for heat, 10:45 a.m.

Drove to bank to get emergency cash, 1:00 p.m.

Made plans to stay with neighbors who have power, 3:00 p.m.

Power back on, 4:00 p.m.

City and AmerenUE get prepared for handling big storms, uh....