LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth |
CAMP Talk |
by Bill Sievert |
There was an ominous, almost science-fiction quality to the recurring blackouts of electrical power that accompanied the sweltering Fourth of July heat wave. They came from out of nowhere, without warning, menacing our resort communities at the most inopportune moments during dangerously high heat levels. As my store was plunged into sweaty darkness for the second time in as many days, I stepped outside to hear a woman screaming that her companion was stuck in a nearby hotels elevator. "How long will it last?" she was exasperatedly asking anyone within earshot. "Its stifling in there." "Who knows?" I replied. "Yesterday we were out for nearly six hours." That was not what the woman wanted to hear, of course. But it was true. An out-of-date transformer had blown on our block, and several shops, a guesthouse and a restaurant were put out of business throughout the afternoon of the Fourth of July holiday, normally one of our busiest days of the year. I cursed the darkness and grabbed for an old transistor radio I kept on hand for hurricanes and Noreasters, hoping to get some information on the source of this latest power failure. Conectiv Power Company has instituted rolling blackouts throughout the beach resorts, the announcer soon told me. "Rolling" blackouts. This sounded so much nicer than saying the utility had purposely plunged us into total darkness and breathtaking heat on an afternoon when the thermometer hovered at around 100 degrees (with a humidity index topping 110). Then the voice of a technician from an area dentists office came on the air. "My God, we have patients in the chair, one undergoing emergency surgery," she cried. "Conectiv is endangering our patients." Suddenly, another local shop owner came running up to my door, wiping sweat from his brow. "This is nuts," he said. He had raced home to rescue his partner, an older woman with breathing problems, from a two-hour blackout at their residence. She had called him to say she was feeling ill from the heat. So he closed his store and drove her into town where she could cool off at the store, only to find the shop in the midst of a blackout and getting hotter by the minute. "At least, the power is back on at the house," he said with a sigh as he headed off to get the car again. My own store became so blisteringly hot during Mondays outage that, when the power finally returned that evening, I discovered some of the tapered candles we sell had drooped over their candlestick holders, creating an oddly limp sculptural effect. (Several customers later urged us to leave the collapsed candles in place, offering the items as objects of art, a series we might title: "An Ode to the Heat Wave: The Softening of the Phallus.") The second of Tuesdays "rolling" blackouts hit my store at a very busy hour, leaving shrieking customers with their pants down in the fitting rooms. As one man fumbled for his trousers in the dark, he hollered, "Ive just about had it with this global warming thing!" Unfortunately, it may be a little late to change the changing nature of weather. Twenty-five years ago, many environmentalists were warning that, by the turn of the century, higher temperatures would be among the consequences of ozone depletion brought on by worldwide industrial and automotive pollution. The last decade has seen eight of the hottest ten years on record for poor old planet earth. And, just days before the Eastern seaboard was engulfed by this most recent spate of 100-degree weather, the national press reported the preliminary results of a new study by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. During the next 100 years the planet is likely to heat up as much as it has in the entire 10,000 years since the last Ice Age. The National Center for Atmospheric Research reported that, in the Eastern and Midwestern United States, heat waves of the magnitude of the one we suffered through over the Fourth of July will soon become routine, not exceptional. Its way past time for the giant power companies to accept reality and get busy planning for it. Delmarvas new power provider, Conectiv, was clearly ill prepared this month. As one spokesperson told The News Journal, "We were having to make decisions very quickly." Another admitted, "Its hard to warn people about something you dont know is going to happen." Conectiv couldnt anticipate that such high temperatures during the busiest time of year at our coastal resorts would probably require record amounts of power to be made available? I spent a lot of time on Monday afternoon complaining about my lost business to various Conectiv employees and supervisors. Some of the voices on the telephone seemed to have only the foggiest idea of where Rehoboth Beach is. The first one claimed that the problem on my block was being "handled as we speak." An hour later, another conceded that the utility company was still trying to find a truck to dispatch from Millsboro. From what two of the more candid Conectiv workers told me, the infrastructure for power delivery to Rehoboth-Lewes-Bethany has become inadequate for the amount of growth the area has seen in recent years. "A lot of this old equipment should have been replaced or upgraded as more businesses and housing developments came in," one service technician admitted. He blamed the problem on poor planning by Conectivs predecessor, Delmarva Power. (Thats a nice thing about corporate mergers and takeovers. The new monopolistic conglomerate can blame everything that goes wrong on the old monopolistic conglomerate.) "There arent enough lines running into your area to meet the increasing demand," another spokesperson said. "We would normally try to borrow power from other states not so drained by the heat wave, but in this case everywhere is running at capacity. Besides, we really arent equipped to deliver much more power here. The system is being over-taxed." That is truly frightening. Like the frequently snarled traffic on all parts of Route One, delivery of the required amount of power to our people is being hampered by runaway growth. Our outdated infrastructure is adding to the problems brought on by global warming. As consumers of power, we all need to do our part to conserve energy, particularly during peak periods. But our giant regional power company quickly needs to come up with a plan for handling the increasing demand for electricitya demand that it should realize always peaks on those major summer holiday weekends resort towns depend on for their economic survival. It is sad to see the owner of a small bistro on the verge of tears because all the food he has prepped for his Fourth of July holiday diners has gone without refrigeration for more than five hours and must be discarded. It is a shame that another restaurant (this one in Bethany) was forced to turn away customers because a two-hour blackout during the dinner hour prevented it from serving the pre-Fireworks meals they had ordered. There has to be a way to alert users in advance of when a "rolling" (which means purposeful) blackout is to occur. By scheduling such outages and publicizing them in the broadcast media, everyone from restaurateurs to dentists could prepare. Hotels could shut down their elevators in advance, and people whose health is adversely affected by lack of air-conditioning could figure out where not to be when. The good news is that most folks among the huge throng of holiday visitors took the power outages in stride just as they accepted the traffic tie-ups. Bravo to all our warm spirited visitors, people who arrived planning to have fun and managed to do so. Shame on our ill-prepared provider of power, who had no plan for adequately coping with the heat. Bill Sievert is co-owner of Splash, a clothing and accessories store on Baltimore Avenue, and the Program Director of CAMPsafe, CAMP Rehoboths AIDS education and prevention program. |
LETTERS From CAMP Rehoboth, Vol. 9, No. 9, July 16, 1999 |