Originally published at Notes from the bunker…. You can comment here or there.

Was sitting at the computer reading LJ when all of a sudden the power went out. Looked outside and all the signage and traffic lights were out too. Hmmm. Probably a localized blackout. Got on my neighbors cell phone and tried various numbers around town…appears it was confined to this side of the river. I grabbed my big MagLite from its readyrack and went next door to the underground manufacturing facility my landlord has. Let him borrow the light since theres no windows down there and for some reason they have almost no emergency lighting. Came back here and pulled out the Baygen radio, wound it up, and started looking for stations…my initial concern was that this was the result of some sort of large-scale problem (terrorist attack on the power grid leaving the whole northwest in the dark, etc) but once I found it was confined to this side of town I was a bit relieved. Most of the stations were off the air and the ones I did pick up didnt have anything to say so that told me it definitely was small-scale. Grabbed my backpack, which I always keep an extra MiniMagLite in, and sat out front and waited for the power to come back on. Took about an hour so it must have been a minor thing that caused it. I was prepared to head home if it lasted more than an hour, but……

Lessons learned:
Spare flashlights for those who are less prepared and you want to share with
Battery radios are a must.. the Baygen is ideal
Have a way to find out the extent of the outage..I called people all the way on the other side of town who had answering machines to see if they had power

Things I was deficient on:
When power went out, my cordless phone became useless. Need to have a regular wall-mounted phone in here