& just as this area doesn’t have any mechanism for handling heat—the PNW apparently has not heard about air conditioning for residential purposes—government & business alike are pretty much useless when it comes to dealing with snow.
The drop overnight on the 13th wasn’t really unmanageable, which was good because the city of Bellevue didn’t get around to plowing residential streets until late Sunday. & they don’t seem to understand the concept of sanding the plowed roads. Thank God for TCS.
(What was interesting was that the storm had been predicted for Friday evening: highways from the Eastside into Seattle were clogged starting at 1400, presumably with people trying to get home before the onslaught. Only I was returning from Seattle at 1930, & the incoming traffic was still blocked—presumably with people who thought they’d miss the early panickers. There had been no accidents; it was just traffic.)
Well, fine—we make it through the weekend & onward into the work week. Then comes the storm of Wednesday/Thursday, which really counts as a storm. At least six inches.
When I left for work Thursday morning, I saw only two pick-up trucks with front-end plows attached; they were on a main street in Bellevue. When I turned onto the ramp to I-405N, I was momentarily discombobulated to see no traffic. There were cars on the southbound side, but I was the only one going north.
Good thing, as it hadn’t been plowed & you couldn’t tell where the lanes were. Same for highway 520, although there were cars on that.
I made it into work, but most people “worked from home” (even though the VPN seems to be very problematic). When I got here I understood why many of the long-timers would have stayed away: an email from Facilities announcing that the company was open for business, but that employees who made it in were on their own. Cafeterias operating only in about four buildings, no transportation, walkways not cleared, limited (= no) mail services, etc.
What it didn’t mention was that no one would be replenishing the coffee or beverage cases, restocking cups & eating utensils, or performing any cleaning services. Trash hasn’t been emptied nor washrooms cleaned since Wednesday.
Think about it.
Out in the wide world, traffic was a mess. On Thursday there were multiple closures of interstates & major highways due to accidents; & on Friday you might have seen news footage of two charter buses that broke a guardrail & hung over I-5 for much of the day.
Well, we were sorting things out (barely) when Nature dumped another two to four inches on us late Saturday night. Evidently this was just more than the infrastructure could handle. When I left for work this morning, my street still hadn’t been plowed.
However I struggled in to find the office even emptier than Thursday & Friday & another in the series of emails from Facilities announcing what not to expect. But I had to come in. My neighborhood lost power at 2000 last night, & it’s still out. The temperature in The Rambler this morning was 48°F. Temperature outside was 30°F. It’s going to get colder inside.
A call to Puget Sound Energy customer “service” revealed that they have no earthly notion when it will be restored. A visit to their website indicates that 1096 customers are powerless. & they don’t seem to be all that fussed about getting us back online.
The roads aren’t much better. They’ve been plowed, more or less; grit to come, I suppose. Or maybe they'll just wait for it all to melt. King County's transportation department's efforts seem to be limited to advising citizens not to drive if they can avoid it.
Well, I wouldn’t have, except that I can’t live in 40-degree conditions. Plus, no working from home when you don’t have power.
More snow predicted for tomorrow night, deep joy. Turning to rain on Wednesday, which will muck it up even further.
Metro Seattle has once again done what I hadn’t thought possible: it makes Metro DC look like a paragon of preparedness when it comes to weather management.
No comments:
Post a Comment