Black-out

Power across much of Ontario, NYC and other eastern portions of North America has been off for the past 13 hours. The electricity faded and then died at roughly 4:10 yesterday afternoon. Our office had about five minutes of back-up power for our workstations. I was surprised how many people didn't realize that a brownout followed by a bunch of beeping noises means "save your work NOW!". I was on the phone with my bank at the time so I instantly realized that this wasn't a localized occurence. I left the office at around 4:30 hoping to beat some of the traffic - it didn't take long to realize the real extent of the situation. Traffic on the city streets got pretty chaotic pretty quickly. Sincere thanks to the civilians and police that were directing traffic - things could have been much worse.
By all accounts, Toronto was fairly quiet last night. A local pharmacy stayed open while they could, charging pretty fair prices for batteries, water, candles and diapers ( 9v batteries, $5.00, candles, $1 ea, Snuggies pullups, $15, water = $4.00 for 12...) We had a dinner of salad and cous cous and then read until it was too dark to see. We unplugged everything in the house, but left a few lamps and lights turned on so we'd know when we had power again. There were 38 instances of looting reported, but Toronto Police were out in full force to ensure that order was maintained and damage was minimized. A sizeable number of the offenders were caught and are cooling their heels in jail as we speak. Thankfully, I was woken up at roughly 3:00, blinded by the number of lights we had left on. One would have sufficed I suppose.
Power has been back on in my neighborhood for roughly 2.5 hours. Its shortly after 5am, but the city is mostly black. The radio stations are urging non-essential personnel to stay home today. I will be make the trek to drop Amanda off at the hospital where she works and then venture forth to see what's going on in Tucows neck of the woods. Could make for an interesting trip. I'll post more when I get a second.