Powerless!

We had an island-wide power outage on the 26th, apparently caused by power lines hit by lightning. We had finished watching "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" at Windward Mall and had just gotten our entrees at Ruby Tuesday's when the lights blinked a couple of times then went out completely. It was about 6:30 p.m. I called home and my Dad said they had lost power too. I called my sister in Aiea and it was dark there too, so I had a feeling it was pretty widespread. I called the hotel to check if they had power but it was out there too; luckily, unlike when the power went out during the 2006 earthquakes, the generator was working so the hotel had lights and elevators working. We finished our dinner in the dark and made our way through the now-empty mall to our car. Traffic was pretty bad because the stoplights were out but we made it home safely. We listened to the news updates on the crank-radio my late Aunty Yosh bought for us in preparation for the year 2000. Since they said that the power would not be restored for a minimum of 12 hours, we tried to go to sleep but it was difficult...being worried and hot because of the lack of AC!

I was up at 4:50 am when the power came back on. We thought things were back to normal, so we went out to do some shopping but found out most of Kaneohe town was still without power. It took a while to head back home, but we decided to stay put. Ryan had plans to go out with friends but I wanted him to just stay home and be safe. He wasn't happy about it, but there were so many sirens out on the highway, I was glad we were safe at home.

Mahalo to all the HECO workers who got the power back on so quickly for us. We're usually the last place to get power back...we can see all the areas around with power while we are still in the dark.