A few weeks ago The Citizen received a letter addressed to the Michigan Utility Commission regarding 12 power outages that have occurred in the Brandon Township area between July and November 2003.
The resident, who has given up setting appliance clocks as a result of the outages, explains some of the blackouts are perhaps the result of weather and 100 year old technology. However, the resident continues by chastising DTE, exclaiming “the North Oakland County residents sometimes envy the residents of Baghdad with respect to the reliability of the electric service we get from Detroit Edison.”
Although, it’s easy to concur with the dissatisfied resident each time homes go dark, computers crash and appliance clocks blink, it’s even more disturbing how truly dependent our lives are on electricity.
For example, during the recent November blackout, schools closed, businesses locked their doors and traffic signals turned busy streets into parking lots. While local utility companies scrambled to fix the problem, cell phones failed, alarms squealed and emergency lights glared in dark offices. Clocks stopped, radio broadcasts ended and workers sat in rooms in half light. Where’s the humanity?
Wow…the world stops and presto it’s 1900 once again. Revert to no refrigeration, no air conditioning and no television. Break out the clubs and move back to caves. How dare any company make us step backward. It’s rather pathetic just how dependent on electricity we’ve become and furthermore, it’s just not healthy.
Our world and society have become electrical junkies, so dependent on the “juice,” that even one hour without a fix in the 8,760 hours each year we go into withdrawals. Not to mention, our dependence has left us vulnerable to terrorists and too open to disaster.
Rather than blaming the utility company every time the wind blows too hard, or the ice becomes too thick or some kamikaze squirrel impales itself on an electrical transformer, let’s join forces and voluntarily shut the electricity off for one hour each month in preparations for possible blackouts. Practice blackouts can be fun, save money and even provide a new means of entertainment.
If DTE can’t keep the power on, fine, we’ll just learn to live without it.