Last night was a fun one for many in Amarillo, wasn’t it? My wife and I were out running some errands when we got a call from our oldest son, who was at home. The call? “Ummm, the power just shut off. We heard it just wind down and stop.” We told him we were just about done with errands and would be home.
Sure enough, we reached Soncy & Hillside and the traffic lights were off; the Toot’n Totum on the corner was without power, as was everything else in that area. That’s when the alerts to my phone started from Xcel. We were going to be without it for a while.
How A Power Outage Can Affect You
Aside from it being a major inconvenience, you don’t realize all the ways a power outage can affect daily life. The first thing we thought about? It’s hot outside, and we have no AC now. So we went around the house and closed all the blinds. That promptly made it pretty dark in the house. So we sat there, joking around, then our daughter spoke up.
“Mommy, I’m hungry.” Oh yeah…dinner. One of the things we ran out to get. Minor problem. Our house is ALL electric, no gas. Couldn’t use the stove or oven thanks to that. Well, now what are we gonna do? I don’t want to DoorDash or anything like that; I’m positive many were already doing that. We landed on just making sandwiches. Not exactly the best dinner plan, but everyone was fed.
Items To Have On Hand In Case Of A Power Outage
We realized as the power was out just how many things we didn’t have that could’ve helped us through the outage, so we started making a list of things we should probably grab. We had a little tap light that was charged, thankfully, so we at least had a little light. Another thing we realized was we should probably have food on hand that doesn’t require prep from a household appliance…