Tuesday’s power outage proved my household utterly un-resilient. Bleary-eyed I woke up to the news that there would be no coffee. Motivated by my craving, I offered to drive my husband to West Vancouver where he could get internet access and meet his deadline.
From the ferry line-up, my husband scoped out the Snug, which, despite its generator, couldn’t keep the cups of islanders full. Will Hayes later told me that the Snug’s generator was purchased in his family’s second year of business ownership, a period of time when the power went out almost every other day.
“With the generator, you can’t run the regular brewers so you’re always lagging a bit,” he says.
Had I been in proper touch with my neighbours, I would not have even had to go to the Snug to get my fix, never mind off-island. I would have known that the sound of my neighbour’s generator running is in fact a sort of siren screaming, “coffee brewing here, come in and enjoy.”
In this case, closer neighbourly contact could’ve saved me some time and a lot of effort. In other cases, such contact can actually be a life-saver.
As Ron Woodall recounted to me this week, the fact that his wife, Heather, is still with us can be attributed to the fact that their on-property neighbour Ajay Rai, stopped by.
“She could hardly breathe. I was trying to pull it together to drive her to the hospital when he came over,” says Ron. “Ajay took one look at her and said, ‘we’re calling the ambulance.”
I’m sure there are lots of stories like this.
So, while we should cheer for the municipality’s emergency notification system, and anticipate the arrival of the Community Paramedicine program, let’s not forget the power of popping in just to say hello.
That’s where we’ll find the true key to resilience in times of crisis (and power outages).
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