It was Sunday night, March 6, 2016. My family, namely my Mom, Grandmother, and Grandfather, had just pulled into Mesquite Nevada to meet up with my Uncle and Aunt who came up from Riverside CA.
We had already had a rather exciting drive down, exciting if you love driving through snow, ice, rain and sleet. The weather around Parowan can be treacherous, and just as we left that city one of those road condition light up boards flashed, "standing water, next 30 miles." Sure enough, 15 miles in, cars were slipping off the road, and as we came up to one such stranded vehicle a mini SUV whipped around us, swerved vertically right in front of us (in which it came within a foot of the stranded vehicle and was within perfect head-on-collision with us), then miraculously strengthened ahead again, swerving to the other side of the road, and back and forth five times to make an elegant wavy line in the slushy standing water. So many things could have gone wrong. It was a terrifying event to behold. It's amazing how everything slows down in times of panic.
So by the time we drove into Mesquite, by nightfall, we were all still talking about it. And then we noticed cops at the main intersections, all street lights black. Lights at the two casino's, McDonald's, and Chevron out as well. Everywhere was dark.
Then I noticed my phone wasn't connecting to anything. When we go through Virgin River Gorge service is never available, but now in Mesquite my cell wasn't connecting to the internet. The 4G lines completely gone.
We were soon informed that all electricity was out throughout the city. And that electricity was out all the way down to Laughlin Nevada, including Las Vegas. One person said electricity was completely out in Las Vegas, whereas another person said only parts of Las Vegas was out. It was a strange hearing different reports and rumors, and not being able to access information on my phone to confirm anything. And the radio stations we could get in the car weren't talking about the situation.
Apparently a storm came through and blew a transformer. According to another person a transformer exploded and caught fire.
(I just found an article on
Las Vegas Review Journal with some basic information. 2,800 homes out of power in Clark County by 5pm. Overton, Moapa and Mesquite power grids completely down. "Outages in Las Vegas began clearing up after 5 p.m., and as of 7 p.m. NV
Energy’s website reported that fewer than 300 homes were still without
power." All thanks to "a power pole at a substation [catching] fire.")
All the gas stations were down with no ability to pump gas. All the restaurants shut down. And the pass going through the canyon backed up and clogged for miles.
Add to all this, a NASCAR race just finished in LV, and the Virgin River hotel was booked to capacity. A bunch of people stranded.
People were hanging out in the open air, hotel doors and windows open to let as much light in as possible. Thankfully the key cards were working. We got my Grandpa settled in his pet friendly room with his dog Ginger, while we were scrambling through the van for flashlights. Thankfully my Grandpa had a couple LED flashlights. And my Mom found another in the 72 hour pack along with a tube of glow sticks.
It's funny, I think the glow sticks turned out to be the most useful items in the pack, along with the flashlight, because we set them up around the hotel room. Around my Grandpa's room, creating bracelets to place on door handles and next to the sink, and then My Grandma, Mom, and I placed the glow sticks around our room.
Virgin River Hotel and Casino was running off generators, mainly keeping the gambling machines operating along with one restaurant serving sandwiches and salad. The line for the restaurant took about 45 minutes, much quicker then thought, and I was relieved to have a turkey sandwich. It seemed they used prime rib for the beef sandwich, because that's one of Virgin Rivers main deals, Prime Rib dinner for $6.99. Since they couldn't serve the dinner and had all this prime rib cooking throughout the day, it seems it went into the sandwich. Thankfully my Mom let me have a couple pieces.
The generators also lit up the parking lot lights, and thankfully our room was next to the parking lot. My Aunt and Uncle were not as fortunate as their room was in one of the back buildings on a third floor, and since my aunt has disabilities and the elevators weren't working, she didn't join us for dinner, so my Uncle brought her a sandwich.
It was all an eerie situation. I've been in power outage situations before, but always at home or close to home, never in a traveling situation, especially one so wide spread.
It was interesting not having gas stations open, restaurants closed, and so forth, all over. Thankfully we stayed in a place with a generator and a running make-shift restaurant. And thankfully we had plumbing working and running water.
We were told electricity would come on around midnight, and around 11:30 P.M. the fire alarm went off. The most piercing, terrible sound, everyone running out of their hotel rooms to save their ears. I'm glad I travel with ear plugs.
The electricity didn't come on until around 8 a.m. the next morning.
It was an eye opening situation. I'm now going to go through my car and closet 72 hour packs and update them. Make sure everything is still good, add glow sticks, and some nuts, beef jerky, and protein bars. Those high in carbs/sugar emergency bars that typically come in 72 hour packs are not enough.
It's always good to be prepared.
