Disaster time

I was having a Board meeting at 7:30, and I was home to have dinner, and leave for the meeting. My wife and daughter were going to their piano lessons and then out shopping before coming back so I would be gone before they came home.

At 5:20 p.m.or so they left and I heard shouting. The garage door opener was not working. The garage door lifted about six inches and stopped. It would then go down again and go up another six inches and stop, etc.

After trying for a while, I unhooked the door from the mechanism, and let them out. They went to piano.

I noticed something funny in that the light associated with the opener was browning out. In fact, as I checked, many things were browning out, but some things worked fine.

I had something on the stove and went back in to turn it off but the stove failed to work.
It had been on.

Then, the upstairs smoke alarm went off, upsetting the dog (and me) and I was afraid of an unseen electrical fire. I ran up to disable the alarm and downstairs to look for a hidden fire. There was no fire, no smoke and no broken circuits! I double checked the circuits after running around in darkness looking for a flashlight!

I ran upstairs and decided to call my wife because I was afraid to leave the house alone and couldn’t find the number! I tried a found number and it didn’t work, no one answered. I tried a neighbor and I tried a friend and no one was home! I called again and it was answered wondering why I would call during a lesson! I yelled at everyone to get home!!

I went downstairs with a flashlight after I found one and found the emergency number for the Hydro Company.

They sent out a guy who explained that since half my house worked and I had seen a brownout, what we had was a melted aluminum wire somewhere underground!

They will send out a truck next week to fix this and cross our fingers the wire isn’t under the driveway.

In the meantime I had to get our neighbors to let them string a wire through pipe and it has to go from their box across their lawn and pavement and driveway to our box.

I was able to get top the meeting by 7:00 p.m. and eat dinner later that evening.

What a mess!!!