Fifteen minutes of Power-cut in the USA.

Sounds like a mystery novel title, doesn't it? Well, even though very rare, sometimes we lose power here in the USA (Yes!). Most of the times it is weather related. Like, for example, we had power loss for about 15 minutes and pandemonium ensued. While this had happened a few times, the yesterday's power cut gave me a chance to think about our collective dependency on electricity; we as a human race - well, most of the human race anyway - has become so "power"-dependent that it is superbly impossible to carry on the most minor tasks without electricity. Here were my experiences from yesterday:

The power went off at office. I looked around and before I knew every single UPS in the entire building started beeping. Annoying is a very simple word here. I shut down the computer and made my way out of my office, thanks to the emergency lighting that pointed me to the exit.

While walking out, I heard that people were stuck in the elevators and they were frantically dialing the emergency numbers. In the meantime, outside on the street, there were emergency vehicles - ambulances, fire trucks, etc - were running every which way with their noisy squeaky sirens on. As I started walking home (I live within a 5 min walking distance), I saw all the traffic lights not working. Usually in these situations, the intersection is considered an all-way stop and the first person reaching the intersection has the right-of-way. But then again, this is DC. Nobody bothered to slow down on the main streets, let alone allow peds to cross. I even saw cop cruisers just whizzing past (without lights or sirens). I finally was able to cross the street and took a look back...it was chaos! Sirens, emergency vehicles, people honking for not stopping, jeeez....it is just amazing to see how much our lives are inter-linked with electricity.