Life Is Unfair

“Life Is Unfair” is the refrain from the theme song from “Malcolm In The Middle” TV show. It kinda explains the past couple of months.

In mid to late March this year, we had two back-to-back storms called “Kona Lows”. They caused extensive damage around the state, but I will only speak on our Kona side of the Big Island. As of today (late March) my farm has received 33 inches of rain. 15 of those 33 inches happened in 3 days! THAT was the Kona Low storms.

A neighbor called and said that our farm access road on the top of my farm was blocked due to a tree down and that neighbors were cutting it up. I drove the tractor up there and found that it was a tree from my farm which was blocking the road which leads to about 1 farms. I am the 3rd farm and the last one on the road is at a dead end.

I noticed a HELCO (Hawaiian Electric) bucket truck nearby and 6 or so neighbors cutting up the tree. I wondered why with a big storm that the electric company was at our small road to fix a downed wire when others were more likely to be out of power. It was then I discovered that my tree had taken out a major high voltage line that darkened lots of other people. I still don’t know why they have a high voltage line running down our short dead end. Anyway I hadn’t realized that the power was off for two reasons; first that I have solar (which was still running) and that since my house is at the bottom of the bottom of the strip of land and has power from the next street over, which still had power.

The next morning I discovered that the wind had taken my power line down from my pole and since there was essentially no sunlight due to overcast skies, I was now without power. I cranked up the propane generator to recharge the batteries. I thought this would only take a day or so to get power back on and was not worried. That was not the case. A few days later as people got their power back on, an electric employee came by to see why my power was still off. The wires had come down off the pole pole on the neighbors farm which supplies my farm. The employee was going to dispatch a crew but I knew that they would balk. This happened many years ago because I had trees growing under the lines and they are on my land, so I am responsible to cut them down. I had not. So I told the guy that I wanted to clear the area under the lines so that this would not happen with the next storm. I didn’t mention the last time. The power company had a crew come and rap the line up and place it near my house which it was still connected to. They removed my meter and I have no idea why. Anyway, I finally found someone to clear the area to the pole and $1,100 later was ready to have service restored. I called last Monday and finally found someone who would spearhead the reconnect. A week later I have not heard a re-connection date.

When I got the Engineering Department on the phone, they told me that I wouldn’t know, but their procedure is that if the power was going to be off for any length of time over a few days, that I would have to go back to Engineering with a building permit and it can take a couple of months to get service. I am on hold now with the Service Department to see if they will just come and reconnect.

I got a call back and it was the woman who originally created the ticket back after the storm. She is trying to see if they can re-connect me today with a new wire. She is hoping they can transfer service to the new meter and not have to go through any rig-a-ma roll (it’s a technical term :-).

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So I personally ran the power line back over the logs to a spot near the pole and the crew showed up and spliced and reconnected it. I now have power again and can fully charge the batteries which has not happened many times since the storm.

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Then there was the earthquake. We had an unexpected 6.0 quake here that was, well, unexpected as I said. That is because we rarely have large quakes on our side of the island. We have had a 6.9 followed by a 6.2 that were nothing like this one. A number of people have said that they thought the would die. It lasted a good 20 seconds, perhaps longer but really shook and I sustained lots of things falling that did not happen with the 6.9. My large screen TV fell and broke, lots of stuff on the floor, my water line to the house broke. I grabbed a flashlight and my cellphone after it settled down, and sat in the card for 2 hours. I didn’t stop shaking during that time. I also called neighbors and friends here on island to check on them. I texted friends on the mainland. I found that news and weather report were very sparse outside Hawaii. We had a house fall down, rocks and boulders closed roads and the next morning a number of stores were closed as the staff cleaned up debris.

It is about time for our next lava flow from Kilauea. In the past year and a half we have had 47 or so lava flows so that works out to about every 10 days or so and it has been almost that long since the last one.