PhotonBoy
Flashlight Enthusiast
CBC News on Nova Scotia Power Problems
Well, the power finally came on here after 46 hours. We had a lot of wet, heavy snow that took down 6 transmission towers and affected 100,000 power customers - that might represent about 300,000 of the 950,000 odd people in Nova Scotia.
We have oil heating and an electric pump on our well. It got down to 12 C or about 54 F in the living room (the furnace uses an electric blower). We had about 5 gallons of drinking water on hand. We could have collected melt water from the snow on the roof if the power outage had persisted longer. We used about 1/2 pint of alcohol in a fondue set that we used to make coffee and tea and to heat up some canned food. I think I'll buy some cans of Sterno for the future.
My most useful light was my Arc AAA standard which I clipped to a baseball cap as a headlamp. The only criticism is that it has a bluish hot spot which distracts when you're reading. I read Michael Crichton's novel 'Disclosure' from start to finish with it. I used up about 2 1/2 AAA cells.
I used my Streamlight Jr. Luxeon when I was outdoors at night shaking off wet snow that was weighting down two trees that were slumping over the power drop running to the house. I'll have to clean up the damaged trees later when the snow melts and it's a bit more pleasant to work outdoors.
My sister used her Elektrolumens IllumiLux 3AA Luxeon for general tasks. She loves it; I dislike the pea green tinge around the hot spot.
My niece used a Dorcy 1 AAA 1 LED navigating around the house and in her bedroom.
I used an Elektrolumens Elektro Star 1 Watt Luxeon headlamp and pointed it at the kitchen ceiling for room lighting.
Overall, we did fine. I had more than 32 AA cells and 12 AAA cells on hand, so I could have gone for quite a few more days with no problem.
The power at my brother's place, which is about 10 miles away, is still off, but it shouldn't take too much longer to come back up.