Antonio Cugini
Vice President
Law Enforcement & Military Saleshis insights into the San Diego power outage of 09/08/2011
Yesterday 5 million people in the So Cal and AZ area lost electricity…us included.
It went down yesterday around 3:30 in the afternoon while we at FoxFury were still working. The reports indicated that it could be several hours to a full day before we got power back. I was also surprised to hear the news cautioning people to be careful with candles as they can start fires…more on that later.
At my home in Oceanside, things got dark around 7:30 pm.
This is a real picture from inside the house at about 9:00 pm, we are talking dark here.
I placed two Scouts on top of my TV and they were able to light up my living room enough for us to see each other in conversation. My wife put 28 tea light candles in a glass bowl so that we could see in the kitchen. The two Scouts and candles were able to provide enough light for us to see one another and to move around. It was so dark out that I could only see my hand when it was one foot (or closer) from my face.
Two scout lights working off the bounce effect, lots of useable light for how small and inexpensive these are.
We were feeling tired around 8:30 (partly because it was so dark) but had Rocky Road ice cream melting in the freezer. Rather than going to bed early, we had the bright idea to set up the Nomad and play a little Monopoly: Planet Earth edition.
For those not familiar with the Nomad, it is an amazing portable area light that can also function as a spotlight. It’s rechargeable so we were able to set it up in our living room to play our game. The Nomad was designed to not need a generator, which came in very handy last night as our 1 and 3 year old girls wouldn’t have been able to sleep very well had we turned on a generator. The Nomad worked as a great tool during the blackout, having light goes a long way in keeping everyone's spirits up.
I placed the diffuser lens on the Nomad to use it as an area light and aimed the light head at the ceiling. I turned it on low (1200 torch lumen) and could not believe how bright the room became. It was about as bright as it would typically be when we had power.
This is on it's lowest setting, burn time of about 8 hours when this setting is used.
We played Monopoly for 2 hours and I of course won. I say of course because I was the Polar Bear while my opponents were a penguin and a kangaroo.
Nomad on High setting, no photo manipulation was used, just as the camera took it.
I mentioned earlier the need for caution when using candles. I have a Candle "Fail” to share with you from last night. The part I left out was that we placed those 28 tea light candles in a 10” glass bowl. We heard a loud noise 1 hour into our game and the sound was the glass shattering. The bowl broke into several pieces while the candles were knocked over while wax was spilling onto our quartz counter top. Thankfully the mess was contained to the counter top and nothing caught on fire or melted.
Thanks so much to Rosanna for these wonderful pictures, I am sorry your penguin lost at Monopoly!
Well, had it started a fire, (thank God it didn't)
Antonio would have been selling some headlamps to the first responders,
that is just how he rolls.
The lights are back on now in the area.
This incident, just like the recent east coast hurricanes,
just reinforces the need for some basic
just reinforces the need for some basic
"just in case" supplies for your home and car.
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