As far as I can tell, what happened last night was that lightning hit a power pole, and the entire electric grid shut down sector by sector ... in HECO's own words ... "to avoid a catastrophic power failure."
I don't know what the difference is between a catastrophic power failure and a 12-hour island-wide black out. I don't think we'll ever know. This spin is already happening - according to the papers we handled the storm quite well.
Although there wasn't actually a storm. There was just some lightning. No wind, no rain, no tornadoes, no water spouts ... just a lightning bolt. The governor says we learned our lesson from the last disaster, and installed portable generators at the airport.
The president-elect was safe. In other headlines, Obama ate a tuna melt for lunch yesterday, his daughters had shave-ice at Sea Life Park, and he made it on time this morning to the Marine Corps base where he works out, thought the McDonalds he usually meets his friends at was closed.
I was set to go to Tom and Joe's party last night, but figured it was off due to the black out. Now I hear that it went on and it was fun. Damn. I should've known my friends wouldn't cancel a party for silly reasons like this. I wish I had gone. Instead I bothered some friends on the phone, talked to Steve in Cali for awhile and Dawn out in Hawaii Kai, then had Maika over for some beers. It was a pleasant Friday, so no complaints. Just bummed that I missed the party.
