Power Cut

An especial thank-you to Colin the dogg for editorial help. The final paragraph comes from information he supplied when he read the first draft. In addition, he talked me out of binning the whole thing.

And then the lights went out...

by Potsherd22

This morning I bit the bullet and dumped my girlfriend Karen. We've been together for almost a year, and I have known we were cooling off for a couple of months. Still, you keep on hoping, don't you?

When I told her that I had had enough, she was furious and ripped up at me, tears of fury in her eyes, but when I saw her in the Students' Union coffee bar after afternoon lectures, she had her tongue down Vince Parsons' throat, cheered on by her girlfriends. All's right with the world. I left the campus, walked along Epinal Way to the busy Ashby Road roundabout and headed down the Ashby Road towards the centre of town and home.

My name is Joe Carthy, and I'm a postgrad librarianship student. I have always loved libraries, and wanted to work in one. I couldn't have guessed, would not even have dreamt, that my country, apparently the sixth richest in the world, should be so sunk into squalor that it could no longer support the basic services that spread and support culture and the dissemination of knowledge.

The MA Librarianship course I am on, one of the top ones in the country, was planned around a student group of thirty. Last year, it recruited fourteen, and one of those dropped out before the course began. They are obliged to deliver the programme for this session, but it has not been re-advertised. If I am around long enough I expect I shall see the superb department library, specialising in children's illustrated books, being thrown into the skip, probably along with the admin staff. How the mighty have fallen.

Well, ok, rant over. Anyway I may be a bookworm, but I am very fit and strong. At eighteen, just before I left home for uni I did a sponsored walk for Doctor Barnardo's. I undertook to walk over 200 miles in five days, starting from Penzance and trying to get as near as possible to Southampton along the South Coast. Well I made my two hundred miles on Wednesday afternoon about half-past two, and by not long after six had I walked the last twenty-two miles into Southampton. The charity got six hundred pounds they really needed and I scored a couple of great pairs of lightweight walking shoes donated by Clarks.

Nine months later Barnardo's contacted me again. Was I interested in another sponsored event? Sylie, my girlfriend at the time, giggled like a five-year-old caught in some naughtiness, took over the phone and suggested that we could do a sponsored recapitulation of all the positions in the Kama Sutra. Oddly enough we never heard from them again. We still practiced hard over the next couple of months until we met our match attempting to do the Congress of the diffident woodworm.

Well that's water under the bridge. Sylie is long gone, and, for me long-distance walking has give way to rock climbing in the gritstone Peaks, with an occasional, expensive trip further afield to the Alps or the Dolomites. I pretty well always climb alone, and free, systematically working along an edge climbing every route that offers serious difficulty. I like to meet other climbers in the pub at night, but for me it's always about being alone with the road, or the rock.

Anyway, I was walking down Ashby Road, heading home to my bed-sitter. It is right on the Grand Union Canal, part of a low-rise block, great for people who are addicted to the sight of water in all its forms. It was touch and go whether or not I'd stop off for a pint of Harvest Pale at the Swan in the Rushes. Then I saw Mrs. Hennessy, one of my neighbours, hair in rollers under a paisley pattern headscarf; waddling along in front of me with a heavy bag of shopping in either hand. I moved alongside to greet her.

"Hi there Dora, you're looking gorgeous this afternoon. But you must be freezing in that thin coat. You must wrap up in this weather or you'll catch your death. Here give me those bags."

"Joseph, you just might have saved my life. Thanks a bunch. You are such a good lad."

"It's my pleasure ducks. It's only a few days since you baked me that delicious date and walnut cake.

"Since my Wally passed, it's lovely to have someone who appreciates my cakes and pies. What with Bill and Shirley living so far away, I've no one but meself to cook for."

We chatted away cheerfully as we cut through to the Derby Road, down Bridge Street and along the Grand Union canal towpath to our flats. Dora was getting along a bit better without the heavy load of groceries, but the cold was penetrating, and her lips were blue, teeth chattering by the time we reached our doors. I helped her in with the bags, kissed her cheek and prepared to leave.

"Stay for a cuppa Joseph, There's a fresh victoria sponge with home-made raspberry jam not long out of the oven."

She could stop pitching, she had made the sale. It would take a stronger will than mine to resist Dora's cakes.

I could not have guessed that that was the last cup of tea I would enjoy in a long, long time. As I was drinking up, complimenting Dora on her cake and walking the few feet that separated her door from mine, events, terrifying in their nature and implications, were coming to a climax just a few miles to the north.

The huge Drakelow Power Station is located in the floodplain of the River Trent, created as the river meandered across a wide flat valley on the southern side of Nottingham. The Power Station was built some twenty metres higher than the river banks, and should have been safe from flooding. Indeed the Civil Defence, Police and emergency services had practiced dealing with many different emergencies, ranging from an attack by pickets from the National Union of Mineworkers, explosions brought about by the Provisional IRA, even a sneak attack on Nottingham and Derby by the Soviet Union (that one dates back to 1963), spontaneous combustion in the huge coal stacks, and a massive electrical fire. What they never rehearsed, never projected and, in short, never allowed for, was what actually happened.

The beginning of January had been exceptionally cold, and the New Year had brought heavy snowfalls that had banked up in the streets, turning grey-brown and gritty as the days passed. The river froze hard, and a few bold teenagers got out their ice-skates and played pickup games of ice-hockey on the frozen river, making a nice little feature item for the regional tv news. In the third week it thawed rapidly, then froze again even harder. At the beginning of February temperatures dropped to minus ten and the rivers and canals swelled with meltwater coming down from the Pennines.

Then on the afternoon of the seventh of February, something happened that is still unexplained and probably inexplicable. Beneath the bank of the Trent, in the accreted silt of millennia, a sort of change took place. Just as hammered iron changes form from a crystalline lattice to something fibrous and linear; areas of silt suddenly lost cohesion and jellied like quicksand. The massive ferroconcrete raft that underpinned the power station tilted, slid and, unsupported, cracked in three. The main power house building lost a wall and the floors tilted at crazy angles, sending heavy plant crashing to the ground below. The cooling towers, which were, after all, simply hollow shells of concrete balanced in the air, tumbled and fell gracefully to the ground to break like half a dozen Humpty Dumpties. The power cables that carried all that huge electrical charge, screamed in agony and huge flames arced across the void. In an instant a million homes lost their life-giving electricity.

Seen from space, they say, the only man-made object visible is the Great Wall of China. Maybe so, but in a minute or two on Friday the 8th. Of February, the counties of Derbyshire, Nottinghamshire, Leicestershire and parts of Lincolnshire and Northamptonshire went suddenly black. The observant passer-by in that sector of space would have seen a black hole, roughly the shape of an eye, appear in the be-jewelled landscape of Western Europe.

I had just opened the freezer section of the fridge to get out ...0.a couple of burgers and some frozen potato wedges for my supper, when the lights went out. 'Shit, I've blown a fuse", I said to myself and hunted around for my maglite to find the fuse wire and pull the fuse. Nothing unusual there, It was always happening. But when I looked out of the window towards the Derby Road, all was black. Not my crap electrical wiring then. A brownout. I picked up the telephone and it still gave the dialling tone (it stopped for good half an hour or so later) and at the time that seemed reassuring.

I got out my climbing rucksack and fished inside. Good! My calor gas lantern had an almost full gas reservoir and a spare refill. Enough light to last six or seven hours with luck. Alternately I could use the refill with the burner to cook a meal or two. By then with any luck we would have electricity again. I knocked on Dora's door to see that she was ok. No problem. She was already lighting candles and posting them around the room.

"Don't worry, ducks, just as long as it comes back in time for me bedtime cocoa I'll be fine. Suppose I'll miss Coronation Street, but worse things happen at sea."

'She's old enough to take things in her stride,' I thought. 'It's the young ones who haven't got the coping mechanisms.'

I thought I'd walk up to the Rushes and look down the street to see how far the power cut extended. Usually it's no more than a couple of streets. Then it's just a matter of waiting for the men to come round and find the fault.

Standing on the corner in total blackness, looking down to the centre of town, I could see not a glimmer of light bigger than a car's headlights. The traffic was moving at a crawl with no street lights, and pedestrians seemed very nervous, although quite a lot of them were using the lights of their mobile phones as torches.

So far no need for panic. Then it all changed. I met Sammy, the caretaker of our block of flats, and he had news.

"Look like a total bugger booy," he greeted me in the ascerbic burr of the North Norfolk coast. "Heerd on the wireless. Drakelow Poer station gorn down. Totally fucked. Won't be no poer for days, they're thinkin'."

Sam's a resourceful man. He's been in enough tight spots in his life to cope with anything. For most of his working life he had been mate, and later skipper of a Thames Sprits'l barge. That bit he is happy to tell anyone. What he kept quiet about was that most of his time was spent as a "poopie", conveying holds full of human waste out into the North Sea and dumping it. Not the most salubrious of occupations, though highly necessary in its time.

Of course, as we all know, The European Community knocked that on the head, and Britain was stopped from polluting the seas and made to institute modern sewage disposal systems. So men like Sammy were thrown on the scrapheap. In course of time his barge was laid up at Maldon and he moved up to the Midlands to be near his daughter and her children.

"Near, booy, thet's the word. Not living in their pockets. I can walk over to our Jenny's, meet the kids from school, gi'e 'em their fish fingers and hash browns and keep 'em company 'til Jenny git home from work. Then I can go home and close my own li'l front door on the world."

By the time Sammy met me, he had been working through the problem of an extended power cut and coming up with possible coping strategies.

"See, booy, T'aint likely they'll git the poer back over the weekend. More'n likely it'll take til Tuesd'y, wednesd'y. We got all lectric heat, light and cooking in the flats. If we don't do sommut they all going freeze and starve. You and me booy, we got take the job orn - no bugger else will."

Sammy and I had got to know and respect each other over many a night and many, many a pint at the Swan. To Sammy the people who lived in his flats were shipmates. Your shipmates are not necessarily your friends – you might heartily dislike them - but their lives are in your keeping. At its best it is a bond closer than family. And Sammy had been a volunteer lifeboat man.

We began to consider our problems and our options. Light would be an ongoing problem. Batteries, gas refills, mobile phone charges all had a finite life. Light would have to be conserved.

Cooking would have to be carried on outside the flats. A communal kitchen would be needed. Freezer foods would soon start thawing. The frozen foods would be fine in cold boxes stored outdoors, at least until the weather turned the right side of freezing. It was impossible to provide heating for more than a small area. Which means a communal sleeping area and sharing body heat. There would be inconvenience, loss of comfort and privacy, but we would survive.

Back at the flats, we started knocking on doors and cajoling people into coming for a short meeting. They needed to be told straight away that this was no short-time brownout; it was potentially life threatening.

They just flatly refused to believe us. Glenda Beckwith set the tone:

"No, it can't be...You must have got it wrong...it's just a brownout, They often happen at this time of the year...tomorrow it'll be back, you'll see."

I noticed Dora, sitting in the corner, keeping schtum.

"What do you think, Dora?"

"Well Joseph, there's no heating in my flat, and I can't so much as make myself a cup of cocoa. What have I got to lose? What do you want me to do?"

I looked at Sammy, but he was clearly leaving it to me. So I answered.

"Well, flat 5 is empty, and it's carpeted. I suggest that we warm the big living room with Sammy's paraffin heater, and light it with candles. Make it as warm and cosy as possible, and everyone who wants to can sleep in there. I've got some sleeping bags that zip together. Bring down all the duvets and pillows we can scrape together. For tonight we sleep in our clothes, and don't forget woolly hats. You know you lose a lot of heat through your head. Then we'll see what the morning brings."

Sammy brought the discussion to an end, and showed us effectively how seriously he took it.

"Well, I'm goin' round to our Jessie and I'm gorn bring her and the nippers here. I'm not lettin' 'em freeze to death in the dark."

With that he thrust the master keys to the building in my hand and departed. The sheriff was out of town and I was his deputy.

A little while later I was tacking an old quilt over the living room window, mouth full of tacks, and standing on a rather rickety old pair of steps the previous tenant had left behind. I heard someone behind me. I had deliberately left the flat door open so that people could see how seriously I was taking the job of preparing for the privations to come. Footsteps came into the room, but I carried on with what I was doing. The last tack hammered in, I looked around to see someone I had never expected to see again.

"Joe..." a tremulous, hesitant voice.

"Sylie!"

A little to my surprise, I was really pleased to see her. All the old bickering and cross-purposes were pushed into the past, and I grinned all over my face. The anxiety left her face and she smiled back.

"Sylie, how good to see you. Where have you been? I have often looked for you in the Three Nuns or the Swan, but never seen hide nor hair of you. Are you ok?"

"Yes, I'm fine. There'll be lots of time to talk later. But we have a serious emergency and we really need your help urgently. Some people are trapped in the lift at our block of flats, and I immediately thought of you. Tell you the truth Joe, if not for that I would not have dared to come and see you, I was a real cow to you when we broke up, and I've been sorry ever since."

"Well then, I'm really glad you came. Let's make our way up to my flat and I'll sort out my climbing rucksack and the stuff I'll need. I shall need to talk to Sammy if at all possible, I bet he knows how to get a pair of lift doors open."

"We've already got that far. The door to the upper service bit where the lift motors are is openable and we could see down the shaft if it weren't so bloody dark. The thing is, we don't know how far down the lift cage is, or who is in it. We don't even know for sure how many people are in there."

We decided we couldn't wait for Sammy. It was a fifteen minutes' walk through the starry, frosty blackness to the ten-storey block of flats where Sylie lived. The clever people who arrange our lives had fitted the whole building out with an intercom system and remote locks on the outer doors, all powered by electricity. Consequently there was no access at all to the front of the building, and the only workable door was the one used by the caretaker to bring in cleaning supplies and store replacement window fittings, locks, lightbulbs and all the little details of communal life. Expecting us, he had left the door ajar.

Rising up from the store-room and the caretaker's flatlet was a echoing staircase of rough, unfinished concrete decorated with the imprint of the plywood shuttering used to form the walls and stairs. Nothing was too good for the paying tenant; almost anything was good enough for the man who kept the whole thing running. By this time the tenants must have been seriously inconvenienced by the loss of their luxurious underfloor heating, but down here the chill of the grave was too commonplace to draw notice.

By the time we had climbed ten and a half flights of stairs we were chilled to the bone. Somehow that pitch dark, piss-miserable staircase was colder and danker than the cold, dank streets. We got to the top of the block, and quickly found the shed-like building that housed the winding gear for the lift. Ted, the laconic caretaker was inside, with the inner door open to reveal the cables that supported the lift cage, descending into a black, echoing void. Ted was shouting down reassuringly to the panicked, half-frozen occupants of the lift.

This was one time when I devoutly wished that I had the caving gear that sat, seventy miles away, under the stairs at my mum's house in Chesterfield. How useful the helmet light would be. In its place I had a maglite and a calor-gas lantern and Ted had a big, powerful battery operated lantern. None of them very well suited to the situation we found ourselves in. It was clear that I was probably going to have to abseil down onto the top of the lift cage. Then at the very least we would be able to give the trapped people light, blankets, maybe a hot drink, and, most important, a pot to piss in...

Sylie and I talked the thing over with Ted, and they started to assemble goodies as I prepared my descent. It was not my preference to do an abseil into total darkness with hands half numb with cold, but, hell, I've cut ice steps in the Alps, and dozed in a pied d'elephant, tied into a bivouac on a narrow ledge on the Matterhorn for the whole of a long January night. I could do cold. I could do dark. Fuck it, I can do liftshafts.

First of all, I lowered my calor gas lantern on a cord down until it landed gently on the roof of the lift cage. There, well offset from the centre was a none too generous rectangular hatch. How the fuck was I supposed to get people out through that, and what was I to do with them afterwards?

The first thing I needed to know was; could all this hassle be avoided? Ted had said with total conviction that only the lift engineers could open the doors of a lift when the lift cage was not in situ. Frankly I did not believe it, but that being so, I did not reckon my chances of success very highly. Still, the attempt should be made.

I walked down a floor, and addressed myself to the two sliding doors. Five minutes of hard work showed that there was about a half-inch of play in the doors, then a checking mechanism seemed to cut in, and that was it. Ok, not unexpected, but I would have felt such a twat if I did the climb, worked my bollocks off and then found that the doors could be levered apart with a carjack.