Hydro Workers

[none]

Several days ago, I mentioned that under great strife, the US would be up here helping us Canadians out.

Well, that statement was a little prophetic. Toronto area is going through a major cold snap, ice storm and power went out last Friday for hundreds of thousands of Torontonians. Even today, four days later, over one hundred thousand are still without power. Our eunuch of a Mayor is too ignorant to request disaster assistance.

A number of hydro workers from the US are here and more are on the way to help us do repairs.

I just wanted to say "Thanks" to the US for the help that we're receiving.

[woodchucker]

Ignorant, he's a idiot. My sympathies for having this joke as a mayor! But then almost all politicians are jokes or criminals.

[FrozenNorth]

We were only out for 6 hours on Sunday, Sister in law was out for 41 hours, we were lucky.

[BenignBodger]

By way of translation, 'hydro' in this case has nothing to do with water. If you are in the US, substitute 'power'; we are talking power linemen (or linepersons) helping get the distribution system back into operation after the big ice storm took a lot of it down. I'm glad they're doing it but I'm also glad that it isn't me working in those conditions -- working up a pole is bad enough when the weather is good.

[Ed Pawlowski]

Works both ways. I've seen the Frenchies from Quebec down here helping out too. Linemen put in a lot of hours at a pretty good rate, but I'm happy to pay it.

[clare]

Or both

[Swingman]

Yep. We also see a lot of town to town, State to State helping each other during outages, especially after hurricanes.

[krw]

...except those from Georgia who were sent home, after traveling to NJ for the Sandy cleanup, because they were non-union. Amazing.

[clare]

Some from Canada too IIRC

[none]

On Tue, 24 Dec 2013 11:09:15 -0500, FrozenNorth

Best friend lives out in Scarborough. His home was out from Friday to Monday morning. Must have been a real pain added to by lost food and the worry about bursting water pipes.

Generally, I'm pretty lucky. I live in the centre of Toronto where most hydro lines are buried so that kind of outage is very unusual. Add to that the number of financial buildings near where I live and electricity is usually the last thing I need to worry about.

[Lew Hodgett]

------------------------------------------ Oldest trick in the world.

Crack a water valve open so the water keeps moving thru the pipes which in turn, keeps pipes from freezing.

Lew

[none]

On Tue, 24 Dec 2013 18:16:52 -0800, "Lew Hodgett"

Yup, but when you're forced to be out of your house for whatever reason, you worry anyway.

[clare]

Big problem is when, like my friend's son's place in Scarbooney, you need a sump pump to keep the basement from turning into a swimming pool. By the time the power had been out for half an hout he and his wife and 3 kids were running a bucket brigade to keep the basement dry, while my friend threw the little 2500 watt generator in the back of the Cadillac in Kitchener and headed down the 401 - where the generator has been running pretty well steady for about 70 hours and the basement is still dry. They were able to run the furnace for a few hours, and heat up meals in a small crock-pot.