It's proving to be a very sheepish Saturday...
Just wanted to share some thoughts on FP&L outages in Hollywood as of Saturday afternoon, after having gone down in-person at 12:45 PM today to the multi-state utility company staging area on the south side of Gulfstream Park Race Track & Casino in Hallandale Beach.
The outage and its attendant days of frustration, largely spent away from the house and spending lots of money just to keep out of the sweltering heat -and keep my cell phone and laptop charged- and nights of quiet exasperation/exhaustion, witho
To be factual, it's my house and about 5-7 others on the south side of the 1400 block of Wiley Street and a similar number of houses behind us on the north side of Mayo Street, despite the fact that electricity in the larger neighborhood west of Temple Beth El came on sometime Thursday afternoon.
I can't prove it, but I'm pretty sure that when the streetlight on the north side of the street across from my house comes on at night, it's actually mocking me as I sit on the porch, sipping my room temperature soda...
On Wednesday, the FP&L power line that connects to my house from the pole in the alley, which has been lying on the ground in my backyard since last Sunday when one of my neighbor's large palm trees came crashing thru the fence and yanked the line off the house, started sparking when the electricity was returned to the larger neighborhood.
Two houses down from us, I heard that a light pole in the alley caught on fire at the same time.
None of the neighbors that I have spoken to on Wiley has seen a FP&L rep or truck (or another utility company) working in the alley since Thursday, so the popular sentiment on the street about whether the power company cavalry will be back and be able to keep the promise they made at their press conference this week that power should be restored by Sunday night, is starting to look like a promise about to be broken.
At least on my street.
So that's what lead me today to head down to Gulfstream, since I recall FP&L previously using the old Gulfstream parking lot off of US-1 that's now home to their retail shops, as a staging area for utility workers and trucks for Hurricane Wilma.
That resulted in me without power for two weeks, even while Aventura, then a ten minute walk from where I was living, was up and running right away.
Today, after lots of walking around from one tent and trailer to another, I finally found someone from FP&L near the logistics tent who seemed responsible.
Even better than just looking responsible, though, he said that he could do something
tangible about the larger problem where I live in Hollywood, and help get a team dispatched to the alley between Wiley and Mayo.
Eventually.
Sometime...
Whenever that is...
Just checked FP&L's homepage for any changes before I post this.
Now they're saying by 11:45 PM on... Monday night.
And that the number of affected customers is about 121.
Que sera sera..
Dave
