About 1 million people have no power here

[skittledoo]

We had a short lived, but VERY destructive storm last night. I had to drive around a couple trees this morning that had fallen into the road. I'm lucky to have power in my home, but the majority of the DC/Northern VA metropolitan area is without power.

Most of the streetlights have no power right now and people are freaking out so there were so many accidents today that I saw since people just plowed through the intersections in a hurry.

I had to work today. I showed up at work at 5:30 am and the entire strip where my work is located was pitch black. Went inside and sure enough there was no power. I had my tiny cellphone flashlight and 30 dogs to walk and feed. It was only myself and one other person until my boss came in around 9 to help out.

We had to "close" for the day since there isn't power. No daycare dogs, but we still had boarding dogs coming in and out.

The worst is that it is SO hot and no power means no AC. That's why I called my boss and she came in. We had dogs overheating that we needed to cool down. Two English bulldogs in particular were having a tough time.

My boss bought a portable AC unit and her ex husband was in PA and found a generator and brought that down for us. One of my coworkers picked up some cheap lights and flashlights as well. We had to pile all the dog crates into one room and stick the store parrot in a crate in that room as well so they could all have access to the AC and fans that we set up with the generator.

To say today has been eventful is a bit of an understatement. Either my boss is going to stay overnight or me and a few coworkers will take shifts staying there with the dogs tonight to make sure they stay cool and to make sure no one steals the generator.

Please spare some good thoughts for the dogs at my work and for the power situation going on right now out here. I just saw on the news that they are calling for another bad storm tonight.

[Moth]

Cool thoughts for the dogs at your work place.

I hope the electricity gets restored soon and that the storm you guys have coming in is less severe.

[JessLough]

...it really is the end of the world as we know it.

Hope power gets restored quickly! If your boss can't/doesn't stay the night, please be safe driving back and forth through a storm :-/

[thebigcheese]

You don't realize how much you rely on power until it is gone. We were the subject of a day long power cut last week and it was dreadful. I know there are people in the world who don't even have electricity and I may seem selfish for complaining about being without for a day... but it is a shock how much you need it.

[RedHotDobe]

We lost power before the storm even hit us. We were sitting in the kitchen eating and everything went black. Then the wind started, then the rain, then the crazy lightning. I've never seen so much lightning. The sky was SO BRIGHT. If the wind wasn't blowing so incredibly hard I would have loved to go outside to see it, but trees and branches were blowing all over the place.

We still have no power. It's so hot. Bleh.

[RedHotDobe]

This pretty accurately describes what it looks like here right now. Most of the area doesn't have power, and no one understands what to do at stop lights. -_-

Thoughts are with you and everyone else affected. They had scary weather service warnings late night yesterday. Burlington and counties that are far away, but that must have been the storm direction. Hale, destructive winds...Al Gore warned us

[Shai]

Yeah we were out for about 18 hours -- not bad and we were in good shape but I'm glad the power kicked back in before the real heat of the day arrived. Trees snapped in half, etc. Mess.

[skittledoo]

Caitlin there were multiple trees down and in roads this morning. They managed to move most of them by the time I got off work but there are still downed trees on the sides of the roads.

I hope the storm they are predicting for this evening isn't as bad. Apparently 10 people have died so far between the states affected by this storm/heat etc. Virginia, West Virginia and Ohio declared a state of emergency... Not sure what other neighboring states have declared or not yet. They said this power outage will more than likely be a multiple day thing and it could be a week before things are completely back to normal.

I definitely didn't realize how much I rely on electricity and technology. I stressed out bad at work because of the lack of power and AC. Also cellphones have pretty much had little to no service around here as well. My cellphone bar is going between 0 and 1 bar right now.

[yoko]

Oh my gosh sending vibes!

I know twice a year we all go through it here with tornado season and it's scary. Not having power may be considered by some people as a luxury but it's a necessity imo.