The IT Nerd

Here’s how things stand after the big storm in Toronto. Hydro reports that they almost have restored to the city according to their Twitter feed:

Power has been restored to customers affected by Hydro One’s Manby station.Approx. 5K customers remain in these areas:http://t.co/LliCermC0a

— Toronto Hydro (@TorontoHydro) July 10, 2013

The remaining outage is a result of tree damage affecting a distribution feeder. Crews on site & restoration expected this evening. #darkto — Toronto Hydro (@TorontoHydro) July 10, 2013

Rogers is still fighting issues according to their Twitter feed:

We continue to work on restoring all services in the GTA areas that are still impacted by the storm. 1/2 — RogersHelps (@RogersHelps) July 10, 2013

We apologize for the inconvenience and are doing our best to resolve as soon as possible. 2/2 — RogersHelps (@RogersHelps) July 10, 2013

Other than that, things are returning to normal. The subway system is running, the sun is currently out and the host of the number one radio morning show in Toronto Tweeted this:

E-bike on the sidewalk while the driver lights a smoke. Good to see the city is getting back to normal after the storm.

— Metro Morning (@metromorning) July 10, 2013

Though, there is a severe thunderstorm watch issued for Toronto. It shouldn’t be as bad as Monday, but you can bet a lot of people are praying that it isn’t just in case.

UPDATE: The Count of people still without power continues to drop:

Power restored to all but 600 customers in pockets of west Toronto, where tree limbs brought down power lines.Emergency crews are responding

— Toronto Hydro (@TorontoHydro) July 10, 2013

Kudos to Toronto Hydro getting people back online in some difficult conditions.

UPDATE #2: I now have cable TV. Thanks Rogers!

Well, my customers made it through the storm better than I did. Most of them who called me this morning had only minor issues that I was able to fix quickly. Such as dead power supplies and some minor work to make sure that things like servers and the like worked properly. Myself personally, I still have no power at home. This was the first update from Toronto Hydro’s Twitter feed:

Correction to outage boundaries: 20K customers remaining in area bounded by Dundas to Lakeshore & West Mall to Windermere Avenue. #darkto

— Toronto Hydro (@TorontoHydro) July 9, 2013

Then there was this:

@rpmartini @680News Customers can expect to be restored by early evening. ^HB

— Toronto Hydro (@TorontoHydro) July 9, 2013

That sounded good. But then things took a turn for the worse:

Customers are asked to conserve energy while crews work to repair the system and restore power. Find tips at http://t.co/9eGS09mPq8

— Toronto Hydro (@TorontoHydro) July 9, 2013

And Worse:

50, 000 customers without power. Liberty Village & area now affected by lack of supply from Hydro One station. Restoration time TBD. #darkto

— Toronto Hydro (@TorontoHydro) July 9, 2013

And worse:

We are currently at capacity with the supply of electricity provided by Hydro One & at their request we have begun load shedding.

— Toronto Hydro (@TorontoHydro) July 9, 2013

Load shedding = rotating blackouts. Hydro One needs us to conserve. We apologize for this inconvenience.

— Toronto Hydro (@TorontoHydro) July 9, 2013

So in short, I have no clue when I’ll be back online and it sounds like the hydro situation will get worse before it gets better. And to top it off, we’re out of water at home.

Thank goodness my customers have let me jack into their networks to grab my e-mails and post things to the blog. One has allowed me to use their shower so that I don’t stink and has extended that offer to my wife. I have the greatest clients in the world and it’s much appreciated. And in the grand scheme of things, it could be much worse. Calgary Alberta and the area around it got hit hard from a similar storm. People lost their homes and people died. What my wife and I are going through is nothing.

Still, Toronto Hydro would score a lot of brownie points with me if they could get power on ASAP.

UPDATE: According to my wife, we got power at 3:30 today. The contents of our fridge are a write off, but other than that we survived. Now I hope power stays up.

UPDATE #2: Finished assessing everything here and everything works except Rogers cable. But I’m sure they’re working on that. Also, they pumped the garage out. But not before 8 cars were declared write offs by various insurance companies. Here’s an pic of the garage now and click here if you wanted to see what it looked like this morning:

Thanks for your concern. For those not in the know, there was a massive thunderstorm yesterday afternoon in the Greater Toronto Area. It caused major amounts of havoc including the stranding of a commuter train that required a unprecedented rescue by our police department. In short, we got more rain in a few hours than in a month and a half.

For myself personally, the situation goes something like this. My wife and I are fine. However, as I type this from a Starbucks in Mississauga (just outside of Toronto), we have no power at home. I had to head downtown to pick up my wife as she was stranded due to several subway stations being flooded. We normally park in an underground garage in our condo and upon arriving home, we noticed that the level that we park on was starting to flood. That’s when we decided to park one level above in visitors parking to keep the car safe. That was a good decision as this is what it looked like one hour ago:

The garage is sloped. So the people who have cars at the far end of the garage have water above their wheels. Where we park is dry. But the water starts less than 5 feet from where this picture was taken. And that was about 5 feet from the location where we park. We realize that it could have been worse for use as people in Toronto have flooded basements or had to be rescued from their cars when they became trapped in underpasses that quickly flooded. My wife and I have nothing to complain about.

As is typical for these sorts of events, I’m getting calls from a lot of my clients for help with servers that won’t power on, damaged computers due to power issues, and the like. I’m doing my best to get to as many clients as I can today. So if my responses are a bit delayed, that’s why.

I’ll try to post an update later today as well as try to post the latest tech news. In the meantime, if you’re in the Greater Toronto Area, stay dry and stay safe.