Delmarva Drops the Phone

This is not about me. It may seem as though I am whining about my Sunday afternoon and how my day was ruined. It really isn’t about any of that. I just point out all the aggravations to emphasize how much could have been avoided with a phone call.

This is about Delmarva Power and their failure to make a few phone calls to avoid inconveniencing a few customers.

I was retiring for the night on St. Patrick’s Day 2012 when all of a sudden I heard the unmistakable sound of a driver losing control of his car just east of my home. An accident was about to happen – I knew it before I heard the large crashing sound.

We don't know exactly what happened, but judging by the skid marks on the road and the tire tracks on that hill, lt looks like he took the curve too wide (very common here) and over corrected.

I grabbed my phone and my pants, and called 911. I quickly realized how difficult it was to put on my pants – in the dark – while talking on my cell phone, so I handed the phone to Terri to finish the report to 911. We saw through the window that a young man (I guessed 23 and I’m almost certain I heard him say that later) had been driving and that he was already out of the car walking around. We confirmed that noone else was in the car when we got outside.

That’s the good news. I don’t mean to lose sight of that. I am very grateful this young man was not seriously injured. His safety is much more important to me than my convenience. I am sure he agrees with me.

Our electricity was out because of crash, but someone from Delmarva arrived and turned it back on after the police had cleared the scene. When we woke up on Sunday morning and realized the pole had not been replaced, we assumed it would happen on Monday.

Then the Delmarva trucks started to arrive. The first one I saw was at approximately 8:30 a.m. The truck stopped, someone got out of the truck, looked at the pole, and then got back in the truck and left. Several more trucks came by over the next three hours. One drove by very slowly, stopped at the four way stop, did a U-turn in the middle of the intersection, and drove back by very slowly again. I saw six trucks go by. Some of them were large ladder trucks, others smaller, one a pick-up. Only two of them stopped. Noone from Delmarva stopped in or called to tell us what was going on.

Then at 1:30 p.m, a bunch of trucks came, blocked off the street, and turned off our electricity with no warning. My computer was on and working, we were drying laundry, and planning to watch basketball in about an hour. We also had plans to go out for a movie that evening.

When I went out to see what was going on, they said “they told us they called everyone on this block.” It’s a very long block, but I think there are only five homes that were without power because of this. We confirmed that at least four of these homes, mine included, did not receive a phone call. They also seemed to indicate we would only be down for four hours. One guy told me “a couple hours” but the guy that appeared to be in charge told me “three to four hours.” We were without power for six hours – on a Sunday afternoon.

Why do I bother to write about this? Well, a simple phone call would have changed everything. I challenged them on that a couple of times. The first defense was that someone told them they did call. Later, they told me it was an emergency and they didn’t need to call. When I challenged them on why it takes 14 hours to even start replacing a pole that is in danger of falling, they said they didn’t have enough people. Understood. So, someone should have thought to make five phone calls during that 14 hour period – or at least tell us the pole replacement was considered an “emergency” but that they didn’t have enough hands to replace it.

If we had known we would be without power, we would have finished the laundry earlier (or not started it), not turned on the computer, and we would have planned on going out for the day. I can’t really speak for my neighbors, but I’ll go out on a limb and say that all of them have the financial resources to go out for the day with a little bit of notice.

We would have also made arrangements for the dog. Our JRT, Vanilla, doesn’t take kindly to strange men making lots of noise in her yard.

BTW, in case you were wondering, we are aware of activities that don’t require electricity. This episode didn’t *ruin* our day, but it did wreck some of our plans. We adjusted, and everyone is safe – that’s what matters – but Delmarva could have picked up the phone and made at least five of its customers happier.

That’s all I’m saying.

This is the pole the next morning before it was replaced.