The power was out last night for a big chunk of Omaha. I drove around town looking for hot fast food and every McDonalds was closed. That's how I knew it was bad.
I had spent the early part of the evening stuck at work. I had headed home twice but had been stopped by the high winds and common sense which told me I was safer where I was for the moment. Some people left anyway and I have no doubt many of them ended up with hail-damaged cars and stalled on flooded roads. When the winds finally died down and it felt safe enough to leave I passed along highway 75 North headed home and the southbound lanes, only a few feet away but separated by construction barriers, were flooded.
When I got to my neighborhood the traffic lights weren't working but the people had the intelligence to automatically turn it into a 4-way stop, driving politely and in an orderly fashion. My kind of people. Intuitively smart and organized. No traffic cops in sight and none needed.
By 9:00pm I was starving. I wanted a hot meal, not the cold food that was spoiling in my refrigerator, so I was finally forced by hunger to leave home in search of food. I instinctively started towards West Omaha but it was instantly clear that things only got worse in that directon. All of the lights were out and all of the businesses closed. At 132nd and Maple, the home of my Baker's, several power line utility poles had been blown down by the strong winds and crews were out working on them. Traffic was routed south.
Most of the traffic lights weren't working. I drove through the busier parts of my neighborhood surveying the damage. The Omaha police force was out directing traffic at the major intersections. Giving up hope of finding food, I decided to head towards the bar where at least I would find the comfort of good company, good music, and good drink. But the bar was closed. Apparently the damage was widespread.
On the way there I had to enter the other, neglected part of Omaha, the part that the city government seems to ignore or at least considers less important. Things were worse than I thought. 90th and Maple, usually an ok area, was like the land that time forgot. It was a drive deeper and deeper into chaos. No policemen in sight. Trees and debris still littered the streets. Some folks were smart enough to treat the major intersections as if they were 4-way stops, but others had no clue and either sat there in their cars holding up traffic or driving randomly into the intersection with no sense of order. Bless their hearts, these were definitely not my people.
When I got closer to the bar in Benson the IQ seemed to go back up again. There is for some reason a series of traffic lights, one after the other, in the middle of streets instead of at intersections. I imagine these were placed there in the old days to allow the people to cross the streets safely to go into the businesses, but now it just seems odd and antiquated, but also quaint and sweet. In fact that's how the people were driving...cautiously, carefully, not systematically and clean like in my neighborhood but with a different kind of system that indicated an awareness and politeness for all the foot traffic in the area.
By now I was really hungry and getting cranky. I drove back towards West O a different way, along Military which had to be better than driving down Maple where at one intersection the people seemed to be trying to drive in order but there were too many who wouldn't follow the system. At that intersection I did something that is uncharacteristic for me: I lost my temper. I honked at a car that drove out into the middle of the street. "Relax!" yelled a man as I drove past him sitting at the bus stop on the same corner. He was right. I needed to relax. These are the types of conditions that either bring out the compassionate side or the worst in people. In my defense, I was also hormonal.
Finally I found a Burger King that was open. It was located, of all places, at 72nd and Sorensen, considered a "bad part" of Omaha but in a newer and relatively nice area. I smiled at the fact that, in the midst of all that had happened, it was this section of town that was up and running.
The entire drive had looked like something out of the beginning of a disaster movie. Traffic everywhere as if people were looking for something...food....answers...lights...other people.
I got my food and headed home. I promised myself that I would make use of this experience by making a list of all the things I'd realized I needed. I mentally added cans of tuna and baked beans to the list. Should I get a generator? A grill? If this ever happens again I want to be prepared so that I can be hospitable and helpful to people, not cranky at them.
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