Just got power back after 14 hours... Wow what an experience...

I was sleeping when power went out. I was so tired from the day and night before that when AC powered off I just tought it was a fuse and rolled over. 15 min later my Nextel phone and radio went off saying that I have to report to base for emergency shift. Dressed up, calmed half my neighbours who tought that we got hit by terrorist again (got my infor from radio, and emergency chanells). Raced to the base in my car (20 min), people were very accomodating on the road seeing EMT going to work. I had full gear on, my car had emergency water, bail out pack and 2 MREs and half a tank of gas. I worked from 18:00 to 02:00 since we had great number of personel responded there was no need for WTC 20 hours type of shifts. A lot of unconcious patients, sprained ankles, fires (people and candles don't mix!), women within 2 weeks of due date started poping out babies. At one point I found my self alone in the middle of the street full of traffic and people working on unconcious lady since my ambulance left with sprained ankle injury and I just hoped out knowing that I will get the backup. I didn't get it but my boss in his sup up H2 helped me to get the lady into rear sit and race to the hospital with me working on her all the way there. People were very accomodating; at one point we had picked up a person with fractured leg and another person went down from heat exhaution right in front of us. I jump out, clear the airway and get O2 going but I see patient is critical, backup unit is 5-10 min out, I can't start CPR or anything becasue airway and everything is within normal range. I hooked her up to defib and rythm was normal. Patient with fracture leg hops of the bus and asks us to leave her here and take the unconcious patient to the hospital. Wow. Isn't that something? I got home 0300 and went few blocks up to check up on my parents and grandmother who has a heart condition. I dropped of some ice packs and calmed my dog who was very scared. Tried to sleep but heat was too much, woke up 5am and didn't want to abuse my power to drive (lights and sirens on my jeep) to my daily job (programmer) so I took my bike and biked over to Brooklyn Bridge (30 min). I switched over to police frequency and upon learning there is no power in the part of the city I work I went back. Went to the park with my dog to tire him out before real heat sinks in. Than biked around neighborhood to check on my friends parents, his sister and her newborn baby, chated with my neighbours. And than power came back on, right now I'm recharging my equipment just in case.

Couple of points:
All my gear worked out to 100%. The most important things such as flashlight were at full power. Inova V did nice flood job and that new Pelican M6 provided really powerfull beam. I had backup batteries for them in my pack plus few other lights. I had my Nextel phone which worked in two way radio mode, I had Yaesu Vr5x for monitoring frequencies as well as AM/FM (fully charged would give me 2 days of operating) and I had regular ems radio. We had communication blackouts due to repeaters going down very frequently.
Water was there althou not cold it was bareble... It was very important to keep hydrated. Few people on the street begged me for water I gave them what I had knowing I can refill in the hospital. But since all the stores closed people comming over Manhatan and Brooklyn Bridges had no ways of purchasing water supplies. That was very bad. A lot of heat exhaution could have been prevented by drinking pleanty of fluids.
I was lucky to be able to recharge my phone in the ambulance. A lot of people had no means to power up their phones without access to regular current. A lot of home phones didn't work because they were powerd by ac adapters. Also nobody owns a battery operated radio anymore. Some lady in the park asked me what time it is since all her clocks at home went out.
I had pleanty of fuel, but many didn't. Lines at the gas stations were few blocks deep. I didn't even hit the backup cans I have in my basment.
Obviously most of food will be spoiled but I gave all my freezer stuff to my dad who made a huge BBQ today. This will be a problem over next few days with merchants/restaurants who don't want to accept loses and will try to resell the defrosted perishables.
One thing that worked really great was a tshirt that I wore under my bproof vest. It was one of those wick away moisture shirts and in that heat it really cooled me down.

That would be it. Honestly it was fun. But that's because I was busy, if I had to sit home with nothing to do I would probably go nuts.

Hope that eveyrone is safe and sound. Cheers from Brooklyn,

Matt