In The Freaking Dark

Once again, I blame that basticule Murphy and his stupid laws.  Also that other basticule KP for calling out on me on a night like this.

I'm exhausted.

Right after shift change I was up by the yard shack.  Boats and Anakin were doing the perimeter check when we all heard a loud "Boom!" somewhere not far away.  Maybe right outside the fence.  Either something blew up or something going very fast ran into something going nowhere at all.  That kind of noise.

Then I get a call from A-dining and I look and see all of the workers and the staff coming out of the building.  Just as I'm about to go down there Anakin calls me and says that 1 house doesn't have any power.

Uh-oh.  That noise we heard was a transformer blowing up.

I get down to dining and their power is out too and it's dark as heck in there. 

So I start making calls.  No power in dining or medical.  No power in 1,2,3 or 4 house or down in the Hive.  None in 6, 7 or 8, either on the other side.  This whole half of the camp is in the dark.  Just snappy.

They close the yards and the wings early because of the power outage and send all of the inmates to sit in their cells in the dark and the housing unit officers have to go open the cell doors one at a time with the keys while holding flashlights.

On top of that all of the sinks and the toilets in the cells are on a new system that runs off of electricity.  So they have no running water and can't flush their toilets. Oh joy.

I'm wondering how I'm going to feed almost eight hundred inmates in a dark chow hall.  When the power went three emergency lights came on.  By the time they called count two of them had gone out, leaving just one light.  It was freaking dark in there and I was getting worried.

And on top of it all, right in the middle of this count isn't clearing.

And it still isn't clearing.

And it still isn't clearing.

We send all of the workers back to their houses all over the camp and clear all of the yards and recheck our perimeters and do the Del Norte check and wait some more for count to clear.

In the meantime it's getting even darker in dining.  And I'm getting more worried.

We are still going to be feeding dinner when midnight shift gets here!

After what seemed like an eternity, the power came back on.  And count cleared.

There was much rejoicing.

And we went back to normal operations.

Didn't get finished feeding chow until 7:20 on A-side tonight.  Two hours later than usual.

And even though I didn't really do much physically, I'm wiped out.

This Sergeant biz is tough some nights.