Dispatches from Isaias: Simple Tech, Energy Democracy, and the Road to Preparedness.

About 500 miles west of the lively streets of Dakar, Senegal lies the quaint and unassuming island nation of Cabo Verde. It is West Africa’s soulful beach destination, where the savory and sweet flavors of cachupa, kavala, and pastel waft enticingly in the gentle breeze. When those Cabo Verdean breezes are stirred from pressure systems from the African mainland, they may be the beginnings of a very big hurricane headed straight for North America. 

Thus was Isaias, of recent fame and infamy both for its indiscriminate wrath and its vexing phonology, nudged into existence, possibly with the help of a butterfly on its way out to lunch.

Isaias’s short but tumultuous life began, with soulful energy, more than two months early. Several months of warm summer waters cook up many storms. It usually isn't until October of any year that the World Meteorological Association has identified nine storms in the North Atlantic big enough to name. At the time of this writing we're now at 11 of the 16 predicted for this season which, if the Atlantic keeps stewing at this pace, may be exceeded. Indeed, extreme weather is expected to become the norm with climate change driving warmer, more energetic oceans, saying nothing of the snacking habits of Verdean butterflies.

In late July, 2020, Isaias became a category 1 hurricane over the Bahamas after first rolling through the northern Caribbean, including Puerto Rico, as an intense tropical storm. Isaias lost strength, and its hurricane status, on its way towards the Southeastern coast. Shortly before landfall right where the Carolinas both meet the ocean, Isaias reclaimed its hurricane title. Intense wind and rain pummeled North Carolina and Virginia, taking some of the strength out of the system, reducing Isaias to a strong tropical storm for its transit up to Canada, where it was then downgraded to a post-tropical cyclone in Québec on August 5th.

But don’t let these names or the distance from the Caribbean fool you. At the tops of the White Mountains of New Hampshire, Isaias clocked in at record-breaking wind speeds above 140 mph (225+ km/h). The Mid-Atlantic region was hit with winds of consistent speeds above 60 mph (95 km/h) and intermittent tornadoes. The chief meteorologist for NBC Connecticut said Isaias was “the first tornado on record in Connecticut associated with a tropical storm or hurricane.”

Isaias’s winds snapped trees and power lines, leaving more than 3 million customers without power, more than 1 million of which may have been in Connecticut, where I had been spending time with family. Mobile phone networks also went dark without power. In more rural pockets, homes and businesses without power also ran out of water since well water typically requires electric pumps to lift the water from beneath the ground.

More than a week later, many across the region were still without restored connections, unable to tune in for the news from Chicagoland where violent twisters wreaked havoc in the city streets. Now two weeks later, Californians endure fires, blackouts, and a heat wave. 2020, as we have learned all too well, really knows how to deliver.

The Hum of the Haves

After a tornado, all is not quiet in the woods. For a while, I could only hear the howl of the wind from within a dark, make-shift bunker in the basement of a house in a woodsy Connecticut suburb. Once emerged, I could hear several back-up power generators, replacing the normal buzz of lawn mowers on a Tuesday afternoon.

In the eerie calm after the storm, it’s fairly easy to tell which homes have a back-up power supply. Dark, quiet homes slumber next to illuminated, humming homes. I was in the only house on the street with a solar-electric system, but the next few sunny days would be of no use. The grid-tied system is designed to shut down when the electric service fails in order to protect utility workers servicing the lines.

Instead, a few jugs of gasoline, a clunky generator on wheels, and the hungry roar of an engine (and its plume of exhaust) would provide a boost of electricity for a few hours per day to keep the refrigerator and freezer chilled, the water reservoir refilled, and the cell phones charged. Without cellular service, we discovered, the phones were of little use except for previously downloaded podcasts… and, critically, the flashlight function.

For those with an automated generator connection to several hundred gallons of propane, the seamless transition to back-up power instilled a sense of pride and accomplishment. Every minute of power generation justifies the investment, whether the power is used for a life-support system or for a rarely used tablet computer that has perilously dropped beneath 90% battery.

For those with a more hands-on, gasoline- or diesel-based system, a few hours of electricity generation prompts an uncertain trip to town to join the long queues at the local gas station, post-apocalyptically filling jerrycans and paying with cash in their face masks.

For those with the means to own a car (and, moreover, to live in a community with minimal alternatives to personal vehicles), the downed trees and power lines blocking the streets offered a chance to experience what it might be like if walking or cycling to the store were the only option. In a community without a piped public water supply, residents without power lost their ability to draw water from their wells. For the less fortunate or less prepared of the fortunate, water supply required a daily trek of several miles to the local fire station to fill buckets and jugs.

Contemporary Crutches and Simple Tech

For all, Isaias presented a rare opportunity to contemplate the otherwise unseen costs and dependencies of our modern world.

On any other Tuesday, the bucolic Connecticut suburbs generally import reliable, utility-supplied power and telecommunications. In exchange, they export noise and exhaust, and disrupt the calm disconnectedness of the backwoods. 

Despite the blissful opportunity to be unplugged in these woods, book in hand, and to relish in an early bedtime, it was quite difficult for relaxation to settle in. It’s hard to quickly retrieve what you need from a dark refrigerator while limiting the escape of cool air. There’s a constant calculus of how many times you can use the toilet or the kitchen sink before the water runs out. And hours were consumed navigating downed trees and wires in a quest to find cellular coverage in hopes of informing work partners that I would not be able to meet my deadlines. It really isn’t polite to unplug from the world these days without the common courtesy of an out-of-office message.

Some elements of simple tech may have helped. To name a few:

• Energy: A world full of gas and diesel-powered generators may indeed provide back-up power, but it’s not the right direction for the 21st century on a number of levels. Today’s solar providers offer clean energy at little to no upfront cost. For solar to help during a power outage, different wiring is needed to feed a small battery bank on a limited circuit that can keep the refrigerator and freezer going as well as one or two critical outlets. For short outages, an appropriately sized battery bank may not need to be recharged, and it could have first been charged by the grid.
• Phone: When even the cell towers are down, it seems that a satellite phone may be your only option… and that’s hardly simple tech. Those of us old enough to remember copper telephone wires know that they sustain their function without power, if the line is unbroken. Despite the simple tech benefits of copper wire, and partly because of its high price and environmental costs, I don’t think most telephone companies are going back.
• Water: A back-up hand pump for the well seems like a good idea. There are also black bags of water you can hang in the sun for a warm shower while camping. A rainwater catchment system could solve nonpotable household needs, however electricity will likely still be needed to generate water pressure and to operate appliances such as the clothes washer. With careful design and management, captured rainwater can be made drinkable, too. Of course, you need to have captured this water before the disruption. Keeping a tank of water around that you’re not using or managing can also introduce new problems.
• Media: A simple battery-powered radio is a thing of beauty, and yet so rare to find in our world today. During the storm, I discovered a local AM radio station providing critical updates on public health and emergency services, storm damage, road closures, and timelines for restored connections. My iPod Nano has helped me listen to FM radio for years (pro tip: try it on a cross-country flight, it’s amazing). In the eye of a hurricane, unfortunately, Hamilton on Disney+ had to wait.
• Heating and Cooling: Long before air conditioning made its grand debut at the 1939 World’s Fair in New York, my grandparents spent their summer nights on the ‘sleeping porch.’ A screened porch or bedrooms designed for good cross-ventilation are low-tech solutions for hot nights without power. Winter presents further challenges for many of these strategies, but a working fireplace and a sturdy sleeping bag can go a long way. In any weather condition, excellent thermal insulation can sustain comfortable living conditions and even save lives when other systems fail. This, alongside several core elements, is key to a building's passive survivability.
• Community: The best low-tech solution of all may be getting to know your neighbors. We find ways to help each other in moments of need, especially if you already have positive relationships prior to when disaster strikes.

But is it absurd to expect all Americans — especially essential workers or those with a full plate and barely scraping by — to be resilient to failed public infrastructure? As Jami Attenberg writes this week in the New York Times, "Who has the time to consider these matters when they're working to exhaustion?"

Energy Democracy

It says a lot about power reliability in the Northeast that so many feel they must invest in back-up power supply. The New York metro area spent a lot of money preparing for another Hurricane Sandy, whose storm surge waters in 2012 devastated many communities and knocked out power systems with components vulnerable to rising waters. But it was Isaias’s wind, not its water, that wrought the most havoc. Microgrids in the region islanded and generally kept the lights on, but these resilient power systems are the exception, not the norm.

We should worry if, alongside important but sluggish investigations into electric utilities that may have failed their communities with inadequate preparations, back-up power systems are sold like hotcakes to those who can afford the fix. We must collectively demand excellent service from our public infrastructure for it to be afforded the investment it so urgently needs. 

Our ‘technical debt’ is large and growing fast. In virtually every area of infrastructure (e.g. water, power, telecommunications, transport), we are operating infrastructure systems while blind to the enormous start-up costs in which previous generations invested and that, without ever asking, they gifted to us today. We breach the contract of intergenerational equity when we pass on the burden of paying for today’s infrastructure investment to tomorrow’s infrastructure users, and kicking that can further down the road has even more worrisome implications.

Energy democracy embraces this concept of taking full ownership of our energy infrastructure and takes it a step further to reshape it into a more decentralized energy system with more inclusive ownership and governance, and clean energy for all. Energy Democracy (the book) is a manifesto for a new kind of energy future. The book is a thoughtful compilation of essays on advancing equity in clean energy solutions compiled by Denise Fairchild of the Emerald Cities Collaborative and Al Weinrub of the Local Clean Energy Alliance. It’s worth a read.

In the wake of Isaias, it’s easy to think about building a stockpile of provisions for the next disaster. Of course it’s very good to be prepared, but I doubt that choosing to mistrust our public infrastructure and going it alone is the sustainable solution we need.

Most importantly, we need community and each other, whatever the future will bring. We need simple solutions and redundancy to get a better yield from the preparations we have made. And, importantly, we must demand more from our public infrastructure by reinventing it, investing for tomorrow, and ensuring that it serves all of us, no matter the depth of your pockets or the strength of your stockpile.

The next time a Cabo Verdean butterfly goes out for a very consequential snack, will we be better prepared? Evolving our critical infrastructure takes time, investment, and focused attention. Tomorrow's more prepared, resilient, and democratized infrastructure requires collective prioritization and action today.