WHEN YOUR “FACEBOOK” GOES DOWN

The cry across any social platform available Monday morning is “FACEBOOK AND INSTAGRAM ARE DOWN!”. We all rushed to our nearest platforms to share the news that everyone was realizing it “wasn’t just them”.

Facebook acknowledged the problem in a Tweet.

The understatement of the Tweet made me laugh and think back to the day my own Facebook page told me, “rain is in the forecast today” when I opened it. Hurricane Irma was coming that day. Kind of an understatement, Facebook.

As inconvenient as it is for the average person for Facebook/Instagram/et all to be down, you know at Facebook this is a MASSIVE cluster flock right now.

THE MORE YOU KNOW: Here's WHY FB et all went down

ARE YOU READY FOR YOUR OWN “FACEBOOK” TO GO DOWN?

We’ve all got that thing or things in our lives that if they go down, stop working, become unavailable, life is on tilt.

Now I’m not talking about things like “your house burns down” (but hey, good to have a plan for that anyway), but some of the more instrumental parts of your life that cause a major inconvenience.

For example, last year in Lincoln we had bitterly cold temperatures. I think -30 was the lowest (with wind chill). There had been rolling blackouts in the area, something Midwesterners aren’t all that used to, but having lived in wildfire country, I got it.

Our station didn’t have a backup generator (we were working on that). That means when the lights went out. The. Light. Went. Out. Everything was down, and even when they popped back on it’s not like at home where you just have to reset the stove clock. This was a 2-hour long process in a certain order to get the station back up and running.

I had been working on a lights-out plan, to make sure we could always cover news in some fashion. Power is out? Means the internet is out. Need hot spots. Call people to tell them to work from home if they have power. Saturate social media and digital with the news.

One fine, bitter cold morning, I got a call at 5:30am. The power had gone out. It wasn’t a rolling blackout for us, but a transformer took some kind of hit and we were in the small pocket of town without power.

I rushed to the station. Everyone was sitting in the dark with their phone flashlights on. “Turn those off, you’ll drain the phone.”, and I got all the real flashlights I could find and sent an editor to Home Depot with my card to buy more.

The digital producer was working quietly on her hot spot, getting content out, but we needed to do more.

I paced. I thought. I tried pulling my car up to the front windows of the station for lighting to do Facebook live inside. It was just too cold to put anchors outside for an extended period of time.

Then it hit me. “Anchors, you made it until 5:30 am so you still have scripts, right?”, I bellowed as if I had just brought Frankenstein to life. ?

“Yep.”, they said back, curious about what was to come next.

“Go get them and meet me out front”, I shouted as I ran out the back door.

We stood in -30 degrees for a few seconds while I said “You guys are going to get in the front seat of my car. I’ve turned my dashcam facing you. Just hit ‘Go Live’ on my phone and read the news from there.”

They did. It was the only option we had.

As I stood proudly in the dark foyer, now eating the emergency McDonald’s our General Manager brought in (food makes it all better, right?). As I chewed, a voice behind me said “Should I be in that car?”

It was the morning meteorologist. “HELL YEAH YOU SHOULD! GO GET IN THE BACK SEAT!”

She did. Our “Facebook” was down, but not out.

I once worked in Reno, a market prone to wildfires, either the smoke they dump over the area or actual fires in our region. I lived about 2000 feet above the valley floor and near a fire-prone area. I made a deal with a colleague, if I am ever trapped at work and a fire is burning near me, go break the windows and get the dogs out. She asked me to return the Facebook. When the “Facebook Down” is a fire, I was going to be ready.

In Las Vegas, we had a new automation system, and we were working out the kinks. It seemed to always go down on Fridays during the morning news that was a 5.5 hour beast of a show. It went down in the 5:30 am half hour. I rushed to work. The system was restarted, yet it wouldn’t restart.

“How can I help?” I asked two engineers and a director trying to curse the system back to work.

“Get something on air!”, they responded.

“Can we just take a camera? Can we roll packages from the tape decks?”, I stupidly asked.

“THE ENTIRE SYSTEM IS DOWN AND WE ARE IN BLACK AND THE DOWNSTREAM KEYER IS IMPACTED AS WELL. GET SOMETHING ON THE AIR!”, they actually shouted back. Good thing because my next question was going to be about putting a crawl up.

Our Master Control was hubbed in Phoenix, so I couldn’t just easily fix it in-house. We were a FOX station and in 2009 we couldn’t go to network. We had nothing to go to.

“Find. Me. Something.”, I said to an overworked and tired Master Control op.

I hear the rustling of papers and a bunch of digital noises and he said “I’ve got American Idol Christmas Special!”.

“Run it. NOW.”, I demanded, knowing it was July and it made no sense. But something was better than nothing.

As Hurricane Irma approached Sarasota, we didn’t allow dogs at the station. I knew I’d be locked in that station for days, and I am a crazy dog lady so I was completely distraught about what to do. I didn’t want them to be boarded.

I had a neighbor who was tough and wasn’t about to let a Cat 4 storm scare her. We made a deal. She was going to stay home, right across the breezeway from my apartment. If her windows blew out, she could go to my apartment, if my windows blew out, she would take the dogs to her. Our windows faced opposite directions, so this seemed logical.

I filled up my bathtub, sinks, and every single cup and bowl I owned with water. This was to use for the dogs and for bathing should there be water contamination. I put the mattresses of my bed over the big windows and used the box spring for another window. If they broke, at least glass wouldn’t be flying. I had one dog so old, mostly blind, and deaf who wouldn’t know if a bomb went off beside her. I knew my Golden would be scared though.

The neighbor said, “One thing though, I don’t have any candles.”

“Don’t just me, but here’s a stash”, I said as I opened a cabinet FULL of candles fresh from the Semi-Annual Sale at Bath & Body Works.

We were prepared for the worst.

I keep all my protected documents and family heirlooms in a watertight and fire-safe box. If I lose everything, I won’t lose that.

I always have a bag of clothes for cold and heat in the back of my car, just in case. I have sternos to light for heat if I get stranded in the cold, and gallons of water in case I break down with my dogs and we need something to drink.

When I go camping, I always check in on Facebook before I got and notify at least two people I’m hiking solo and if I’m not back by sundown, call for help.

I always have a list of my medications on my phone, readily available in case I need to run fast.

Even with COVID, I planned. When it first reared its ugly head, I knew the gyms were closing so I created “The Yoga Porch” at home. I rented a rower from my other gym so I could do garage workouts. At first I only grocery shopped at 5 am so there were no crowds, and eventually fell in love with Instacart (what I was spending in tip and delivery fees I was saving from spontaneous shopping decisions as I wandered aisles).

Then I went into full “clean” mode. I’ve been washing my hands and face for years with a wide personal space already, but this was EPIC mode. I wiped down everything anyone touched with wipes. I showered as soon as I got home.

Then I got COVID 17 months into it, despite being vaccinated and a homebody. Before I even worried about anything, I started planning for the worst. I called all my doctors to let them know the positive test (I have kidney, heart, and lungs issues from an immune issue – not a huge deal, but still need these docs for bi-yearly checkups) and what should I do? Got that information and was cleared to keep working. Next step? Dogs. I have a 10 ? year old Golden and at the time a puppy that was just 9 weeks old (so she couldn’t go to boarding or day camp since she wasn’t vaccinated).

I found a neighbor who would help if I ended up in the hospital. I double-checked the executor of my will knew my wishes, just in case, which is always a good thing to do consistently. (Take it from someone who watched her parent’s will plans shatter after one parent died and another got remarried, you want to have a plan!).

I ordered an Oximeter, meds, tissues, new thermometer, Breathe Right Strips, and enough cough syrup to set off alarms at checkout (Sorry, DoorDash guy, I was just stocking up!).

I had everything I needed to work from home and be healthy as possible, with people ready if I needed to pull the ripcord should COVID push me off a cliff.

I once worked at a station that was in the process of fixing an old roof, and every time it rained outside, it rained somewhere inside. I knew this. I prepared for this. I knew where ALL the buckets were.

Then one day someone who isn’t prone to running sped by my office door. Seconds later ran back holding large trash bags. It took me a millisecond to realize Thunderstorm + Heavy Rain + Our Roof + Engineer running – it must be bad. I went to the usual places it leaked, and it wasn’t leaking. A staff member, speechless, just pointed at the door to an engineering area. The. Water. Was. Pouring. On electrical equipment vital to keeping up on the air. Water was coming out of the lights.

“Facebook” was most definitely down and drowning us.

What wasn’t a waterfall was seeping through the walls. Meanwhile, the next newscast was about to go on air, and viewers at home wouldn’t know a damn thing was going on. A quick roofer visit and the hole was plugged.

I could list a million more ways I prepare for the worst. It helps my anxiety. Some people it just makes their anxiety worse, as I found researching this article.

You never know when your own “Facebook” is going to go down, but isn’t this a good time to figure out your backup plan, no matter what the personal or professional risks are, no matter where you live or work?