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Rita experiences at first-hand the freak storm that has brought devastation to Washington DC…

The voice on the radio spoke with a heavy Indian accent.  He was calling in to “The Talk Back” line, a feature on Washington D. C. station WTOP that invites listeners to call and vent their frustrations on local issues, often traffic woes.  But this time that other frequent brunt of listener invective, PEPCO, the regional electric company, was topic A.  “PEPCO officials should all visit India” the caller railed, “and learn how they maintain their power supply.  This situation is worse than a third world country.”  Now those are fighting words, especially coming from a foreigner and on the eve of Independence Day, the religious holiday when all true Patriots must reaffirm their faith that America is Top Nation.  But the capital city of Top Nation has just been proven impotent in the face of a perfect storm.

High summer arrived early in Washington this year, the soggy suffocating blanket of hot air usually reserved for August descending on the city in June. Tempers are at boiling point and, it being election year, there is no summer reprieve from the political heat either.  Washington just survived the storm of controversy over the Supreme Court’s decision on the health care act, when a literal storm roared into town like an express train.  The cliché is true. Everyone is marveling that it really did sound like an express train.

Our story begins on an ordinary Friday evening as heat-exhausted Washingtonians prepared to either leave town or hunker down in air-conditioned houses for the pre-July 4^th holiday weekend.  Evening thunderstorms are a common feature of Washington summers, so I wondered why my husband was pacing about the house clutching his Blackberry at the first distant rumble of thunder.  Well he was following the weather alerts from NOAA, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (pronounced Noah, a lovely apocalyptic irony). I thought he was making an unnecessary fuss when he insisted I get out of bed and take shelter downstairs. On the way down the lights flickered a few times and then everything went dark.  We stumbled on by the pale glow of my iPhone.  We heard an express train. It was the wind, up to 90 miles an hour we learned later, whipping the trees back and forth, sending our patio chairs flying through the air and ripping a shutter off the house.  The lightning was like none I had ever seen; not distinct flashes but continuous flickering like a strobe light that went on for over an hour.  Yards from our house a tall tree fell blocking the street.  Even as the storm finally died down we suffered its worst effect; no power meant no air conditioning and with temperatures of about 90 degrees the house soon felt like an oven.

Next morning the full extent of the devastation was evident.  Trees down everywhere, some fallen on houses and cars and power lines.  Over a million people and businesses in the metropolitan area without electricity.  Several deaths; one man stepped on a live power line as he rushed toward his burning car with a fire extinguisher. The only sensible place to be was inside a car for the air conditioning and the radio news.  But fallen trees blocked roads, traffic lights were out at many busy intersections and most gas stations were closed due to lack of power.  Smart phones, at least those that had plenty of charge, were the only way to keep up with storm information.  Local jurisdictions declared a water emergency so in the 100 degree daytime heat children couldn’t even cool off in lawn sprinklers or the area play fountains.  This was indeed the Washington region’s nightmare scenario: record-setting heat, no air conditioning, and a water shortage.  The only happy people were the meteorologists, thrilled to have a new word to throw around, Derecho, the name for this very rare type of storm.

On Saturday afternoon we headed to downtown Silver Spring in the Maryland suburbs, one little enclave that still had power.  My daughter and small grandsons joined the crowd of refugees fleeing their hot houses.  Starbucks and the movie theater were open, vestiges of civilization spared Derecho’s wrath.  Everywhere we saw people using any electrical outlet they could find to charge their electronic devices, some using power strips to plug in as many gizmos as possible.  We enjoyed a children’s movie in the blessedly cold theater and emerged to the good news that power was restored to our house. But we were among the few lucky ones.  PEPCO announced that it would take a full week to restore power to all. My daughter’s family moved in with us to wait out PEPCO’s repairs in their neighborhood.  With little mouths to feed I headed to the grocery store on Sunday morning for milk and other child-friendly foods.  But the shelves were bare at my local store.  Staff were busy disposing of all perishable foods because the power had been out too long for food safety.  It was only at the third store that I was able to find milk and some other essentials.  The sound of chainsaws ruled the afternoon, and then in the relatively less hot evening we took a “disaster tour” through our neighborhood.  The little boys were agog at huge trees snapped off at the trunk like matchsticks.  Neighbors who hadn’t spoken in years shared storm stories and pitched in to help clear debris, “just like London in the Blitz” my husband couldn’t resist saying.

Six days after Derecho local media are obsessed with the storm and PEPCO’s inadequate response. Thousands are still without power.  PEPCO is under attack, culminating in the ultimate insult: “this is worse than a third world country.” How could Washington survive a terrorist attack if we can’t deal with a storm, talking heads bewail on TV. Nationally the talk is all of Extreme Weather: unprecedented numbers of tornados, record-setting temperatures, freak storms, forest fires raging in the parched west.  They are either signs of the End Times or proof that scientists are right about global warming.  You have to choose sides. Yes, even on the usually innocuous topic of the weather, Americans are dividing themselves along ideological lines these days.

All I know is that on the July 4^th holiday the God of American Patriotism was shining on my family.  My daughter’s power was restored that very morning so my beloved but rambunctious grandsons could go home, leaving me to enjoy the calm after the storm.

Rita Byrne Tull is an ex-pat librarian who lives in Maryland.