Power corrupts, but blackouts kill you in a stuck elevator

This morning I was just reaching for my laptop when the fan on my table suddenly died. It was 10:47 AM.

Power cuts here in Beirut are ubiquitous and omnipresent. As I type this I'm sitting in a borrowed office on the American Univeristy of Beirut campus, and a few moments ago the power went out. It took a surprising couple of minutes or so for the generators to kick in. Supposing, instead of typing, I were doing a science experiment of some sort. Two minutes without power, and with no warning? One can imagine some bad outcomes!

But there are worse. Power in the neighborhood where I live generally goes out for 3 hours a day. This is supposed to happen on a rolling schedule, something like this:


Day 1: 3-6 PM
Day 2: 12-3 PM
Day 3: 9-12 AM
Day 4: 6-9 AM

More or less. As I understand it, power should not go out before 6 AM or after 6 PM. "Should" and "does" are two different things, however. This morning power failed around 8 AM - not at the top of the hour, and not at 6 AM, which would have been 'normal'.

To be fair, it came back on at some point before 9. Again, to be fair, only to fail again at 10:47. After which it stayed off for about a half hour, then came back.

Presumably, neither of these were our 'designated' dark hours, since they neither began nor ended on the stipulated top of the hour. I have no idea when that might  be, power may be out again when I return to the apartment.

In our neighborhood, power is 'supposed' to go out for 3 hours each day. In others, according to my friends, it may be 6 or even on occasion 12. In any case, those are just the 'officially designated' blackouts. The others are similar in that there is no power, but they are, happily, unofficial.

How does one live in a city apartment block, sizzling in the sun, without power for 12 hours? When power fails, lights go out, fridges start to warm, air conditioners stop purring, TVs go black, internet dies, email stops, nothing gets charged, and - worst of all - elevators stop instantly.

No one in Beirut steps into an elevator and presses the button at the top of the hour. No one. More people enjoy Russian Roulette as a pastime.

Not the cause of our blackouts, but it sure
can't help. I could fill a blog with nothing
but pictures like this.

But what happens when power goes out at 10:47 AM? Or 11:23 PM? Suppose you just took an elevator, and you are between floors 12 and 13 when your elevator stops. What then? What if the power stays off, not for a few minutes, but for an hour or more? What if you are an elderly woman for whom the elevator was your only choice because you can barely walk anymore? What if, in addition to being elderly, you are in poor physical health and now have to survive several hours in a tiny, unbearably hot, box? Shall we have a bet on how often this has happened?

If I sound indignant, it might be because as I write this I'm sitting in an office on AUB campus, looking out at the sea and watching the motorboats cruise back and forth. Not many, it's true. But there's lots of money in Lebanon. Piles of it.

And it might be because yesterday I heard an interview with a former High Banking Guy in Lebanon (who quit in disgust), and learned to my astonishment that Lebanon has $15 billion in reserves. $15 billion! And here I was thinking that, after all the war and fighting and assassinations and attacks by Israel and no tourists Lebanon was on the very brink of bankruptcy.

$15 billion! It's true that the civil war destroyed and degraded much of the city's infrastructure. And it's true that the Israelis helped finish the job, including gratuitously bombing the power grid in 2006.

It's all true. Still. $15 billion will buy a lot of infrastructure, bring back clean water, create an actual sewage system, save a lot of old ladies in elevators!

$15 billion!