Storm struggles: rural Marin residents beset by power outages
MARSHALL -- A lot of people across the Bay Area have had their power disrupted because of the storms -- left to wonder when it would come back on. In some remote reaches of Marin County, intermittent and lengthy power outages are adding up to days in the dark.
The tiny town of Marshall sits on the edge of Tomales Bay and, even after it stopped raining, water was gushing everywhere. Unlike the big city, when fallen trees or high winds cut off the electricity here, there isn't an alternative power circuit to switch to.
"Today is very exciting for us to be running service because we haven't had any business in the last four days or so," said Lauren Bachar at Tony's Seafood restaurant.
Even though it might have been the calm before the next storm, at the restaurant, the assistant director of operations said she'll take whatever she can get. Bachar said the previous few days have been pretty rough.
"We've been closed ... we've been without power," she said. "So, it's been -- not a lot's going on. We've been here daily to re-ice our perishables, throw out whatever batch is bad for that day and do it again the next day."
On Sunday, it felt good to see customers again, especially for server Amanda Linn, who spent more than 72 hours without power at her home in nearby Inverness.
"I actually boiled a pot of water and took a sponge bath because I was, like, I need to get clean right now!" she said. "We have a little generator and we were plugging it into our DVD player and projector and we were just projecting movies onto the ceiling."
That's what it's like in a small town like Marshall. They don't spend a lot of time complaining about the weather or its effects.
When the power went out at server Justine Quattlander's house and the school closed, her kids were in heaven. She recorded a video of them squealing with delight as they crawled around in a torrent of water pouring across her yard.
"They had so much fun," she said. "We went on multiple rain walks; they had a big game night with hot chocolate and they don't go to school so, yeah, they just think it's hilarious."
And though they have a generator at their house, for most of a 48-hour-long outage, Steve Hadland and Anneke van Derveem left it off to save gas. They soon rediscovered the romance of candlelight.
"It was very sweet being at home together," Hadland said. "But 48 hours and you're getting a little bit on each other's nerves, maybe," he added with a laugh.
Still, they said, a couple days without power actually felt pretty good.
"I felt calmer and I slept better," van Derveem said.
"We kind of went to bed when it got dark and got up when it got light," Hadland said. "A natural existence and many more hours of sleep."
Longtime area residents say it used to be normal for there to be outages around here but, after years of drought with no lines being disrupted, some had forgotten what a normal winter is like. They said there's a lesson to be learned from all of it. The modern conveniences are nice but it's also nice to take a little break from them, once in a while.
