Mid-Atlantic residents adapt (begrudgingly) to life without electricity

Three million East Coast residents are learning firsthand how much they depend on electricity after damaging storms in late June cut a wide swath through an area extending from New Jersey to West Virginia. These compelling before and after photos from space paint a striking picture of the extent of the outages.

Patience is wearing thin as many are without electricity during suffocating summer weather that can’t be combated with air conditioning or even electric fans.

Refrigerators have to be emptied of anything that could spoil, resulting in a heavy dependence on peanut butter and canned food.  Those who want fresh food have to make daily shopping trips to a store with power (or at least a backup generator). But car trips slow to a crawl without working traffic lights.

Bracing cold showers became a fact of life, though in triple-digit heat they don’t feel so bad.

Residents wondering how many more days they must go without power are learning that, without electricity, many computers, radios, TVs and phones are of no help. Even services like Netflix and Pinterest were temporarily disrupted for customers nationally, raising questions about the reliability of so-called “cloud computing.”

Look around you and imagine what would happen if you lost electricity at your home or work for a week.  What devices or appliances do you rely on that would become inoperable?