REAL LIFE ADVENTURES
OF THE UNDERWATER STUNTMAN
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REAL LIFE ADVENTURES OF THE UNDERWATER STUNTMAN |
On January 6th, 1998, my home town of St-Jean-sur-Richelieu was at the center of a fierce prolonged ice storm which cut off the electrical supply to 3 million people for several days, some for as long as a month. I thought little of it at first, using my camera to film the downed trees and some of the survival techniques used at my own home. But things got worse and worse. High voltage lines began to collapse and I knew on the 4th day that this was not going to end soon, and even worse, temperatures might be getting back to normal, that is, 20 below zero at night, 10 above during the day. My mother is in a nursing home, and the management offered to house my father. My brother and his family had a fireplace which they can huddle against to keep warm. My house has no such luck. We are being evacuated. The makeshift shelter equipped with a few hundred beds is ill equipped to handle the portion of the 50000 residents that will need them.
I have a car and a credit card, and some video footage of the disaster. I left my supplies for the others. There is no way to get groceries or cash to pay for them anyway. I had been monitoring American radio stations and headed south as soon as I felt the opportunity arrive. I was apparently the only one to do so, I only met one Quebec license plate during my entire aimless voyage.
I got to Vermont, checked with a store to see if my credit card can be authorized. It's OK. I can move out of the emergency area and seek shelter for the next few weeks in an area where food, shelter and sanitation is available. I picked up a Traveler discount guide and consulted the motel coupons. Atlantic City seems to be the cheapest place to stay as close as possible.
Next was how to let my friends know I'm OK. I visited some TV and radio stations with my story and tape, and the public library. I explained the matter to the attendant at the computer room with my intentions. My own server, obviously, was down, but I happened to have a page in GeoCities for experimental purposes. The index file can be accessed and edited without E-mail or special software, and I have already mastered some knowledge of HTML. First thing to do is to post an "emergency message" and to let friends know where it is.
http://www.oocities.org/underwater_stuntman
I am known as the Underwater Stuntman. Now I know that anyone can pass for anything using a web page, but my character happens to be for real and I had with me the exact outfit illustrated on my page. In this case, eccentricity paid off. People recognized me immediately and knew my story, once it got into the Atlantic City Press, and eventually on WMGM-TV 40. Through "chat" I was able to contact people in Montreal who successfully relayed messages at least to my friends outside the disaster area. Through forms provided by the Montreal media, I was able to again post my whereabouts and situation, saying essentially that I am OK and living comfortably on the means at my disposal. T. Byrd's Computers in Pleasantville allowed me access to a computer at a predefined hour (in this case 4:30PM). I was able to leave messages to my regular Internet contacts whom I usually talk to late in the evening, and some of them waited for me at Ultimate TV chat and Yahoo! chat so we could talk live. Two weeks after the storm, I could phone home and reach my family. I followed the progression of the repairs through the Internet, and 21 days after the initial breakdown, I saw signs of recovery in my municipality at the Hydro Québec web site. I slept in Newark at a chat friend's house, and the next day I was back home. The following week I spent four days on the roof, de-icing. With the furnace back on line, the roof began to leak. It was around February 18th that the last lingering inconveniences of the ice storm were fixed, Cable TV was re-installed.