Tech breakdown in Spain.

[Carole]

I didn’t really know where to post this so I’ve just started a new thread based on my experience this week.

We were staying in our place in Spain, and on Monday we’d been there for a week and we’d got our family joining us the next day.
We went out and did a big shop in anticipation of their arrival and we were unpacking it when we had a power cut.

Didn’t think anything of it, we thought that it was just our community. After a few hours we got a phone call from our son asking if we were ok. He had heard something on UK news and it was only from this phone call that we realised that it was the whole of Spain and Portugal.

Then suddenly our phones went down, I couldn’t send a text, or make a phone call.

I walked to a central point (shops, bars, restaurants etc) to try and get a signal and that’s when I realised.

All shops closed because tills not working. Cash machines not working.
Some bars open, cold food only, cash only,

No one can make a phone call, no one can get money, no one can send a text or email, we can’t communicate with anyone anywhere at all, anywhere.
All you want to do is Google for information but we were completely cut off from everything and I can’t begin to tell you how scary that felt.

And that’s when the panic set in. People didn’t know how long it was going to last and we couldn’t access any news to find out. Rumblings of a cyber attack that could take weeks to sort out.

Our family were arriving the next day but we couldn’t phone them or communicate in any way, we didn’t even know if flights were taking off or leaving.

Obviously, anyone who has been following the news will know that phone communication was restored after about 6 hours and power after 14 hours.
It just made us all realise how much we rely on technology and how when it doesn’t work how we panic.
And yet we managed without all this technology when I was growing up.

What freaks me out is this ….. we have a very small community lift in our complex, just enough for 2 people at a time.
I has been in that lift just 30 minutes before the power cut. I could have been in there for 14 hours.

 

[staffordjas]

Gosh Carol , must have been awful not knowing what was going on. That is scary thinking of the lifts suddenly not working with no power , and others could also have been stuck in them as well not even being able to get in touch with anyone and not knowing what's going on.

Glad you weren't in your lift at the time!


Good job you were able to have contact with your son briefly ,before losing all forms of communication , to get to know the situation going on at least. It was horrible watching the news seeing how much impact the loss of power was having on everything and everyone.

Shows how dependent we have become on electricity , phones , ATM's and card payments etc and television , google to let us know what's going on in the world. Water through the taps , fuel coming out of the pumps .... just everything ! It was saying on the news that shops were sold out of bottled water as people queued for it as their electric water pumps weren't working. People stuck in train carriages .

I always keep some back-up cash , but amazing how many of my friends since have said they have no cash at all. Made them think now!

Did you manage to keep all the supplies you'd just stocked up with cool enough until the power came back on for fridges/freezers ?

 

[Carole]

Gosh Carol , must have been awful not knowing what was going on. That is scary thinking of the lifts suddenly not working with no some back-up cash , but amazing how many of my friends since have said they have no cash at all. Made them think now!

Did you manage to keep all the supplies you'd just stocked up with cool enough until the power came back on for fridges/freezers ?

Yes, we we’re ok with what we had bought and it stayed fresh.
We offered some of our food to another family who had no cash and would have taken us up on the offer if the situation had continued for longer.
No point us having food defrosting and others going hungry.

Most supermarkets closed because the tills weren’t working, Lidl opened the next day, my friend sent this photo.

 

[staffordjas]

Yes, we we’re ok with what we had bought and it stayed fresh.
We offered some of our food to another family who had no cash and would have taken us up on the offer if the situation had continued for longer.
No point us having food defrosting and others going hungry.

Most supermarkets closed because the tills weren’t working, Lidl opened the next day, my friend sent this photo.

View attachment 16685

Wow , as one person on tv news said it was like Covid times again in their shops.

Glad communities pulled together helping each other out.

 

[Gramaisc]

Some people in Ireland had something like this sort of situation after the big storm. The system there is usually quite good at responding to storm damage, but the sheer scale of that event just used everything that was available before the repairs were half done, and the last people were reconnected at around fortnight later. Of course this was not the 'everything everywhere' situation that Iberia was in, but, with such scattered habitation, it was still a big issue for a large number of people. A lot of people would be like me and have multiple systems running - gas cooking, woodburning stoves, oil lamps, etc., and cash is still much more used there than I see in England, this eased a bit of it, for those in older houses, particularly

The planning requirements make it unlikely that any new house there would have a chimney, making the 'alternative heating' arrangements awkward, to say the least..

I like the multiple systems approach myself, I could survive with little real trauma for some time, I'm sure.