Storm of the Decade

I have not written for two days due to the three day storm we have experienced here in northern California. They are now calling it the storm of the decade. We had a total of nearly four inches of rain, sustained winds (on Friday) of forty-five MPH with gusts up to seventy, and power and phone outages. We even had thunder and lightening...a rarity here...on Saturday. Today we awoke to sun for an hour or so but now it is cloudy and we are expecting more rain...mostly passing showers.

Yesterday we found that our land line was out and we could neither call out or receive calls (I used my cell phone to call our neighbor and ask her to call us). Then I spent a very frustrating hour and a half attempting to reach ATT to report the problem with our phone. First, I tried the number given in our bill. I reached a person in India (I could tell by the sound of his heavily accented voice coupled with a cacophony of voices in the background). He gave me a nunber which directed me to a universal phone repair bank. He told me he could not help me. So back to ATT. First, I tried the internet but could not gert past the required password which I did not have and could not get through registering for one. It simply would not allow me to do so. Using my cell phone I called the new service line which took me through a chain of "push this number". The first time the computer voice gave to repair the problem would be Tuesday because of all the service calls caused by the storm.

Here is where it gets very interesting. Just before four AM this morning my husband was awakened by the sound of our doorbell. Half asleep, he opened the door to find a very tall Petaluma policeman standing there. He asked who lives in our house. My husband answered, "My wife and I." The policeman said, "I need to see her." When my husband turned and began walking away, the policeman said, "Sir, I need you to let me in. I will accompany you to your wife." My husband walked into the family room adjacent to our bedroom and called to me to wake up, put on a robe, and come out because a policeman was here. In a fog, I did as he said. When I came up to the door of the family room I was greeted by a very tall policeman whose hand was on his pistol in his holster. He appologized for waking me and explained that the Petaluma Police Department had been receiving 911 calls from our house but when they called back all they heard was static. That is why they sent the officer and why he demanded to see me. He wanted to be sure I was alright and not the victim of foul play.

Now the thing we cannot figure out is how our nonfunctioning phone dialed 911 automatically and why it did so. We unpluggged all our land line and digital phones to stop the system from dialing 911. I called ATT this morning and this time I spoke directly with the repair representative. I told her what happened and that the police department wanted the peoblem resolved. She said the earliest they could come was Monday. However, two hours later, the ATT repair truck arrived and began working on the problem.