The grid

All I Want for Christmas Is a Working Power Grid

On Christmas Eve, Knox County went dark. By Christmas night, strangers had five of the seven substations running.

By the Rebel News county desk. Knox County, Saturday 25 December 1993. 3 min read.

Christmas night inside a snowy substation fence: a big man with a moustache, aviators and a leather biker vest crouches grinning by a running yellow generator, and a man in a white cowboy hat and hi-vis vest sits on a second generator laughing with a fist up; behind them, by the shark-mouthed black Huey, a red pickup and a dark sedan, the helicopter crew stands around smoking, talking and laughing, a fire glowing over the dark town beyond. — Anywhere inside the fence. That's the whole manual. Rebel News picture desk

KNOX COUNTY. On Christmas Eve, a little after ten in the morning, the radio stations cut out mid-sentence, the substations tripped, and the lights went out from Ekron to Louisville. The grid has no owner. Nobody's getting paid to fix it. Here's who went anyway.

Nobody called a meeting. Somebody asked in the chat who was where, somebody said Riverside, somebody said they'd take Rosewood, and before the hour was out people were hauling generators toward substations all over the county. Strangers swapped tips, offered each other a hand with the hard ones and called it in when theirs were running. By the time Christmas Eve got dark, four of the seven were humming. That's not a server. That's a town.

At sunset by a steelworks substation, a woman in a camo cap and field jacket with a sniper rifle on her back wheels a yellow generator through the fence gate while a balding man in camo with a shotgun and a lantern crouches by a second one; a sedan with its trunk open waits behind them. — Christmas Eve, county-wide. Rebel News picture desk

On a frosty afternoon at a small highway substation, a lean man in a backwards camo cap, shooting glasses and a navy vest stands alone between two running yellow generators, a shotgun slung and a red gas can at his feet. — Christmas Eve, county-wide. Rebel News picture desk

Riverside South and Ekron

The barbed-wire tattoo and the magazine armour didn't wait for a plan. They asked where the generators go, got an answer, and had Riverside South humming by early afternoon. Then they drove clean across the county to the steelworks at Ekron and did that one too, while the rest of us were still looking for a generator.

Muldraugh

The backwards cap did Muldraugh alone. Two generators in, one line in the chat to say they were running, gone. Then he offered to help with Louisville.

Rosewood South

The veteran, the cameraman and the gas mask took Rosewood South at last light, and were gone again before the generators had warmed up.

Louisville East

Louisville is the part of this story with teeth. The beard from page 2 drove north for the eastern substation, alone, at night, down backroads that kept ending in fences. He got close. His van didn't like it. So he turned round and left what he'd brought on the Louisville side of the rail bridge: two generators and the fuel to run them, for whoever goes next.

Update, Boxing Day: he went back for them. Read the update.

Irvington

Christmas night, two survivors from up the road, the biker vest and the white cowboy hat, loaded two generators into a red pickup and a black sedan and drove into Irvington. The cowboy hat had a bad leg. Irvington is the kind of town that notices a bad leg.

They didn't know a helicopter crew had been in town since the afternoon. Molotovs out of a helicopter door, a gas station on fire with the dead still in it, and everything that walked out of the smoke put down with a gun. By the time the pickup rolled in, the streets round that gas station were carpeted.

Head-on down a snowy small-town road on Christmas night: a gas station burns on the left behind a red pickup, a black sedan sits on the right, and far down the road the shark-mouthed black Huey idles with its rotor turning; four survivors advance out of the firelight shooting, a cameraman in a camo helmet and firefighter coat in front, a deputy in a campaign hat by the pickup, a woman in red coveralls in the middle and a moustached man in a SWAG cap by the sedan, the dead silhouetted in the foreground. — Nobody called for backup. It came anyway. Rebel News picture desk

The stragglers found the pickup first. Then the Huey came in over the rooftops, shark mouth and all, and dropped onto the road just ahead of them. The cameraman was out first and ran straight between the two cars, shooting. The deputy hat and the veteran came up either side and the red jumpsuit filled the middle. The two in the cars never had to get out of their seats. They said thank you after, in the glow of the fire.

The absolute aura when you guys came in as that horde was creeping on us.
The biker vest, Irvington

Tape 3: Irvington, Christmas night. The tape. Watch the rooftops.

Christmas night in Irvington

306dead left in the streets
123of them shot
183burned
6Molotovs out of a helicopter door

Then the helicopter flew escort to the substation. "Where do we put them?" "Anywhere inside the fence." The generators went in and somebody said "Heroes". Everybody meant it.

That's five. The county is still dark, mind: the grid won't come back until all seven run at the same time, and generators drink. Irvington's will run dry first. The last two are in Louisville, and Louisville at night is nobody's idea of Christmas.

Word is a crew's getting ready to go in, flip the switch and get out. If you've got a generator, a gas can or a spare night, you know where they're needed.

Merry Christmas, Knox County!

UpdateMonday 27 December. Two days after we went to print

The last one sits in Louisville proper, and it went to the barbed-wire tattoo and the magazine armour: the pair who did Riverside South and Ekron on Christmas Eve while the rest of us were still looking for a generator.

They went in before dawn on the 27th, in the dark, which this paper had already called nobody's idea of Christmas. They got to the substation. They got it running. Then they tried to leave.

They made it a couple of hundred yards down the road south. Both of them died there, thirty-five seconds apart, with the job done behind them. Then one of them sent this:

LV online, we still need Rosewood. We both died.
The Louisville pair, in global chat

Somebody frame that.

Rosewood South still needed fuel, so the beard drove it down. "We are all go," he said. A little before noon on the 27th, all seven substations were running at the same time, the siren went up over the county, and the lights came on from Ekron to Louisville for the first time since Christmas Eve.