Honolulu 6 A.M…

This morning after checking my email I headed down the street to get some coffee with a coworker. Outside our building we saw that there was a downed power (or other) line. It wasn’t clear how it had come down as there was no downed pole or other indication, but there is was, laying across a couple of lanes of traffic. No sparks were visible but you can be sure I wan’t going to try to move it. My coworker suggested, as no officials were around, that we call 911 about it.
That was at 6:10 A.M. By the time we’d gotten our coffee, just a few minutes later the first officer had pulled up and was eyeballing the situation. Soon several more police vehicles arrived and traffic was diverted.
We watched for a bit from our windows overlooking the scene then got back to work. That’s when I noticed the first email. I’m subscribed to Nixle, a notification service for government and law enforcement, that keeps me up to date on the local goings on.

As you can see, 25 minutes after I’d called, probably 20 minutes after the first officers arrived, I got this notification. Keep in mind I’m not claiming to be the only one who called this in, indeed it could have been down all night and phoned in multiple times. I like to think, however, that even if I wasn’t the first, the city was fairly nimble in responding. If I wasn’t the first to call it in, I suspect I was within a few minutes of that call. [This is actually the second time I’ve called in down lines, the previous time was in the same area around the same time, but a much different situation.]
Later, after 7 a.m., I received this notice…

I haven’t paid much attention since then other than to note that the notices also showed up in my Twitter feed as well as on the HPD Facebook page. Actually when you get right down to it, there’s a lot of information available these days one can find on what’s actually happening in near real time. It was kind of fun tracking this, especially as it doesn’t seem there are any injuries or property damage (besides the power line itself) involved. That would definitely have been a bummer.
Coffee break time is over so…back to work!