Still Waiting for CUC...

Typhoon Choi-Wan didn't hit Saipan. There were no reports of damages to homes. Some banana plants toppled, but, by all accounts, this was a mild storm, with wind and rain, but nothing terribly serious.

The electricity at my house went out during the storm--sometime Monday night. It's now Wednesday morning, and CUC has yet to even visit my house to assess the problem.

I've called. The trouble desk lines are almost always "busy" so you can't get through. On at least one occasion, the phone actually rang (no busy signal) and then rang and rang and no one picked up. On the few occasions when I did get through, the guys answering (Joe and Bill) were courteous, but had nothing to tell me. I have no idea where in the queue of complaints our little segment of San Vicente is. I have no idea when a crew might get to us. I'm still waiting for the promised --we'll call you when the CUC crew is coming--call.

I enlisted support from my family. My sister-in-law managed to learn a bit more--which neighbors are still without power--and she spoke with Tony Muna personally. But that's not much more than I already knew and still no idea of when; not much greater reassurance than the trouble desk provided.

Today's newspaper gives a sunny report that CUC is on top of the situation of power outages from the storm. But I think that is optimistic, and not entirely accurate.

What bothers me most about this power outage, besides the inconvenience and loss of food in the fridge, is that this was a MILD storm. If this is the level of response from such a minor weather event, what can we expect if we have a serious storm or typhoon that actually hits us?