Fifty Degrees Below - Kim Stanley Robinson [150]
“Is the power to the heaters on generator standby?”
“No way. Cross your fingers.”
He continued with his survey. The low sun turned everything blinding silver. By now the temperature had risen to about twenty below, which in combination with the midday sunlight made a huge difference in how it felt to walk around. It came back to his body’s memory how major distinctions could be made between cold and super-cold, so that eventually ten below became comfortable, because thirty below was so miserable; and ten above became shirtsleeve weather, while fifty below was always on the edge of sudden death.
The power went out west of Connecticut Avenue, and Frank went over there and helped for a while with a crew going door to door to make sure people were all right, occasionally carrying the hypothermic out to fire trucks and ambulances and off to shelters or hospitals. Eventually his hands got too cold to carry on. He had to retreat into a UDC coffee shop and drink a coffee with the other adventurers sardined into the place. Painful buzz of his fingers regaining their feeling, though it was nothing to the way his penis had felt. Then the coffee shop had to stop serving, as their pipes had frozen and their water supplies on hand were all used up. They stayed open just to provide shelter. The damage to pipes alone was sure to cost millions, someone said, and take weeks or months to fix. They might be in for a water crisis as bad as the one after the flood, when for several days potable water and functioning toilets had been very hard to find. People didn’t think about these kinds of things until they happened, and then it was like discovering yet another Achilles’ heel, because it had ruptured.
The sounds of sirens seemed to be converging on them. Frank went out and looked around, saw black smoke rising in a thick plume over the neighborhood between Connecticut and the park, just south of where his van was parked. He hustled over there, slapping his tingling hands together as he walked.
It looked as if squatters might have accidentally set an abandoned house on fire. Already the blaze was out of hand, several houses burning, a whole knot of trees, all roaring in pale flames. The radiant heat beat on Frank’s face. When the fire trucks arrived they found that the water had frozen in the fire hydrants. They had to work on that instead of the fire. A helicopter chattered in and dropped its load of chemicals, to no great effect as far as Frank could tell. It had to be dangerous to fly helicopters in this kind of cold; they did it in Antarctica, but those helos were specially prepped. No doubt the Antarctic guys at NSF were extremely busy right now, helping in any way they could. No lunch run today. Corps of Engineers likewise. It was essential they keep power flowing. If there was any kind of significant power outage throughout the city, many people would freeze.
Talking to some of the firemen around the hydrant, Frank learned that there were already as many as two dozen fires in the metro area. All emergency response people were out: firemen, police, paramedics, the power company repair crews; the National Guard had been called up, yes both of them. Everyone else was being urged to stay home. Nevertheless the number of people walking the streets increased as the day wore on, all of them bundled and ski-masked and walking out in the empty streets. It loooked as if bank robbers had pulled off a major revolution.
Another fire started in Georgetown, which then lost power, and it also had frozen water mains. Frank drove down there, as his van kept starting for him, and he served as a taxi for a couple of hours, shuttling people from frigid houses and apartments onto the Georgetown University campus, where generators were keeping most of the buildings warm. George Washington University Hospital was also working on generators, and for a while it was clear that taxiing people was the best thing Frank could do to help; but then the streets began to jam up with traffic, amazingly