The Prison is Blaming Hurricane Idalia For Our Wifi Being Down

Our camp is in the mountains, nowhere near any zones where the hurricane caused damage.

Photo by JD Designs on Unsplash

Hurricane Idalia began her path of destruction across the southern United States on Wednesday this week. I’m housed in North Carolina, but in the mountains, so I wasn’t worried about myself. Not that a hurricane can’t affect where I am, but stranger things have happened. We did get some rain the day after the storm battered the coast of my state, where my wife lives. That’s where my concern was — wondering how my wife was faring in a place where hurricanes typically cause a lot more damage.

The storm was set to bring heavy rains, wind, and tornadoes long after I could talk to my wife on Wednesday evening. So of course, I didn’t sleep much that night and was looking forward to morning and being able to call my wife so I could hopefully find out that she’d made it through safe and sound.

Thursday is Demeter’s day off but I still have work first thing in the morning, so I knew I would have to wait until I finished work to check in with her — but I always know I’ll have a message from her on the tablet letting me know she’s awake and okay. When I got back to the block, I’d already heard rumors that the wifi was down, but I hoped it wasn’t true.

Unfortunately, for once, the rumor mill was accurate. The tablets weren’t connecting to anything. Thankfully, I got back just in time to go out to the dayroom for our rec time and the wall phones were available, so I was able to call Demeter and check on her. Luckily, though she definitely had some moments (living in an RV is like being on a roller coaster during storms) the storm just brought a lot of rain and wind, but no serious damage. A few downed limbs and a lot of standing water.

As the day went on, I could see the router lights blinking like crazy, which is always an indicator it is misbehaving. A few of us asked the COs what was going on and of course, we were told it was being worked on. I began to worry that Demeter and I wouldn’t get our video visit, but thankfully, I was called up at the usual time and it connected after a few false starts. I was told after the visit that those computers are connected with an ethernet cable…