A pedestrian walks in the rain in San Francisco on Dec. 11, 2014.
As one of the strongest storms to hit northern California in a decade drenched the San Francisco Bay area yesterday, techies found themselves dealing less with innovation than with the old-fashioned business of keeping dry and finding power.
Some coders had to attend conferences with flashlights after the electricity cut out, while others grumbled about surge prices for car-booking application Uber Technologies Inc. as they struggled to find transportation to get to meetings. Many vented their frustrations on Twitter, with competing hashtags including #BayAreaStorm, #hellastorm and #stormageddon.
“The minute the power went out and people realized their Internet connection was down, the descent into aimless madness was rapid,” said Erin
Nelson, director of brand strategy and communications at Emeryville, California-based Location Labs, which makes mobile-security applications.
After her office lost power -- which lasted for about two hours yesterday -- people on the creative team gave up working and instead began making and hanging paper airplanes in the office and forming a line to the ping-pong table, she said.
The Golden Gate Bridge through a rain covered windshield on Dec. 11, 2014 in Larkspur, California.
Rain Drops
Such scenes were repeated across Silicon Valley, underscoring how ill-equipped the nation’s innovation capital actually is when it comes to dealing with a storm. The deluge, caused by a slow-moving weather system known as Pineapple Express, was set to dump 4 to 6 inches (10 to 15 centimeters) of rain into the area, according to the U.S. Weather Prediction Center. The rain and high winds caused at least 90,000 customers in the region to go without power, according to Pacific Gas & Electric Co., the utility unit of PG&E Corp. (PCG), including parts of San Francisco’s downtown and elsewhere.Bloc, a company that teaches users to code online, was one of the businesses to lose power downtown.
“This was a foreign experience for us, anything that interrupts the speed of our Wi-Fi -- even 10 percent -- is met with tremendous gnashing of teeth and consternation, so to be totally shut out like this was quite jarring,” said Clint Schmidt, Bloc’s chief operating officer.
To cope, the handful of people who made it into Bloc’s office huddled into a small room “so we could try to use human body heat to heat a small space,” Schmidt said. All tethered themselves to a Wi-Fi connection through the most charged-up iPhone and lit candles for some ambient light, he said.
“We made do and had a very productive morning,” he said.
With Candlelight
Other companies told folks to stay home. Staffers at San Francisco-based cloud company Joyent Inc. had to work from home due to a power failure, though the firm’s data centers were unaffected.Tweets from a startup conference at San Francisco’s Fairmont Hotel showed pictures of a darkened buffet line and candles illuminating tables. Organizers of the event, known as the Lean Startup conference, tweeted: “Our technical director just said, ‘I’ve had rock ’n’ roll shows go down, but never a conference lose power.’ We’re innovators.”
The loss of power also threw a wrench into if(we)’s holiday party plans. The social products incubator raced to relocate its planned holiday party for as many as 250 people yesterday to their San Francisco offices after the ballroom they reserved lost power in the morning, said Meg Bolger, marketing manager at if(we). The balloon archway had already been rerouted for the evening’s prom-themed event, as had the cover band, she said.
Surge Pricing
Twitter was full of bellyaching about surge pricing on Uber, with the local CBS affiliate reporting on its website that pricing during the morning commute reached 3.8 times the normal fare. “Uber surge pricing now at ‘first born child,’” one man joked.An Uber representative didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Executives at Shyp, which helps people package and deliver goods using a staff of couriers who are dubbed “heroes”, knew they might have to shut down service -- most of their delivery staff ride bicycles. Yet it was a painful choice considering the one-year-old company was coming off its three biggest days of volume ever, said Lauren Sherman, Shyp’s head of marketing.
“We ultimately made the decision that it would be better for our heroes if we suspended service until the storm died down,” she said.
Chicken Soup
Sherman was grateful that other startup services stayed open. She was able to surprise her boyfriend, who is home sick, with a delivery of chicken soup, using San Francisco-based courier service Postmates Inc.Postmates saw a spike in business, as it often does during bad weather, said spokeswoman April Conyers.
“I don’t think I’ve ever felt more San Francisco -- just accepted @Postmates surge pricing to get @PapaloteSF burritos delivered,” Amy Saper, an MBA student at Stanford, tweeted. “#hellastorm.”
That attracted a response: “Desperate times = desperate measures!”
The suffering may not be over. Bob Oravec, a meteorologist at the U.S. Weather Prediction Center in College Park, Maryland, said the rain will spread across California through the end of this week. After the system moves away from California, the state may be in line for another storm next week, he said.
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