Guest Commentary: PX power outage makes for interesting afternoon for local family

By Kathleen T. Rhem

My family and I weren't expecting much adventure when we headed into the Fort Belvoir Main Exchange July 25, but the afternoon got interesting pretty quickly.

It was sunny, calm and in the mid 90s when we headed into the PX to look at digital cameras before an upcoming vacation. As luck would have it, my 11-year-old daughter, Lexi, and I had decided to look for bargains in the shoe department before heading over to the electronics department. Because of this, we were in the very back of the store when the power went out and we were plunged into complete darkness.

I was grateful to be within arm's reach of my daughter when the lights went out. We waited a moment to see if they'd come back on, then began to make our way toward the faint light coming from the front of the store.

Once we got out of the store, it was immediately apparent what had caused the power to go out. In the 15 minutes or so we had been inside, the leading edge of a large and destructive storm had hit the post. The sky was full of dark clouds and high winds were swirling debris around the parking lot.

We stopped a runaway shopping cart as we dashed for our car while shielding our faces from the blowing leaves and dirt and were covered head to toe in grit before reaching the safety of our vehicle.

Within five more minutes, the rain had started and the temperature dropped 20 degrees. As we drove off post, we saw the power was out throughout that end of Fort Belvoir. The traffic lights were dark all the way through the Kingman Gate and on the Fairfax County Parkway.

By the time the storm passed, power was out for hundreds of thousands of customers in the National Capital Region, due to downed trees and power lines. The damage was so extensive, some customers in the area were still without power up to four days later.

The event ended up being nothing more than a mildly amusing anecdote to share with my Facebook friends, but it caused me to think about some of the intangible benefits my family and I enjoy being members of the Fort Belvoir community.

I was immediately impressed by the calm authority of the PX staff. As soon as the lights went out, staff members nearby were telling customers to stay calm and carefully make their way to the exits. By the time my daughter and I slowly made our way to the end of the row we were in and found my husband, PX staff members had gotten flashlights and were marking rows for customers to safely exit.

Other employees were waiting at the exit to relieve customers of the products they had been hoping to purchase.

It was clear they had been well-trained on what to do in an emergency. I'm not so sure employees at many off-post department stores would have reacted so quickly and professionally.

As we left Fort Belvoir, passing through intersections without functioning traffic lights, motorists were courteous to each other and followed appropriate traffic laws - treating the intersection as a four-way stop. But, as soon as we exited the gate, we saw people speeding through dark intersections without even looking to see if someone was coming the other way.

All in all, if I had to have this misadventure on what I was expecting to be a quiet Sunday afternoon, I'm pretty glad it happened on Fort Belvoir.

Note: Rhem is chief of internal communications for the Defense Logistics Agency, a Fort Belvoir tenant organization. She is also a former Army senior NCO and the wife of a retired Army chief warrant officer.