It took 13 days and 13 nights, but the Le family finally came out of the dark ages.
They have a working refrigerator.
A stove to cook on.
And, the mother of all luxuries, air-conditioning.
Actually, they had all these conveniences, just no electricity to make them work. That came Tuesday night when the Les' home became the last of 250,000 households to have their power restored after storms whipped through North Texas on April 10. "I didn't realize how dependent I was on electricity," Desiree Le said in her hot and humid home Tuesday evening. "Even my can opener is electric." The power outage has been a drain on the northwest Dallas family, to say the least. "We can't do laundry, can't vacuum, can't save any food," Ms. Le said shortly before the electricity came on. Ms. Lee and her 2-year-old daughter, Fayte, had to make daily shopping trips to the grocery store and rely on takeout for most dinners. "Every day, I go to CVS and pick up milk for her," Ms. Le said, "and put it in a cooler." When the storms hit that early Thursday morning, lightning downed an oak tree in the Les' back yard. A live power line snapped, flying precariously close to Ms. Le's bedroom. "I saw the light, and I woke up," she said. "The live wire was sparking everywhere." The storm left a hole – about a foot in diameter – in the roof, and bricks in the exterior wall were cracked. And an electrician told the Les that the electrical box was probably destroyed by lightning. Those complications caused the lengthy process of getting power restored. An Oncor work crew told the family that power couldn't be restored to the house until the Les had an electrician replace the damaged electrical box and repair a mast on the roof. An electrician couldn't replace the box until a contractor fixed the cracked brick wall and patched the hole in the roof. And before any of that work could begin, an insurance adjuster was required to inspect the damage. The insurance adjuster initially said he couldn't stop by until the following week. "I said, 'No, no, no. [I'm] five months' pregnant, I have a 2-year-old, and I've already had to deal with this for five days," Ms. Le said. Ms. Le said she spent three to four hours on the phone every day coordinating all the necessary steps to get the power back on. She had to negotiate with electricians to get an affordable price to repair the electrical box. Often she had to bolt home from her teaching job at Cary Middle School to meet workers for estimates. "I called five different roofers because no one could come out to do it," she said. "Finally we found a decent roofing guy." Even using the phone was a rationed luxury. Without electricity to charge her cellphone, Ms. Le would plug the phone in at work or charge it with her car battery. Her husband, Khoa, had to stay at work late because he needed a computer and Internet access for his advertising job. With Mr. Le out of town this week for a business trip, Ms. Le was uneasy that the home security alarm wasn't working. Fayte also had a hard time adjusting. "Not being able to make what she wants is the hardest thing," Ms. Le said. "She'd open the fridge and say, 'This is broken.' " Ms. Le's pregnancy cravings for meat and potatoes had to go unfulfilled. "At night, I get hungry. I go over to the fridge" – and curse, she said. Last week, during a chilly evening, Mr. and Ms. Le heated their house from the fireplace. But when temperatures reached almost 90 degrees this week, Ms. Le found little comfort in the stuffy home. "It's very hot when you've got a few extra pounds," she said. Even without electricity, Ms. Le still walked around and instinctively flicked on light switches. Most of their light came from a $45 handheld lantern. That came to a halt about 6:45 p.m. Tuesday, when two Oncor workers came to restore the power. About half an hour later, the Les were finally thrust back into modern life. "We've got fans! We've got lights!" Ms. Le exulted as she ran inside her home. Though she teaches history every day, Ms. Le never thought she would have to live it. "You hear about life in cabins," she said, "but you don't have any conception of what life is like until you don't have electricity."
Desiree Le is feeling powerless.
Her family has been without electricity since Thursday morning's storms, when a tree fell on their northwest Dallas house, damaging the roof and an exterior wall and leaving a live electrical wire on the ground.
"It's one thing to be without power," Ms. Le said Sunday afternoon. "It's another to have a live wire down."
While Oncor was working Sunday to restore power to the last 150 homes affected by the storms, the Le family could hold the distinction of being the last to get their electricity turned back on.
Here's why:
Ms. Le said a repair crew came out Saturday and turned off power to the downed line in the back yard. But the crew said it couldn't restore power to the house until the Les had an electrician replace a damaged electrical box.
An electrician can't replace the box until a contractor repairs damage to the wall and patches a hole in the roof, which is temporarily covered with plastic.
And, finally, before any repairs can begin, an insurance adjuster has to inspect the damage, and Ms. Le, who is five months' pregnant, said she doesn't know when that will happen.
Megan Wright, a spokeswoman for Oncor, said the downed wire is a service line that carries electricity into the house.
"It is the homeowner's responsibility. The crews can't restore service until those repairs are taken care of," she said.
Ms. Le, a middle school history teacher in the Dallas school district, said she, her husband, Khoa, and their 2-year-old daughter have lived in the house about a month.
They moved to Dallas from Austin, where she thinks the weather is milder.
"This is our first natural disaster," she said.
Since Thursday morning, the Les have eaten way too much takeout, burned a lot of candles and kept coolers stocked with ice.
"It's like camping out in your own home," Ms. Le said.
Living without all the creature comforts has made her realize that people take electricity for granted.
"Even when my daughter just wants juice or milk, we have to run out and buy these little juice boxes," she said.
In the meantime, Ms. Le is hoping creatures don't find comfort in her home.
"I'm really hoping a squirrel doesn't try to get in," she said.
Ms. Wright said Sunday that of the 150 homes that remained without electricity, most were in the mid-cities and Fort Worth.
She said repair crews expected to have all service restored by the end of the day Sunday.
"We had about 250,000 outages at the peak early Thursday morning," Ms. Wright said.
No out-of-state crews were called in, Ms. Wright said, but Oncor had about 4,500 employees and contractors working in the aftermath of the storm.
