5 Minute Freewrite - Prompt: Turbine

Jacintha gripped the rail as tightly as she could, struggling to keep her temper under control as dozens of workers frantically worked on the steam turbines. There were five turbines in all, plenty to provide power and heat to their medium-size settlement, but only two were left spinning. And the longer the other three were offline, the harder it would become to bring them back up in time for the coming storm.

"And why," Jacintha said through gritted teeth, "was I not notified of this as soon as the first turbine stopped?"

There was an uncomfortable shuffling of feet and a few mumbled apologies before the head supervisor took a deep breath and stepped next to her.

"We felt the problem wasn't significant enough to bring to your attention," he said. "We've had a turbine fail before and it wasn't an issue. There's no reason--"

"You idiot!" she exploded, wishing she could take a swing at the fool. "It failed during the warmer months, when the temperatures were at least above freezing!"

"Well that shouldn't--"

"The temperature is currently low enough to kill with less than an hour of exposure. Now we're suddenly at less than 50% power with a deep freeze due to hit in the next 48 hours!"

She took a calming breath and returned to watching the workers. The supervisor and his subordinates scrambled away the moment her attention was off of them and Jacintha sighed. If those turbines weren't spinning by morning, they could all end up freezing before the following sunrise.

This prompt was provided by @mariannewest and can be found here.

Image sourced from Pixabay.