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Power Outages Strike East Coast
fordp writes "CNN, CNBC and others are reporting that major power outages are happening just after 4:00PM EDT in New York, New Jersey, Detroit, Ottawa and Toronto, Toledo." There are reports of a Con Edison transformer on fire on 14th Street in NYC, and lots of people stuck in trains and elevators. CNN is reporting that it is, according to power officials, most likely not related to terrorism, because you know you were wondering. The Niagra Mohawk power grid is overloaded, which feeds electricity throughout the northeast U.S. and into Canada. Update: 08/14 21:06 GMT by P : The mayor said there was no fire, that it was black smoke brought on by an automatic shutdown because of the power grid failure.
I'm in Manhattan right now, near Colombus Circle. All power is out across all 5 boros. No traffic lights, hundreds of thousands trapped in the subway... I'm dialed in through Verizon (wow. good network, right?) on a laptop, through a PBX with a battery backup.
According to the radio, the 14th street power station is burning. Of course, it also is talking about blackouts from Cleveland to Toronto. With no power, my poor tropical fish have less than a few hours to live, and I already hear a crowd in the street screaming, but it's mostly good natured right now.
I'm sorry, this seems like sabotage. I've got 100 gallons of fresh water, and a sword.
And I'm posting on slashdot.
Oh well. I guess I just wanted to say hello. =p
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OH THE SHAME I fell off the wagon and use sigs again!
This is kind of weird. I work at a mid size hosting center and ISP and since we normally run on generator power, we didn't know that there was a widespread power outage. Things started popping up on our monitoring system -- and they all seemed completely unrelated. Of course, it turned out that all the things going red were customers with T1 lines and such, that were in buildings losing power. :)
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...that this is due to a single fire at a major ConEd substation.
So this one isn't terrorism (so they say), but I'm sure terrorists will be delighted to know that they can throw five major cities into utter chaos by taking out one substation and getting an assist from the domino effect.
~Philly
I'm typing from 30 miles southwest of Boston. I've heard reports that Boston is affected; but here in the suburbs, we're not having any problems.
It's worth noting that, no matter what caused the initial problem: The results we're seeing are exactly what happens when the populace fails to concern itself with potential problems. We Americans, even today, suffer from a serious case of "It'll-never-happen-to-me." Experts have warned for years that our power grids had dangerous "pressure points," where small problems could cause massive failures.
Unfortunately, when we hear the phrase "potential problem," we hear the first word and never bother to listen to what follows. "If it's not a sure bet, why worry about it?" Well...here's why.
crib
Please don't read my journal
There is also the Enron factor. A couple of years back when Cheney gave Enron the green light to manipulate the California energy market California was making deals to buy any capacity it could
During the period the market was being manipulated the cover story was that it was California's fault for not allowing new plants to be built. Power plants have a major lead time so the only way to get generator sets for new power plants to be built in the West was for NYC to give up the generator sets for a bunch of gas turnbine systems planned to be deployed in the East.
Thank Bush, Cheney and their big friend 'Kenny boy' Lay for putting the interests of Enron before the national interest. First they screwed California and now NYC may well be getting hit by the unexpected results.
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Reporter Shepard Smith at JFK airport said over the Fox News network that airport maitainance workers were delayed in fixing the generator because they were initially denied access to it because they could not be cleared to access the generators without the metal detectors being powered.
I know it sounds strange, but I'm sort of sorry that I'm not in New York for this (I moved to Boston 25 years ago). Yes, I know that it's a monstrous pain in the ass for everyone and even has the potential for injury and loss of life (e.g., heart attack from climbing stairs), but both blackouts I've been in ('65 and '77) were interesting experiences.
I was five years old for the first one and scared out of my wits when the lights went out. It was an early evening in November, around 5:30 PM, and I was sitting on the kitchen floor, watching TV (the Winchell-Mahoney hour). Lights, television, even the streetlamps outside went out. My first thought: "Mommmmmmmmm!!!!!".
We ended up walking over to my aunt's house a couple of blocks away and eating the cake that my mother had baked that day. That was our dinner. Blackout cake. She never made it again after that, but I remember with all the flickering candles it seemed like someone's birthday.
My father got stuck on the subway for 36 hours, though. Bummer for him.
When the '77 blackout hit, I was living with my father on the 15th floor of a building on East 96th St. I'd just gotten home from my summer job and turned on the radio. The DJ was complaining about the turntables running too fast (overcompensating for low voltage?). Looking out my bedroom window, I saw the blackout roll uptown: the Empire State Building went out first, then the rest of Midtown, the Upper East Side, and then us. It was a hot, humid night and you could see the occasional flash of heat lightning.
I checked on my neighbors, an elderly couple, before heading down to the street, where I bartered a couple of cold beers for a handful of candles. People were bewildered, wondering if the Indian Point nuclear plant had blown, or if the Rooskies were attacking. It took about an hour for the looting to start north of us and for most of the night there was an endless parade of NYPD patrol cars headed uptown, four or five cops in each, all in full riot gear.
I don't want to downplay the millions of dollars of damage that happened that night, but my neighborhood was pretty peaceful. It was like an instant block party, people sharing food and beer and the occasional joint, oldtimers (I guess that's me now) talking about the '65 Blackout (which, like today, started at the Mohawk grid and covered roughly the same area).
Fifteen flights up was nothing for me back then; I ran track in high school.
A couple of years ago my neighborhood in Boston lost power for 36 hours. Nothing big, maybe 25,000 households, but I was bereft. No cable, no Internet, just a battery-operated radio and, of course, candles. Off the grid.
But it was educational. I never realized how dependent I was on technology and the network, how much of my time is spent in front of the silicon devils (TV and computer). Thirty hours with nothing but books and an acoustic guitar for entertainment. When the power came on, the first thing I did was fire up a web browser. It was like a refreshingly cool shower of meaningless information after having to sit and stew with my thoughts.
Shit. I think I'll go to the basement and throw the main breaker. Just for old time's sake.
k.
"In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart." - Anne Frank