Task Force Finds Blackout Was Preventable

Shakrai writes "In what will probably be the last we hear of this subject CNN is carrying a story that states what we already suspected: the August blackout was preventable. One of the more interesting observations from this article is that this task force will remain active for the next year to push for their changes and improvements to be adopted. Does anyone think any change will come of this? If you lived in the Northeast US or Canada what were your memories of the August Blackout?" The full report is available at reports.energy.gov.

Comments

Things do go wrong

[JaxWeb]

Things do go wrong, and when things go wrong, they normally are preventable. People accept this, and understand it might happen. This is, for example, why there is so much opposition to Nuclear Power.

However, according to the article, there were rules in place to stop this happened, which were not followed (Quote: "Many reliability rules were ignored during the outages, the task force said.").

Also, it says:

"As it did in its interim report, the task force largely blamed FirstEnergy Corp., [...] faulting the company's lack of communication, faulty equipment and inadequate training"

These two points draw the line on acceptable accidents. This not only should have been prevented, but also it is due to neglect of rules and short-sightedness which caused it to happen.

Blackout of '03 @ Toronto, in Pictures

[Amadaeus]

"If you lived in the Northeast US or Canada what were your memories of the August Blackout?"

Well, a few days after the blackout I made a photo-documentary of the 'mayhem' that was downtown Toronto during the great blackout of '03.

The documentary is located here