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The Backhoe, The Internet's Natural Enemy
Juha-Matti Laurio writes "Experts say last week's Sprint outage is a reminder that with all the attention paid to computer viruses and the latest Windows security holes, the most vulnerable threads in America's critical infrastructures lie literally beneath our feet. A study issued last month by the Common Ground Alliance, or CGA -- an industry group comprised of utilities and construction companies -- calculated that there were more than 675,000 excavation accidents in 2004 in which underground cables or pipelines were damaged." I estimate that one third of those accidents occured within the 5 block radius surrounding my office.
I would love to see what all these "oops" cost. Fiber optic is not exactly cheap, and it is a little more complicated than just reconnecting the severed ends. And then take network down time etc.
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That reminds me of when Qwest cut all telephone lines to my home town - including 911. It made the local news, and the police chief and fire chief were both pretty pissed about it. They had to increase police patrols since no one could just call in a crime, fire, or medical emergency.
Fortunately nothing serious happened while 911 was out.
Then Qwest did it again, two days later, on the same line...
Ah, telecom monopolies.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
ah here a great human error story. House gets blow up because they connected the wrong gas line. Home in Lexington explodes. If a company that has the maps of all of its own gas lines can do this. Think of the possibilities when DHS tries to classify the listing of all the fiber optic in the US
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NSA (not a joke). Here is an article from ZDnet about it. AND this is PRE-9/11. What do you think has happened since? http://news.zdnet.com/2100-9595_22-529826.html
A possible solution would be to embed RFID tags every 3 feet or so inside the conduit, allowing for easier location. Code embedded in tag would give owner, pipe or line type, and depth.
At least here in Iowa, they ARE fined. It's against the law to not call for a "locate" if you are going to do ANY digging. The law applies to both businesses and individuals.
Of course, no one ever calls. I work for a local utilities company, and lines get cut ALL the time by contruction crews. Because they almost NEVER call for a locate. It's insane.
The few times they do call for a locate, we go out and mark the lines, and they cut them ANYWAY. Unbelievable.
Do I smell a business opportunity that utilizes a Google Maps plugin?
Neal Stephenson has a hilarious comment on this in "Mother Earth Mother Board", in his description of a big project to lay fiber optic cable in the Pacific Rim.
Q: Why bother running two widely separated routes [for cable from Point A to Point B] over theMalay Peninsula?
A: Because Thailand, like everywhere else in the world, is full of idiots with backhoes.
Q: Isn't that a pain in the ass?
A: You have no idea.
The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who cannot read them. - Mark Twain
Over here in Blighty I've been digging with a little mini backhoe for foundations for a greenhouse and found pipe - rusty iron about two feet down which for an 8 inch main is actually shallow. Put a crack in it, but no leakage fortunately. So we called round and Transco (gas infrastructure) reckoned it was theirs and sent a man out.
A short period of digging later and he came out the hole at some speed looking very pale. The said "pipe" had fins on one end and was delivered 60 years ago by some Germans who failed to stop and advise my grandparents of the delivery.....