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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.
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.
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.....