Hey whats with the black-outs up northeast area?

[NocturnalPS]

Its all over the news, New york, Cleveland, Toronto, Detroit, Buffalo. Major power failure. Okay who did it?

 

[Duke]

Somebody turned off Niagra Falls by mistake, I guess. Now it's dark and they can't find the switch.

I guess we won't know which GTPers are affected until after, huh? I'll say it in advance: good luck during tonight's looting, if they don't get the juice back on.

 

[NocturnalPS]

Dude i forgot about looting. Man now is a good time to have a few guns handy to protect yourself.

 

[Giancarlo]

Blame Iraq.

 

[Viper_Maniac]

Blame Canada.

 

[NocturnalPS]

LoL Yeah its Canada.

 

[milefile]

Originally posted by Viper_Maniac
Blame Canada.

Shut your ****in face uncle ****a,
you're a ****-sucking, ass-licking uncle ****a,
You're an uncle ****a, yes its true,
nobody ****s uncles quite like you.
Shut your ****ing face uncle ****a, you're the one that ****ed your uncle uncle ****a,
You dont eat or sleep or mow the lawn,
You just **** your uncle all day long!

 

[hanker]

heh, i blame it on the over-using-power-hog americans who dont have electricity so they steal it from us!!

 

[hanker]

But, this seriously is no joke!! I turned TV to CNN and there are like evacuating all hte buildings and subways, people everywhere!! They said something about a big transformer blowing, and allthe other cities had to vulentarily shut theirs off becasue there would be an overload or somthing, but its "NOT likly casued by terrorism", still serious stuff

 

[km]

blame the terrorests

 

[Rat Bastid]

I just heard on the news that there was a fire at a Consolidated Edison plant in Manhattan. ( Con Ed is NYC's utility company)
I guess one thing led to another.......

Mayor Bloomberg says "There is no sign of terrorism."

 

[vat_man]

Ahh - the wonders of crumbling infrastructure.

Tell me - is the affected power grid privately or publicly run?

 

[Rat Bastid]

I think privately.

 

[Rat Bastid]

Power is getting restored to many areas now. Myself, I only had a few flickers for a few minutes. I'm 4 hours NW of the city.

 

[Talentless]

Blame speculation of culpability.

 

[lsutiger7]

Ok, I admit it! I'm sorry!

 

[vat_man]

Mmm...I have a theory that the short term share price/profit motive of the private sector isn't actually that appropriate for big scale vital infrastructure. Exampls include:
- this blackout
- Californian power crisis
- Auckland power failures
- the failure of privatisation of the power stations in Victoria, Australia

Just an inkling. Do you guys have a mandated reserve capacity on this sort of stuff?

 

[risingson77]

Large scale power failures like this are rare. I wouldn't write off privatization just yet.

Besides, with the electricity rates being what they are, I can't imagine that power companies don't have a decent cash flow.

 

[vat_man]

Originally posted by risingson77
Large scale power failures like this are rare. I wouldn't write off privatization just yet.

Besides, with the electricity rates being what they are, I can't imagine that power companies don't have a decent cash flow.

I'm not writing it off completely, but the few examples I just listed off the top of my head are grounds for concern. I mean, don't you find it mind-blowing that a single accidental fire at a power station can take down virtually the entire north east US power grid? I mean, BOTH New York airports were closed! Where's the redundancy?

From a security point of view alone, this should be huge grounds for concern.

 

[MazKid]

Yea I'm watching the news. No worries at all here in STL.

They are saying that there was a problem with a Niagra plant, causing the ripple effect. Basically it's like a bulb going out in a circut where power runs through 1 bulb to get to another, and when 1 goes down, all that follow it go down too.

Wait...isn't Doug in the New York area?

Here in STL we have power outages, usually caused by 1 person. Years ago, a full size moving simi came down our street, hit the powerlines, and pulled them down. Another was after a small tornado that came right by here(like right by here) and a tree branch was on the power lines right behind my house, caught fire, and burned the line down. And earlier this year a trash truck caught a line right by here that goes across Craig road(the road mine is off of, it goes along I-270 here), snapped a pole, and sent it flying across the road. Just yesterday we had a power surge.

It use to be worse. Many years ago, they didn't have this squerrel blocker thingy on the transformer behind our house, so squerrels would climb the pole, get torched/fried, knock out the power, and fall smoking back into our yard. Which is always fun.

 

[MistaX]

I was affected for about 3 or 4 hours, but now everythings back.

My motherboard nearly fried cuz of it. But whatever.

 

[vat_man]

Originally posted by MazKid
It use to be worse. Many years ago, they didn't have this squerrel blocker thingy on the transformer behind our house, so squerrels would climb the pole, get torched/fried, knock out the power, and fall smoking back into our yard. Which is always fun.

Mmmm... dinner is served!

 

[Attila_Da_Hun]

No power problems here

 

[Pupik]

Sorry to just cut and paste...but I'm at work and nobody's talking about anything else. From www.cnn.com :


Major power outage hits New York, other large cities
Thursday, August 14, 2003 Posted: 6:28 PM EDT (2228 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A major power outage simultaneously struck dozens of cities in the United States and Canada late Thursday afternoon.

Cities affected include New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Toronto and Ottawa, Canada. The power outage occurred shortly after 4 p.m. Officials said the outage does not appear to be related to terrorism.

By 6 p.m. the power was being restored in parts of the affected area, starting with the northern and western edges, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference.

He said it was unknown how long the outage may last but did say it would be "hours not minutes."

New York Gov. George Pataki declared a state of emergency for the state and deployed additional state police.

State officials said the outage was likely a natural occurrence. They said the Niagara-Mohawk power grid, which provides power for New York and stretches into Canada, was overloaded.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg told a news conference there was "absolutely no indication" of terrorism.

Black smoke coming from a power station on East 14th Street was a natural reaction to the power company shutting down its boilers, Bloomberg said.

"No damage was done to the Con Ed facilities," Bloomberg told CNN.

A statement from the Department of Homeland Security said, "The department is working with state and local officials an the energy sector to determine the cause of the outage and what response may need to be taken."

Bryan Lee, a spokesman for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said based on preliminary information it appears that a "cascading blackout" was caused by an outage at a Manhattan power plant, which has destabilized the power grid as far north as Canada and as far west as Detroit and Cleveland.

FERC and the Department of Energy were monitoring the situation and evaluating the problem, Lee said.

Frank McCarton, deputy commissioner for the Office of Emergency Management, said the blackout may have originated in Canada. "We understand that, from Con Ed, that we had a power surge and a dip and a failure that originated in Ontario," McCarton said.

Much of Midtown Manhattan and Wall Street was shut down. All area airports and the Long Island Railroad were also affected.

The Federal Aviation Administration grounded planes at all three New York area airports and in Cleveland because the blackout affected security screening facilities. The FAA reported planes also were grounded at the Toronto airport. The airports were operating on backup power, officials said.

The FAA said flights at the airports affected by the power outages were taking off, and flights already in the air were being allowed to land, with delays of no more than 15 minutes being reported.

The New York City Police Department said a number of people were trapped in elevators. Thousands of people could be seen leaving buildings and walking into the streets. New York subways were reported stopped and people were trapped in the cars.

"We are going to have a situation where people are going to have to walk a long distance. They need to be careful," Bloomberg said. "Our advice is to go home, open up your windows, drink a lot of liquids."

In Washington, a White House official said information about the situation was being relayed to President Bush, who was in California.


So terrorism's ruled out. Enron's revenge?

 

[Attila_Da_Hun]

Its on the news now....

 

[Attila_Da_Hun]

The poswer is not expected to be back up until tomorrow.

Raiding Party!!!!!!!

 

[Pupik]

It's funny, I just had a couple that drove down here form New York in my office. They were so darn suspicious of the news...they really did think it was terrorism. And after what happened nearly 2 years ago, who can blame them?

I told them what I read, and told them "Perhaps someone in the plant had tripped over the plug?"

They laughed with me, eased up a lot, and paid their bill. This job's fun at times...

 

[Rat Bastid]

You should see all the cars lined up in the streets by my house! they're all waiting to get to the gas station!

 

[Raptor65]

Retards. There's no need for that.

They just need to get a copy of my avatar, print a few million and hand it out to the New Yorkers.

This is just something you can tell your when grand kids. "Yeah, sonny, I was around back when we was attacked and then a couple'a years later there was this huuuuuuge blackout......." (Don't think it's funny? Just read it like a tottery old man and you'll start to laugh.)

 

[Solid Lifters]

Now they are saying that a lightning strike at Niagra was the reason for the black-out.