The lights went out around here at approximately 4:03 PM. Thirty seconds later, the lights came back on. For the first time since I had it installed ten years ago, the heavy duty emergency generator outside the house got a major workout. Not only did we have lights, phones and a working refrigerator, but even the cable stayed on. We had more neighbors coming over in one night than in the last month as folks came by to make calls, watch the news, and just look up at the lights with about as much amazement as Edison’s neighbors must have done when they swung by to see what the latest invention he (or his people) had come up with. The amusing thing, as darkness fell, was watching cars cruise by and slow when they passed the house as the drivers must have thought, “Oh, the power’s back on…wait…”
I admit I did keep worrying about that “Twilight Zone” episode, but fortunately the generator is loud enough that neighbors would attribute the continuing power to that rather than aliens.
The thing that bugs me is imagining bin Laden watching CNN in a cave somewhere, snickering over the continual reassurances that it wasn’t terrorists. Before 9/11 I doubt it even would have occurred to anyone; no one shouted “Terrorists!” in the previous NYC blackouts. But concerns have so insinuated our culture that terrorism has become the first line of panicked reaction.
This has been another fair and balanced blog entry.
PAD
• 
People immediately thinking “terrorists” – as though terrorists weren’t bright enough to wait until the dead of winter to pull a stunt like that – didn’t bother me so much as the fact that it happened at all.
It isn’t as though this were the first time eastern North America’s power grid got trashed by a ‘point source’ event. Remember ’65? What, exactly, are we paying our politicians for if, given almost FOURTY YEARS, they can’t even twist the utilities’ arms into designing a grid which won’t all collapse if someone sneezes in Wawa Ontario?! They must be Reverse-Borg. Unlike the Borg, they’re UNABLE to learn from experience.
Glad to hear you’re safe, Peter.
Alright–that settles it: I’m calling the sibs, and Mom’s getting a generator this month, even if it breaks our collective personal banks. No sense waiting for another wake-up call, especially with the hurricane season we’re likely to have in the Northeast this fall.
Glad to hear things worked out well at Casa David, and I hope that all things across the outage zone are picking up for all folks today–particularly folks in Cleveland, Detroit, and Ottowa: judging from the reports, they’ve had some of the worst consequences. (Even I, a Long Island native, was annoyed by the lack of coverage of other areas affected. Sure, sure–NYC’s the big story, but there were millions affected elsewhere.)
S’funny: just yesterday I was talking with a friend of mine who was hypothesizing that colleges and universities in the US should start offering courses teaching how to live off the grid, grow our own food, store it without elecric refrigeration, keep a clean local water supply that’s not motor dependant, etc. He’s not a nutty survivalist, but a bit of an enviro-futurist–and not a particularly doom and gloom one, either. He just thinks knowing how to do such things makes perfect sense given current energy and financial trends.
I got home from that conversation and turned on the AC and opened up the fridge and got a glass of ice water. Then I turned on the TV and saw what was happening. Sometimes a great notion…. 🙂
And, just think: there are thousands of people in Iraq who haven’t had power or reliable water since April. Think NYC was hot last night? Try Baghdad. That’s not a political comment, just a reminder of how everything’s relative–and how useful it may be to examine the things we take for granted.
“offering courses teaching how to live off the grid, grow our own food, store it without elecric refrigeration, keep a clean local water supply that’s not motor dependant …”
The first thing they need to do is to show all participants the first episode of James Burke’s excellent CONNECTIONS series which begins with footage from the ’65 blackout and points out the ‘technology traps’ we’ve built for ourselves.
Unfortunately, as he also makes clear at the end of the series, there are now far too many people for the ‘back to the land’ appraoch to really work any more.
Concerns about terrorism are still real. They are not necessarily panicky reactions. Although I think the gov’t/newsmedia overstressed terrorism in their statements about yesterday, it is still a primary concern to many people. I work in the Wall Street area. I was here on 9/11, and here yesterday. Although my foremost feeling was that it was likely a power grid collapse, my secondary thought was that someone hit Indian Point, which is a nuke plant about fifty miles north of NYC. In talking with people last night, that was not an uncommon thought. There was noone in my close circle of people who was panicking, and I don’t really think that people are overtly fearful of terrorism. It is still however a valid concern in this era, and people are on edge.
Of course, once we were pretty sure it was nothing more than a major inconvenience, we just hung out on the streets and helped the local bars clean out their inventory. It was a memorable night.
You know, you came “This” close to an entry without Political comments.
Not thats bad, but I’m just so tired of the bickering Politics creates – especially on this board.
Oh – and just to mention this: when I first heard about the Blackout Terrorists where actually the last thing on my mind.
Very funny refrence about the Twilight Zone. I saw the Updated version of that episode. You don’t have any paranoid drunk neighbors – do you? Cuz that would be bad for everyone within shooting distance.
Do you have a Fallout Shelter too, for distasters. (Since you seem prepared) Beware – just like your neighbors coming over durring a blackout, people will rush to a Fallout shelter – much like Flanders, in the Simpsons, when an asteroid was gonna hit Springfield.
Thats pretty funny, people flocking to the prepared people. Good work – you must have helped out suported your street durring a crisis.
Generators = Good Things.
Glad all is well at Casa David.
TWL
One of the sacry things about this is that damage to a power station (or whatever the technical name is) on the US Canadian border was able to do so much damage. In this day and age with the fear of terrorism so high, you would think that someone would have figured that decentralizing a power grid that affects such a huge portion of the Northeast would be a good idea for the sake of national security.
I wound up walking from Mid town Manhattan to Jamaica station in queens and then picking up bus service to Long Island. It is really great that in the face of such a situation, New Yorkers are able to step up to the occasion. It was good to see people be courteous and go out of their way to help people. While there were people along Queens Blvd trying to gauge people, charging ridiculous prices for water (5.00 for a 32 oz. bottle of Poland Spring) it was good to see that others were standing along the way handing out water to people who needed it – much like they do in Marathons – you really could see the spark of gratitude in their eyes as the accepted the water.
I left work at 4, got home at midnight and I have to say it certainly was an interesting experience – to say the least.
I thought of that Twilight Zone episode, too. As I was watching the news and saw the NYC mayor talking, I kept wondering: “What about all the people who can’t hear this? They’re the ones that need to be reassured it wasn’t terrorism or anything.”
Crazy times we live in.
The power went out here in upstate New York too. It happened while I was at work. I work in the kitchen of an assisted living community, so we did the best we could to serve supper on disposable dishes because we couldn’t use the dishwasher. We also had to serve out all the ice cream and sherbet we had stored in the freezer so that we wouldn’t risk it melting. You should have seen the looks on the residents faces when we started to serve out those big styrofoam bowls of ice cream. I, myself, was allowed to eat two bowls of rainbow sherbet. It wasn’t bad. I still got out of work on time and I didn’t have to vacuum the dining room.
“And, just think: there are thousands of people in Iraq who haven’t had power or reliable water since April. Think NYC was hot last night? Try Baghdad. That’s not a political comment, just a reminder of how everything’s relative–and how useful it may be to examine the things we take for granted.”
Well said. I’ve blogged about the blackout as well, and I think I used variations of “we were the lucky ones” about a half dozen times. Perspective, she is a good thing.
Actually, Bloomberg’s comments were likely available to anyone with a battery powered transistor radio. Of course, I saw an older fellow on one of the news channels last night who was saying that there seemed to be a lot fewer of those radios around than during the 60s blackout. (He had one and people kept walking up to him to find out what was happening.)
One of the problems with the Northeast electrical grid is that it’s decentralized. When one area runs short on power, it can tap excess power in other areas to prevent brownouts. Unfortunately, the folks who designed the interconnections put it together in such a way that a major disruption in one area ripples across the grid and causes other power plants to shut down in self-defense. The theory is fine. The execution is (apparently) lousy. (I saw a quote on one of the news channels that said the entire event took nine seconds to shut everything down that failed.)
Glad to hear that you had a generator, Peter. I called a friend of mine in the Detroit area on the way home and he was quite happy that he’d put one in a few years back. It wouldn’t run his multitude of computers (he’s a computer consultant who works from home), but it did keep the water pump, refrigerator, and lights going.
“… couldn’t use the dishwasher …”
And lots of other things.
I was in a shop when it happened. At the front counter about to pay for purchases. After a minute or so, it was evident this wasn’t a ‘off-on’ short term thing, especially given the building next door had also been affected.
I stood there, waiting. The woman at the cash (not a teeny-bopper, but in her fourties whom I knew to have years of experience as a cashier) looked at me, apparently wondering why I was still there.
I nudged the items I was buying towards her. She pointed to the over-engineered cash register and made helpless gestures. “You’ll have to come back later, there’s no power.” As though I hadn’t noticed.
I held up my hand full of cash.
“Uh …” Again with the helpless gesture. “I can’t open this to give you change. It won’t open without electricity.” (Who’d design such a monumentally stupid system anyway?)
I pointed to the money in my hand.
“I have the exact amount. You don’t need to give me change.”
Again with the helpless look. “I can’t open this…” Points to the register drawer. I remind her she doesn’t need to. I have the correct amount.
I’m still waiting.
“Ah, I can’t give you a receipt.” Again, points to the dead terminal.
*sigh*
“There’s a pencil,” I point on her counter “or I can loan you a pen if you prefer, and there’s a sheet of blank paper.”
Again, she looks lost until one of the sales staff comes up behind her and writes up the receipt and send me on my way.
Christ on the proverbial minibike. How in perdition did the human race EVER manage to survive before microchips came long?
I’m beginning to think they should issue stickers for most people to put on their heads.
“Intel outside, nothing inside.”
I was sorry to hear about the blackouts across the northeast. but it is lucky that it occured in the summer. During a blizzard last winter, my family (along wiht many other families) was without power for 11 days. The temperature inside our house reached 34 degrees. It was darn cold. Also, living in North Carolina, we’re mostly helpless when it comes to…what do you call it? Ah yes, snow and ice. Which there was a heck of a lot of.
Glad the power’s coming back on and that you were prepared.
I’m glad you checked in and am gratified by all the positive stories that have come out of this situation.
Glad to hear you’re okay, Peter.
By the way, with the exception of the northwest corner, most of Pennsylvania managed to avoid it because the right breakers were tripped before the cascade hit us.
Does that make you want to move back to Philly?
So, when’s New York doing a recall election on Pataki?
(As Mark Evanier blogged, if the blackout had happened in California these days, Davis might well have been dragged out from the Mansion and lynched)
Somewhat more seriously, I channel surfed to Nightline near its end yesterday, and Ted Koppel was talking with a reporter in NYC who apparently been in Iraq recently. He commented that Iraqis were probably thinking that now New Yorkers would understand what they were going through. Um, right. An 18 hour one-shot blackout in 90 weather = constant blackouts for weeks, bad food and water supplies, etc. in 110+ weather, along with guerilla warfare going on around one. Yeesh.
1. Starwolf:
I was at Wendys one day a few weeks ago. The nice counter person mentioned, we don’t have any buns. I suggested that they take some money out of the cash register and go over to Kroger (about 600 feet away) and get some. She looked at me like I’d beamed in from another planet.
2. Power outage.
from AP via
http://cnews.canoe.ca/CNEWS/World/2003/08/15/161428-ap.html
The head of the North American Reliability Council, who earlier said northern Ohio may have been the flashpoint, later backed way from reaching any nclusion “until we’re absolutely certain.”
Gent said he was fairly confident terrorism wasn’t involved.
Federal officials earlier said there is no evidence of terrorism.
We don’t have any indication of blown-up equipment,” he said on ABC’s Good Morning America.
So, we’re almost certain it’s not terrorism of any kind.
—
OK, they have no idea what caused it, but it was not terrorism.
This about 20 hours after the outage. Yesterday, at 6PM less than two hours into the outage Mayor Bloomberg said it wasn’t terrorism.
How the heck can they know?
ABC seemed, to me, to have the best coverage last night–pleasant surprise.
But Koppel had a few odd moments: for about two hours (before any power had started to come back on in Manhattan), he kept referring to a shot of a single building in Times Square that clearly had only emergency lights on (but a lot of them, sure) as evidence that “power must be coming back now”. Finally, someone must have sent him a clue through his earpiece, ’cause he droppped it.
Govs. Davis and Richardson comported themselves pretty well on Larry King, too, despite Larry’s usual inane questions. Both Govs. said some eminently sensible things about energy production, delivery, and consumption in this country, and what a lousy job we’ve done on all fronts for the last 60 years.
Here’s hoping this gets us all thinking and acting more wisely: we need a better, smarter grid, fuel cell-storage facilities, joint heat and light initiatives, better building practices, more renewable sources and fewer fossil fuels, greater efficiency, and less, less, less thoughtless consumption.
Speaking as one on the far western side of the blackout (I hail from fair Lansing, MI) I’m just glad this whole thing is almost over. The best thing about it has been the utter and complete lack of looting or rioting, even in Detroit (which is still largely without power). It’s good to know that society doesn’t dissolve into chaos as quickly as we might think it would.
Here’s hoping that everyone’s power comes back on soon and that everyone will be safe.
I used to work in the electrical industry (in a very minor and secondary role, thank goodness) for a time. You would be very surprised and possibly frightened to know just how interconnected and vulnerable our power grids are. And, at the moment, absolutely full to capacity.
I’ve seen the maps for the west coast. You think this outage is impressive? If the exact same thing happened on the west coast (some sort of surge that triggered all the protective measures) the entire coastline up to Alaska would be out. Because of the way generators are placed, I think the power would come back on-line more quickly, but don’t quote me on that.
Ah well… luck to those who were hit by this thing. We’ll keep you in mind when it’s our turn.
hmmm…consensus seems to be power going out in winter would be worse…
but I can’t help but think you can always pile on more blankets. I’m not completely oblivious to the poor who don’t have blankets to pile on…but they’re equally effected by the heat.
One can also always build a fire. (controlled, naturally)
Supposedly it is around 42 celsius in Toronto…107 fahrenheit. You can walk around naked in that heat and still die from heat exhaustion.
I think I’d prefer the power to go out in winter. But maybe I’m missing something.
Where was PAD when the lights went out?
In the dark. (And then, apparently, in the light again.)
When I first heard the power was going out on the east, I did the usual news site scans to find out what was happening (I’m in Arkansas, and the fact that my plant had a very short power-blip minutes after hearing about the NE sector did make folks a bit jumpy.) I found bits and pieces on CNN, MSNBC, and others… except Fox news.
I suppose they must have known about the blackouts, but since it wasn’t directly attributable to terrorists, it was only fair to let the other networks carry the balance of the reporting on this one. 😀
First, I want to say that I am on the West Coast and not right in the middle of it where I might have been thinking more clearly than New Yorkers who have already lived through a terrorist attack, but terrorism never even occured to me.
Terrorist are more interested in killing people than merely inconvienencing (sp?) them. That why they’re called ‘terrorists’ and not ‘inconvienecists’ (sp? again).
Glad everything is all right with you PAD. I’m halfway through ‘Tong Lashing’ abd loving every page.
Terrorists are all about creating fear. Killing is by far the best way, but blowing up power plants would be a more than a minor inconvenience. You’d have to rebuild the entire thing – which could take weeks or months. I would be surprised if this wasn’t an action considered by terrorists.
BTW, when I got the breaking news item via email, terrorism WAS the first thing I thought of.
Glad to see you’re allright, all.
In the past, folks may not have cried “terrorists” at blackouts, but I recall in at least one case they were crying “Soviets!” The 1965 blackout included people reporting having seen a satellite object passing overhead just before the lights went out. (Some, of course, saw it as an alien UFO.)
While there may not have been any plants blown up, this morning on Good Morning America, several individuals interviewed did mention the possibility of “cyber-terrorism” and alleged recent attempts to hack into part of the power grid to shut systems down. One went so far as to say that this was the sort of thing a warning was issued about recently.
Of course, it seems that any out-of-the-ordinary occurrance these days ends up with the “possibility of terrorist involvement.”
If you are, at all, curious about how the power grid works, read this article. Very well written:
http://shotsacrossthebow.com/archives/001778.html#001778
Mark said “Terrorists are all about creating fear.Killing is by far the best way, but blowing up power plants would be a more than a minor inconvenience.”
Believe me, I’d almost be happy to be proven wrong on this one. Personally, I like the idea of terrorists turning out the lights a lot more than I do of the idea of terrorists killing people.
Of course, it goes without saying (but on this board I should probably say it anyway), that I would prefer they go away all together, but thats wishful thinking.
The funny thing about PAD’s “bin Laden’s still out there” comment is that the blackout wound up scuttling NBC Nightly News’ original lead story: the capture of yet another significant bin Laden operative.
The bad news: bin Laden is still out there. The good news: he doesn’t have much of a fighting force to lead anymore. Peter, you might do well to grasp that latter piece of information.
-Dave O’Connell
The funny thing about PAD’s “bin Laden’s still out there” comment is that the blackout wound up scuttling NBC Nightly News’ original lead story: the capture of yet another significant bin Laden operative.
The bad news: bin Laden is still out there. The good news: he doesn’t have much of a fighting force to lead anymore. Peter, you might do well to grasp that latter piece of information.
-Dave O’Connell
I love how they keep saying they don’t know what caused the outage, but they’re SURE it’s not terrorism.
How can they be sure of the root of the cause if they don’t even the cause yet? For all we know it could’ve been sabotage. Just because there wasn’t a bomb doesn’t mean it wasn’t terrorism.
Just like KateGH (posting way above this one), here in this area of North Carolina we had 2 major ice storms, and a couple of minor ones this past winter. I was without power for about 10 days one time, and 3 days the next. And when she mentioned 34 degrees…that was the warm part of the day! Just enough to let any snow melt and refreeze into more ice. The only fortunate thing for me is that work put us up in hotels as soon as possible (I work in the media, so we were required to be at work), but it was pretty rough. Sure, you can pile on the clothes and blankets, but it’s frowned upon lighting a fire in an apartment without a fireplace. We also had multiple deaths of people using a charcoal grill inside for cooking and keeping warm.
Glad to hear the Davids are OK and were well prepared!
Personally, I was a little upset over Bloomberg’s accusation that the power outage was caused by a problem on the Canadian side of the border. Granted, I’m a native Torontonian and am somewhat biased. But, my point is that he was a little too quick to associate blame before he had all the facts. I would have thought that his first concern would have been to ensure public safety and restore the grid rather than take time to lay the blame on Canada.
I haven’t yet heard any definitive cause for the blackout. However, there is some indication that it began somewhere in Ohio. Should this be the case, I’ll be waiting to hear if Bloomberg issues an apology.
On a slightly different note, a comment was added above that suggested someone should have foreseen this as a possible terrorist target and taken measures to isolate the grid.
Yeah. Right.
I don’t want to sound too much like a cynic, but since when does anyone spend money unless they have to? With the exception of PAD and other like minded souls who had generators, rare are the times that companies (or individuals) take the time and expense for contingency planning in the event of crisis. (Mind you, those who prepared for Y2K may be an exception but, then, there was a great deal of publicity about how we were all going to turn into gun-toting survivalists once all the computers blew up). Usually, it’s only after experiencing a crisis that money is spent to remedy the situation. For example, the Quebec hydro system was unaffected from this latest power outage because they updated their systems following their experience with the ice storm a few year back. Or, to take another example, how many people take up exercising and watching their diet but only after they’ve been told by their doctor that they have high blood pressure and run the risk of stroke or heart failure?
Hopefully, this most recent blackout will see more investment made in bringing hydro systems up-to-date and prevent a reoccurance whether it be accidental, act-of-God, or terrorist attack.
I haven’t yet heard any definitive cause for the blackout. However, there is some indication that it began somewhere in Ohio. Should this be the case, I’ll be waiting to hear if Bloomberg issues an apology.
Yeah, well, Canadian officials initially tried to blame it on an accident at a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. All of our stations have reported accident free.
We’re still waiting for our apology.
I live near Chicago and my neighborhood lost power for two hours Thursday, too– but oddly, it came back at almost exactly the same time the Northeast lost theirs, and the two outages were completely unrelated. Ours was caused by a downed power line five blocks away.
Oh well. Since I was battling a cold and couldn’t watch General Hospital, I took a nap. Glad you and yours are well, Peter. A home generator? Why didn’t I think of that?
My mother’s got a friend who lives in Cleveland who had to put up with the blackout there. I hope she’s allright now. I sure hope that Medina County didn’t fall victim to the effects too; I know a few people who live there whom I hope weren’t effected by this very unfortunate incident.
Has nobody here noticed the peculiar thing described here? Peter David, a quite intelligent writer, someone of basically liberal and optimistic viewpoint…had his house equipped with a GENERATOR!
The TV station where I work has generators, practically required by law. The only individuals who have generators are contractors who work on houses or…the paranoiacs who watch the skies for black helicopters, believe the International Jewish Trilateral Commission is controlling the world, and has submachine guns with cop-killer bullets secured in their basements.
Doesn’t David’s posession of an overpriced, expensive piece of survivalist gear strike anybody as the least bit uncharacteristic?
Yeah, well, Canadian officials initially tried to blame it on an accident at a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania. All of our stations have reported accident free.
We’re still waiting for our apology
On behalf of the Canadian Government, I apologize for insinuating that nuclear power plants in Pennsylvania were the responsible for the power outage.
At least we were half right — it began on your side of the border.
Uh …” Again with the helpless gesture. “I can’t open this to give you change. It won’t open without electricity.” (Who’d design such a monumentally stupid system anyway?)
I can actually answer that, (working in the supermarket industry and all, supporting the software that runs the cash registers). The answer is no one. All cash draws, (at least that I know of)have a lock that can be opened with an old fashioned key. The problem is that only the Manager or owner usually have the key, or in bigger chains they take the lock out all together so even though it’s designed with a lock by the time it’s installed in the store it can only be opened electronically. You may think that’s tremdously stupid but it’s not. Ask yourself this, how many times does the power go out or something simular happen that you would need to manually open the cash draw? Answer if it happens more then once a year you’re having a very bad year. OTOH industry wide thousands of dollars are stolen by employees hourly. It’s that huge a problem and haveing employees, (or even managers) have the manual key would only help to increase it. (When the terminal is electronically opened employee id’s, etc are recorded, so that if there is cash stolen things can, in theory, be easily tracked). So all things considered it makes more bussiness sense to not give employees the ablity to manually open the draw then it does to let them have a key for the, on adverage, once a year event they may need it. As to the rest of you complaint, don’t get to mad at the poor cashier, unfortunatly cashiers these days are taught that the sysmtem does everything and they don’t need to know how to manually do anything, in fact it’s usually discoraged. When things go wrong managers are supposed to decide the course of action and direct employees accordingly. (Which is what sounds like happened here). And yes I think this is wrong headed too, but it’s the way it’s been in most retail since the early 80’s and I don’t see it changing anytime soon. Many states don’t even require items in retal stores to be marked with the prices on them, so that even if the cashier had a battery powered caculator they wouldn’t be able to ring you up, because they have no way to tell what the price of anything is. Again you may think this is stupid but it’s not, it cost a lot to mark things and over time would cost stores a heck of a lot more then they would lose when they have to close for the occasional blackout. (This is also why so many stores and resturants do not have generators, yes they lose a ton of money throwing out perhisables after a blackout but that’s still cheaper then buying a generator for every store that may only need to be used once every few years).
In the past, folks may not have cried “terrorists” at blackouts, but I recall in at least one case they were crying “Soviets!” The 1965 blackout included people reporting having seen a satellite object passing overhead just before the lights went out. (Some, of course, saw it as an alien UFO.)
Oh that’s just silly. Everyone knows the 65 blackout was caused by the Yellow Claw and his goons. And it would have been a lot worse had not Nick Fury and Captain America (with a little help from Mr Fantastic and the Thing) been on the case. And of course we all know that the 77 blackout was caused by a battle between Spider-Man, (With YellowJacket and the Wasp) and Equinox. I’m amazed they don’t teach these things in school. 🙂
I work in downtown Toronto, but live in the suburbs of Toronto, I was at work when the power went out and because of the resulting gridlock and self-imposed gasoline crisis, I ended up spending the night in the store where I work. We had a battery powered radio going all night, tuned at first to the CBC. The really creepy part was when the news reporter was replaying tidbits from a press conference that our Premier had given just a few minutes earlier. The Premier had just finished saying “we anticipate that everything will be restored to normal very soon.” (a paraphrase) when the radio signal cuts out because the station’s emergencey generator shut down.
Fortuntetly it was a boring and uneventful night at the store.
The TV station where I work has generators, practically required by law. The only individuals who have generators are contractors who work on houses or…the paranoiacs who watch the skies for black helicopters, believe the International Jewish Trilateral Commission is controlling the world, and has submachine guns with cop-killer bullets secured in their basements. Doesn’t David’s posession of an overpriced, expensive piece of survivalist gear strike anybody as the least bit uncharacteristic?
Only if someone wants to be a total prat about it.
I have deadlines, and Long Island has blackouts. One major blackout some years back had some residences without power for as long as three weeks. Putting aside all the hardships my family would endure in such a circumstance, I’m also concerned about being able to earn a living. If your place of business loses power for an extended period of time, you get a paid vacation. Me, I lose money and blow deadlines.
This blackout, while neighbors appreciated the opportunity to watch TV and keep abreast of the news, and elderly neighbors knew they could use our fridge to keep medicines in, I was busy writing an issue of “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” and earn a living. You got a problem with that?
In the past, when the generator kicked in during much shorter blackouts, I was able to keep writing and meet my deadlines. But hey, all that annoying practicality shouldn’t stop anyone from taking an opportunity to lump me in with paranoids and Anti-Semites.
PAD
> saw the NYC mayor talking, I kept wondering: “What about all the people who can’t hear this? They’re the ones that need to be reassured it wasn’t terrorism or anything.”
I work on the Qu
Has nobody here noticed the peculiar thing described here? Peter David, a quite intelligent writer, someone of basically liberal and optimistic viewpoint…had his house equipped with a GENERATOR!
The TV station where I work has generators, practically required by law. The only individuals who have generators are contractors who work on houses or…the paranoiacs who watch the skies for black helicopters, believe the International Jewish Trilateral Commission is controlling the world, and has submachine guns with cop-killer bullets secured in their basements.
Doesn’t David’s posession of an overpriced, expensive piece of survivalist gear strike anybody as the least bit uncharacteristic?
If it does, they’re flarking idiots.
PAD lives on Long Island. Long Island routinely experiences multiple blackouts and brownouts in any given year due to winter storms, hurricanes, and problems (like this one) stemming from being part of the NY metro area grid–one of the most overtaxed and quirkiest grids in the country. PAD also makes his living from home and, like many small business owners on LI, has invested in a generator to insure that he can keep making that living during these all-too-regular power outages.
I know tons of folks living on LI who don’t have generators–but every single one of them has long wished they’d get around to setting one up, and they felt this way before last week. And not a single one of the them is a survivalist, paranoid, anti-Semitic militant with stockpiles of cop-killer bullets, oddly.
Not that much. I worked retail for a couple of years and it didn’t add significantly to the cost of things.
You’re wrong. It takes employees to mark things, it takes other employees to change the prices, (putting things on and off sale). When I started in the stores, (back in high school), there were 3 full time people and two part timers who did nothing but price changes. Those positions no longer exist in states that don’t require pricing. Add up the salarys, (not to mention benifits, vacations, etc), and the saving is significant to say the least. Mind you I think things should be marked but to say that not marking doesn’t save the retailer money is just wrong. States that don’t require price marking, (like the one I live in) had strong retailers who lobbyed the state to change the law so that they could save money. The laws unfortunatly are often written to the retailers advantage not to the consumers. (Retailers have more money for lobbist then consumers do).
I’ll third the “no, a generator’s not a particularly weird thing to have at all” comment.
I don’t know what the power situation is like in LI, but for the last two years my wife and I have lived just south of Los Gatos in the Santa Cruz mountains.
When storms come through, there’s usually a fairly decent chance of us losing power.
Last December, our power went off for a week — we were a tiny area affected, so very low on PG&E’s priority list.
Picture being a teacher the week before winter break with no power at home.
We didn’t have a generator then.
We will by the next storm season.
And we don’t tend to stock up on ammo, either.
TWL
Heck…I’m far from being the kind of conspiracy theory survivalist mentioned above, and I wish we could set up a backup generator to our apartment. Our power has gone off 3 times in the past 2 months. The first was for at least 12 hours while we were on vacation, and the relative keeping an eye on the place for us let us know about it. The second two have come in just the last few weeks, once for about 30 minutes, the other for a couple of hours. Oddly enough, the most inconveniencing power loss was the one while we were on vacation…we came home needing to throw away frozen foods that went bad while we were away.
Also in the ‘generators aren’t weird camp.’ My parents live in the wilds of rural Missouri and have one hooked up. They bought it cheap from the Y2K folks who found the world didn’t end.
Paid off last month when the tri-county transformer went down for four days. But there have also been times in the past when they’ve been snowed in without power for a week, or had strong summer storms take power down.
They’re not paranoid, just making a solid investment based on past experience.