No, not New York - just a CBD blackout [Sydney Australia power failure]

Sydney Morning Herald ^ | September 2, 2003 | Les Kennedy and Geesche Jacobsen

[LurkedLongEnough]

At least 50 buildings in Sydney's CBD were blacked out last night following an underground fire in a major electrical substation, causing huge traffic jams as motorists were diverted around the scene.

Many people were trapped in lifts for more than four hours, while others had to wait patiently even longer to be rescued.

The blackout affected a 10-block radius from the Cockle Bay construction site of the Cross City Tunnel exit near Sussex Street. It stretched to parts of Chinatown, and as far as the Town Hall and the Pitt Street Mall.

Police rescue squad officers were called to free people trapped in lifts in six buildings in the first wave of disruptions, which struck at 5.30pm.

The Pacific International Hotel on Kent Street lost power about 6pm. Some guests sat in the lobby by candlelight as hotel staff checked lifts to make sure no one was trapped.

Police rescue officer Garry Morgan said he had helped three people trapped in a lift at 88 Pitt Street for more than two hours. The lift had to be manually wound back because of its old mechanism.

Traffic on Market Street was very heavy and lights were out of action at the intersection of King and George streets.

EnergyAustralia said the power supplies to the affected area were initially cut when 15 feeder cables at the City Central substation at Cockle Bay failed.

At 7.30pm fire brigade crews helping police officers rescue people trapped in lifts were diverted to help fight the fire discovered in an underground cable tunnel to the power station. At least 30 firefighters were battling the blaze by flooding the tunnels with carbon dioxide but were unable to enter it because some lines were still live.

As a result, EnergyAustralia cut power to some lines, further disrupting city power supplies.

Company officials were optimistic last night that power would be restored in time for the morning peak hour.

No casualties were reported in the power failure.

[LurkedLongEnough]

What do you think now?

[DoughtyOne]

New York
London
Sydney

That's what I think.

[LurkedLongEnough]

You forgot California. ;-)

[Snowy]

This one didn't seem that big. I will admit that the NY and London blackouts were a bit fishy. However, we must all 'move along - nothing to see here.' :)

[thoughtomator]

I think that if we analyze blackout frequency/duration/area on a historical basis and adjust for the inability of the power grid to cope adequately with the high demand of a post-technological economy, we will find that nothing has happened that we could not expect to happen otherwise.

If AQ or any other band of crazies could act here or in the UK or in Australia, there would be dead bodies to indicate it.

[DoughtyOne]

True enough, but I'm wondering if the three I mentioned were instances of sabotage.

Note that the three nations involved are pretty close allies.

[Calpernia]

Would a blackout of a 10 block radius normally make the news outside of Australia?

[DoughtyOne]

That's a reasonable question. It's seems unlikely doesn't it. Perhaps I'm jumping the gun on that one. And perhaps London as well. It just seems like a very strange series of incidents has brought us and our two main allies for mid-east policy to have power outages. Stranger things have happened I guess.

[Calpernia]

Trust me, I'm as suspicious as you are. There was also another incident that caught my eye.

Read this:

***"Today (brought) another escalation in the
terrorist activity of the Hamas movement when
for the first time, they launched a rocket into
a town in the southern part of the country,
Ashkelon, making an effort to hit a strategic
target that is one of our largest power
stations," Sharon said.***

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/333892.html

[DoughtyOne]

I beleive we are just one big disaster away from Israel getting fed up and expelling the West Bank and Gaza populations. They can't put up with this forever, and they shouldn't.

[Calpernia]

Did you notice the target?

[DoughtyOne]

Yes. That's why I stated what I did. Is this a nuke plant?

[Calpernia]

I don't know enough about what I'm reading to tell how the power station generates electricity: http://www.jpost.com/com/Archive/29.Sep.1997/Business/Article-4.html

[DoughtyOne]

I don't think we can determine the source of energy here. Coal and oil plants also have chimneys. The talk of units coming on line sounded like nuclear, since I'd think other type of plants would have more than just two energy generators.

These two units were 500 megawatt units. That sounds like a typical nuclear power plant to me, but that is pretty much an uneducated guess if you catch my drift.