Posted on 08/17/2003 8:11:48 PM PDT by Cathryn Crawford
Expert Traces Path of Blackout Surge
(2003-08-16) -- An electricity industry expert has traced the path of this week's blackout surge which left some 50 million North Americans without power.
Dr. Reuben Goldberg, who heads the North American Electric Reliability Council, mapped the course of the blackout for journalists at a news conference this morning.
The problem apparently started, according to Dr. Goldberg, in an Ohio automobile plant, where an autoworker eating lunch squirted some mayonnaise from his bacon, lettuce and tomato sandwich onto the floor at 3:37 p.m. on Thursday.
A janitor noticing the spill at 3:48 p.m. fetched a mop and began to swab the floor. While backing up to mop his own tracks from the floor, the janitor accidentally stabbed the butt of the mop handle through a plate glass window which triggered the factory's security alarm.
The sudden blare of the alarm startled a large rat which was traversing a cable above one of the plants power transformers. The rat fell across two high-voltage lines, causing the the transformer to short circuit then explode. Results of the autopsy on the rat were inconclusive as to cause of death given the proximity of the jolt to the blast.
The explosion rocked a nearby vending machine, toppling a half-empty can of Mountain Dew which a careless worker had left atop the machine. The sticky sweet fluid ran down the wall and bridged the prongs of the vending machine's plug, causing another short circuit and a brief power surge which blew out several light bulbs including one above the head of the worker who had originally spilled the mayonnaise. He is the plant electrician.
As he staggered about his work station feeling for a flashlight, his elbow inadvertently bumped a lever which controls the flow of power to assembly line number three. The line stopped with a jerk, causing another autoworker to drop a rather large pneumatic wrench on his foot.
Just that morning, the employee had accidentally dumped a full cup of coffee into his left steel-toed boot, forcing him to come to work in ordinary hiking boots. The impact of the wrench on his great toe caused him to bend at the waist suddenly. His head smote the side-view mirror of the car upon which he had been working.
His supervisor, noticing that one of his men was down, pressed a button which alerted the plant's medical staff to the emergency situation on line three.
As the medical staff scrambled to aide the fallen autoworker, said Dr. Goldberg, three high-voltage transmission lines elsewhere in Ohio probably failed inexplicably causing a domino-effect shutdown of the power grid across the United States.
"As you can see," he added. "It was a simple cause-and-effect situation. We're addressing it by developing new lunch regulations regarding condiments on sandwiches."
This is obviously incorrect. Having worked in an Ohio auto plant, I know for a fact that more than 11 minutes is needed for a janitor to act on a mayo spill. It takes (approximately) 15 minutes to notify a supervisor, another 30 for the supervisor to contact the janitor's supervisor, 20 for the janitor to be found and notified, and 45 for the janitor to arrive at the scene.
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