Major power surge in NY? (Blackout is in NYC, Detroit, Ottawa and Toronto, per Fox News)

8-14-03 | Joe Hadenuf

[WxMan2000]

Link to NWS Radar Loop:

http://weather.noaa.gov/radar/mosaic.loop/DS.p19r0/ar.us.conus.shtml

[OXENinFLA]

LOL

I'm listening to Peter Jennings, DirecTV out, he cut to a reporter and she didn't know she was on air she said some along these lines..."yeah, I'll be off around 8 , it looks like FOX NEWS has gone to normal programing"

[Peach]

The speculation among governmental officialas - Canadian and US - is ridiculous.

[Moose4]

Not exactly. Handie-talkies depend on radio repeaters to amplify and boost their signals. They have short range otherwise, especially in major cities with lots of tall buildings. If their communications gear doesn't have some sort of good emergency power, then the repeaters are paws-up, and that'll limit their transmissions to the ranges their HTs or car radios can reach. It'll probably really play hell with the digital radio signals that send data to those portable computers that so many police cars have nowadays.

In 1993 I was living in Lynchburg, VA when we had a massive downburst thunderstorm come tearing through--the closest I ever want to get to a hurricane, 80 mph winds. The entire city lost power, 150,000 people. The police, fire, and EMS repeaters were all knocked off the air and it made things, uh, "interesting". Their ability to talk back to their dispatchers was very limited and depended on whether they were in a good spot or on top of a hill.

The only functioning communications repeater in the area was a VHF amateur radio repeater that some guy had in his backyard, so we wound up sending ham operators to the city emergency operations center and to two of the outlying county sheriff's departments, and used that repeater to pass traffic between the jurisdictions for a few hours, until they got the phones working reliably again. Cellphones, as few as there were in 1993, were of course kerplunt. The city radio repeaters were on the cellphone towers and drew off the same power sources.

}:-)4

[BohDaThone]

Page 12 of THIS report

http://www.wws.princeton.edu/cgi-bin/byteserv.prl/~ota/disk2/1990/9034/9034.PDF

Specifically says that the 1977 blackout began with a series of sever lightning strokes.

The source document is a 1990 report on general vulnerability of the power grid to natural disasters. From the COngressional office of Technology assessment

[Focault's Pendulum]

any lightening strikes in your area? Canadian Prime Minister says this was caused by a lightening strike at Niagara Falls.

It's my fault...I lit a fart to see if my Metamucil was kicking in...it made a mess in the bathroom.

And now I gotta post laying on my stomach for a few days.

[BurbankKarl]

state-by-state report


http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-08-14-states-blackout_x.htm

[Salvation]

Oh, that Chretien?

Don't believe him!

[Fraulein]

Sun starting to go down in NYC.

[meyer]

Well, sort of. The safety shutoffs to prevent system damage probably worked, but I think there's supposed to be something to better localize outages; that didn't work.

Exactly - time will tell what initiated this, but it can easily be said that something or some things didn't work as they should, while others did. And, some of us were quite lucky. I'll look at the frequency charts tomorrow - should be pretty interesting.

[prairiebreeze]

Thanks for the find on Cheney!

Prairie

[Bella]

I think it was terrorism, but we'll never know or be told for sure. It will be a fire and a "computer glitch". I mean, the computer worm? Come on...

Might be right on target..Of course they'd never tell us..is probably why Ridge came on w/ his comments..Looks like they might be doing a rehearsal??

[DannyTN]

"Heat lightning? More common out west is my understanding. "

We see it in Tennessee. But I thought Heat lightening was primarily an upper atmosphere event.

Possibilities...

• Lightning
• E-bombs -> 1 or more
• The Big Lie -> The big lie is a utility induced crisis used by utility companies to justify rate increases and/or additional investment.
• Hillary just saw Ann Coulter's book sales.
• Valdemort stole Dumbledore's magic lamp off gadget and built a really big version.

[mewzilla]

Yup, I know. I checked, too. Just askin'. But then we get a lot of squirrel assaults on the power around here, so we have a healthy respect for Mother Nature and the local fauna. Our two local TV stations are still off the air. But Binghamton's CBS affiliate in on the air. Go figure.

[proud American in Canada]

"Trust Canada's Cretin to blame God!"

The headline in Ottawa yesterday was that he was defying the church to support gay marriage up here.

Coincidence? I think not.... ;)

[Peach]

LOL

[Consort]

Any word from Baghdad Bob on this?

[FairOpinion]

No Evidence of Terrorism in Blackout

Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Law enforcement officials quickly determined Thursday that the massive blackout was not caused by terrorists.

The FBI, the Homeland Security Department and New York City police all agreed there was no evidence of a terrorist attack or criminal act in the power outages affecting the eastern United States and Canada.

"We are not aware of anything at this time that would indicate anything of a criminal nature or an act of terrorism," FBI spokesman Bill Carter said.

The agencies quickly made public their conclusions to quell any fears that al-Qaida or other groups had made good on their previous threats to strike U.S. economic targets. Power plants, nuclear facilities, dams and chemical plants are considered on the terror network's hit list.

No Evidence of Terrorism in Blackout

[BurbankKarl]

that is one big Howard Dean Meet Up at the NYC ferry terminal....