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Giant power Outages? (1 Viewer)

Holadem

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I really love it when something different happens. I doubt this will happen again. It sure was dark and sure was beautiful!!
I wished so much I was in the city yesterday! I would have been chillin outside all night - near a bar of course.

Of course, I could have been stuck in the subway in the middle of some tunnel... At 4 PM, I think the subways are still OK. It would have been terrible if it had happened an hour or so later, when people are packed like sardines (most of them standing) on the real busy lines :eek:.

--
Holadem
 

Glenn Overholt

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Ok, I think I have it all figured out. While the power people (and others, it seems) point fingers at each other, I'd like to know what time your clock was at when you saw one that had stopped.

I figure that whatever power plant when down first would have the earliest time. I have heard some say it was at 4:03 EDT, which was way before 4:10 or so, and this would probably be before the '21 plants went down in 3 minutes".

Glenn
 

Jay H

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I think it hit Wayne, NJ around 4:11 because I was just powering off my PC when the power outage kind of did it for me :) My friend and I were preparing to go mountain biking and I normally leave at 4pm anyway.

What's with all this finger pointing? Who cares who's at fault?



Just learn from it!

Jay
 

Adam Lenhardt

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What's with all this finger pointing? Who cares who's at fault?

Just learn from it!
Nah! That'd be the responsible thing to do.:)

Fox News just had a disc jockey from Detroit on, who had been covering the outage. When O'Reilly commented about 22 arrests for looting in the city, he responded serious that (paraphrasing) "The thing you got to realize, Bill, is that that's usual for a Thursday night here."

That had me on the floor:)
 

Prentice Cotham

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I was pulling into the gas station yesterday as the radio station I was listening to went out. I thought that was odd. All the pumps were dead and all the traffic lights were dead. That's even more odd! People were extremely rude on the way home going two or three cars at a time at the lights. I was kicking myself for not filling up 10 minutes before.

It wasn't until later that night til we realized the extent of the power failure. I slept in the basement last night were it was cool.

Anyhoo, we got power back 25 hours later. I threw out the lunch meat we had. The gas stations here have such long lines that it would be a pain in the ass to try and get gas. I guess I'll try and do it in the morning. Hope everybody else had funny in the largest blackout ever!
 

Malcolm R

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I'd heard the entire domino effect took only 9 seconds, so everyone should have lost power nearly instantaneously.

We never lost power here, but I was just getting out of the shower when the lights dimmed around 4:10 p.m. Apparently the Vermont systems sensed trouble from the incoming NY connections and pinched them off before the VT state system was overloaded. "Exactly how they're supposed to work," according to VT power officials, and left them wondering why other states' systems did not react in a similar manner.
 

Seth_L

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It was a blast Prentice :rolleyes:. At least the water just came back on (power about 8 hours ago).
 

Tommy Ceez

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IM FINNALY BACK ON THE INTERNET!!!!!!

My story,
I very untypically left work on time and walked to the Borough Hall station. My train pulled in, opened the doors, and everything went dark. (Definition of surreal, a pitch black subway ststion in brooklyn) If the power had gone out 90seconds later I would have been stuck in a tube under the east river!
After loitering for a minute or two, the announcement was made to clear the station - now my escape route mode kicked in. (The problem with such mass confusion in the city is that people have absolutly no alternate travel plan so they stand around going "What do I do?")
I walked the appx. 6 blocks to the Brooklyn Bridge, over the bridge with a growing mass of humanity (that was me on TV)
After the bridge, through some of the largest crowds Ive ever seen I walked north to 23rd and Madison for the Bronx express bus (double time and not stopping once). Arrived on line for the bus at 600 (two hours into my trip). Waited on line until 700 and then stood on the bus for the next two hours as it crawled through traffic (the 23rd st stop is where the bus originates, it picked up NO ONE north of there).
Got home at 900 to my section of the Bronx where the lights were on.

Total travel time 5 hours (2 walking, 1 standing in line, and 2 standing on the bus, plus the walk home)

Lessons learned - ALWAYS CARRY CASH! Since the express bus is not MTA it was charging the 4 dollars - I had $5!
DUMP SPRINT AND GET A VERIZON CELL PHONE! - EVERY single person in Manhattan with cell reception was using a Verizon phone (as was the case on 9/11)

As for the "I think it would be cool to stand around drinking" - Those nutjobs were the ones who never realised that in a blackout THERE IS NO AMBIENT LIGHT IN MANHATTAN!!!! Have fun stumbeling over people!

All that and I was back to work today.

People! LEARN AN ALTERNAT EXIT STRATEGY!!!!!!

BTW it was a trip! Everyone was really cool (I guess when EVERYONE is in the same state of mind, has the same goal, and is experiencing EXACTLY the same thing, people just pull together.) NY is the love of my life and the place I despise most (at the same time, an entire life here will do that to you) but we have an incredible 8 million strong family bond when the going gets tough.
Consider this - If the rudest city in the US can pull together on two of the most stressful days ever than this is a GREAT fuckin country!!
 

Glenn Overholt

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Nice stories! They are always interesting to hear.

I was hoping with the time that someone would come up with something before 4:10, but the latest I heard is that it started in Ohio.

However, I'm going to laugh if anyone points the finger at the originating station, because the finger-pointing should go to every other station that got overloaded after that. Whatever safety devices they should have had in place to prevent a repeat of the earlier blackouts really screwed up.

And some say that it is going to happen no matter what they do. My answer is this - If that were true, then half of the US should have blacked out.

As for the Big Apple, I thought that that they would have set up an evacuation plan after 9/11, and don't understand why the buses just stopped. They could have filled up and formed a line out of town. Watching them sit there amid thousands of people was the strangest sight I have seen in a long time.

Hope to hear more stories!

Glenn
 

Keith Paynter

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The consequences of the power failure affected our workplace. Our point-of-sale system is nationally linked to our head office in Pickering, Ont. This has meant that for the last two days, employees have been forced back to old-fashioned handwritten bills, and manual calculation of taxes and trade-ins.

Rentals have been problematic because the rates we use are on the computer software, which makes establishing rentals very difficult. Hopefully the situation is resolved soon, but the backlog of paperwork is going to be overwhelming.
 

Ted Todorov

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Well since everyone has a tale to tell, here is mine:

I mainly had a terrible time without f@%king Verizon DSL all day Saturday
since the power came back at ~6:30 in the morning, but the power outage
itself was kind of romantic (or would have been except for my recent
knee surgery -- walking from Wall St. to West 75th St. was brutal).

It all started with the power going out as I was completely zoned into my programming. My "NO, NO, NO" was the only sound heard -- I dashed up the stairs to the computer room, relieved that all was well -- the UPS had kicked in. I went back down to find the floor practically deserted -- one of the last people left pointed to the east windows -- thick black smoke!! the building was on fire!! I quickly went downstairs -- and after a couple of minutes of confusion discovered the source of the smoke: my company's diesel generator had just kicked in... Back upstairs I went, called a friend who is always informed and heard that the blackout was all the way into Canada... After 30 minutes of necessary work in the computer room, at 4:45 I started the long walk home.

My very sore knee aside it was a beautiful night to have a candlelit dinner on our
deck (which we did), look at the moon and Mars, listen to a couple of our neighbors do
a beautiful O sole mio duet, and yell "we take requests" to the people
applauding from the surrounding darkness. Indeed a weekly party
mailing list I belong to put last night's experience very succinctly:

"NOTE: Because of the blackout, which last night delivered a glorious
vision of what life in New York could be like all the time, with
neighborly cooperation, car-free avenues, and spontaneous parties in
parks erupting with dance, song, and wild revelry, nonsensenyc will not
publish a complete list this week." It really did feel that way as I
was limping home -- more of a citywide party than a disaster.

I do profoundly regret not
having had a camera of some sort to document my journey home: just the
sight of the Brooklyn Bridge completely full of people walking home in
the beautiful afternoon sunlight, the bars where along I stopped for a
drink of water or to sit down, with people playing pool in the
candlelight, strangers becoming friends in normally empty midtown
plazas, a true community writ large being formed right before my eyes.
It was really a once in a lifetime filmmaking opportunity -- and it can
never be staged as fiction, the budget would be way to big, and nobody
would believe it anyway.

Ted

P.S.
As for the "I think it would be cool to stand around drinking" - Those nutjobs were the ones who never realised that in a blackout THERE IS NO AMBIENT LIGHT IN MANHATTAN!!!! Have fun stumbeling over people!
Um, hate to tell you, but yes there is (was), tons of light. I was hoping for a true starry night before moonrise, and there was still way too much ambient light for that. Once the superbright moon rose, it was really, really light outside.
 

Scott Merryfield

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However, I'm going to laugh if anyone points the finger at the originating station, because the finger-pointing should go to every other station that got overloaded after that. Whatever safety devices they should have had in place to prevent a repeat of the earlier blackouts really screwed up.
I agree wholeheartedly. Pointing the blame at any single power plant is silly. The entire power grid system's design is at fault here. No single plant failure should be able to cause such a large domino affect.

I manage the data and voice networks for a large health system in southeastern Michigan, so I have been very busy since the power went out. While each hospital and our main data center have generator backups, there was still a lot to deal with, such as making sure we could get additional deisel fuel deliveries for the generator, dealing with uninterruptible power supplies in wiring closets that fail, making sure equipment stays cool (not all a/c systems are on generator because of capacity issues), etc. Also, very few of the smaller clinics have generator backups, so that causes other issues.

It's been a busy couple of days, but things are getting back to normal. Now, hopefully I will be able to get some gasoline for my car -- the lines at gas stations have been crazy.
 

brentl

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"All the bread and water was sold out"

Power went down at 4;10 .... we(a&p) were sold out by 9p.m.!!

Brent
 

JoshF

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Ugh. It took 28 hours here in Manhattan, NYC. Power went back on last night around 8pm. What's more, we had no water.
 

MarkHastings

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DUMP SPRINT AND GET A VERIZON CELL PHONE!
Tommy, I have Verizon and definitely had better reception than most of my co-workers, but I heard (last night) on the news that Verizon had major outages with their service, 3 times on Thursday. My parents have Verizon and they said they couldn't even use their phone at one point and the phone actually crashed (i.e. like a computer) where they couldn't even turn it off (my dad had to yank the battery and put it back in to get it to do anything)

The Mayor (NY) was explaining that he understands how a cell phone company can be flooded like that when the power goes out, but he also said that these cell companies have got to find better ways to ensure cell phone reception during catastrophies in the future.

But yes, having a cell phone is becoming more and more of a necessity than a luxury.
 

Andrew Grall

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Fox News just had a disc jockey from Detroit on, who had been covering the outage. When O'Reilly commented about 22 arrests for looting in the city, he responded serious that (paraphrasing) "The thing you got to realize, Bill, is that that's usual for a Thursday night here."
Yup, gotta love Detroit.

One of the many reasons why we'll probably be moving back to the Milwaukee area in less than a year. Another reason being the general rudeness of people around here...
 

Jon_Are

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I was at work (in a hospital) when the juice disappeared. They announced that nobody could leave work until further notice. I ended up working from 7:00 a.m. until 10:00 p.m. with no A/C, very little lighting, and no running water. It was getting ugly, with the humidity, the heat, and the un-flushed toilets. Talk about a funk.

My power just came on this morning; I was without power for 37 hours.

And I missed my on-line HTF fantasy football draft! :angry:

Jon
 

Dave Mack

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Was crazy! I work backstage at a (currently empty) B'way theatre and when the power dipped, all the alarms went off and the emergency gen. kicked in which made the house lights go on full blast. I locked up, ran into some stagehands next door and we went over to a bar on 9th ave. and started knocking 'em back. If NYC was gonna go, we wanted some BUDS in us 1st. Later while walking up to 100th st. in the dark, it looked just like Escape From N.Y... Very medieval. And the delis were ripping everybody off after the supermarkets closed...

VERY strange nite... :) D
 

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