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Southern California In The Dark
A major blackout has struck Southern California leaving many Los Angeles residents in the dark.
According to the latest reports as many as 1.4 million people are in the dark and the power could remain out for up to 20 hours in some areas, though most should be restored more quickly. The blackout has also impacted areas of Arizona and Baja California.
Naturally there is speculation as to the cause of the blackout and immediate rumors of possible sabotage and/or terrorism but in all likelihood this is just the result of an overtaxes system and a hot summer day.
10 Responses to “Southern California In The Dark”
And the slide into third worldism continues.
I’m sure it’s government’s fault. If we didn’t have any utility regulators then the power would always stay on.
Yes, Barky, this is clearly a regulatory success story. Think of the CO2 we saved.
No, no, no, it’s the fault of the “Dirty F***en Hippies”, if it wasn’t for them we would have Nukular Power Plants on every other street corner.
I am bemused how some can turn any topic into a political attack topic LOL
It doesn’t get much more political than the fact that someone’s relative on a ventilator could have died because some corporate executive decided that big executive bonuses were more important than maintaining and upgrading the power grid.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/2011/sep/08/californias-worst-power-failure-started-arizona-de/
If you actually read something about the event, the blackout started when equipped was being upgraded. That created a cascade that knocked power plants and other parts of the grid off line.
However, I guess that if Arizona had filled out more forms and had more hearings, then the issue with the substation would have never occurred.
Power utilities are one of the most regulated industries in the world. How is adding more inspectors or having more regulatory hearings going to make things better?
SuperD,
Ever heard of the concept of REDUNDANCY.
The fact that one power substation going down can take the entire Southern California down with it is the biggest indictment of the incompetence of the corporate management I have seen in quite a while.
There is a perfectly good reason for this…
We aint perfect.
Sometimes even the best designed systems fail for reason we were unable to predict.
Like a worker upgrading a subsystems on a planned schedule.