Just caught the tail end of a news report on the radio that mentioned a substation exploding and 45000 are still without electricity. Since I didn't catch the whole story, thought I'd throw it out here and see if any of youz guyz have????? I think they said in Ohio, but not sure.

-- Other Lisa (LisaWard2@aol.com), January 17, 1999

Answers

How about Olney Maryland? just saw a reference to it in email... though I've seen nothing solid on the net, yet. Olney is one of the outer northern 'burbs of DC...

Arlin [who stays south of the border (that's the MD/VA border) as much as possible]

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), January 18, 1999.

Which I suppose is AKA the Line??

(As in Mason/Dixon??)

c

-- Chuck, night driver (rienzoo@en.com), January 18, 1999.

Hi Chuck,

No, actually the Mason/Dixon line is somewhat north of the border...the real division is along the lines of liberal/conservative - MD tends to be left of center and VA tends to be moderately conservative except for the Northern Virginia DC suburbs...though even here there are a fair number of us conservative types.

Arlin

-- Arlin H. Adams (ahadams@ix.netcom.com), January 18, 1999.

The article you refer to was a explosion at one of the electric substations during the repair from damage due to ice. No mention of Y2K in article (nothing new) but they speculate it was due to age of system along with surge due to repair. Who knows.

-- Greg (skipy@ix.netcom.com), January 19, 1999.

Again, understand that not evrything is Y2K related itself; particularly when recounting utility trouble-shooting.

However, each systemic failure stemming from a single fault - regardless of whether that fault itself is y2K related or weather-related (as here, for example) - is an indication of how rapidly and widespread any single fault coming from y2K will spread through the system.

And if somebody wants to "fix on failure" - how will their troubleshooting teams know which failure to fix first? What caused the "first" failure, and how do you isolate and troubleshoot it from all the other (hundreds, thousands, dozens ?) of simultaneous failures?

Which failure do you fix first? And how do you find out if the first repair worked? Will subsequent (third,fourth, fifth, ....) failures - that can't get fixed until number one is fixed, cause the first items to trip again? Or worse, burn out completely each time?

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), January 19, 1999.

I live in northern VA not too far from the bulk of the power outages. The real story isn't the substation explosion that knocked power out for 70,000 people. The real story is that there was a bad ice storm here last Thursday/Friday, and there are still people in Montgomery County, MD who are without power due to the storm, although all service is supposed to be restored by midnight tonight. The residents were tolerant for a day or so and many coped by staying at hotels or with friends who did have power. I think their patience is gone now and there has been some talk of suing the power company.

-- Melinda (gieriscm@hotmail.com), January 19, 1999.