Hi Rick,

Yesterday afternnon in Sydney the CBD (Central Business District) was blacked out for 2.5 hours. Sydney Electricity has initially explained that an explosion in one of Sydney Electricity's sub-station caused the shutdown.

Sydney Electricity explained "we were totally surprised that this occurred ...it hasn't happened to us before on this scale"

ie Hello?..where's the contingency plan.

In fact, businesses are screaming that they have lost alot of money because of the blackout and are already asking for compensation.

The city was in absolute chaos. 100's of people caught in lifts etc, etc.

Hang on a minute - Where was the businesses' contingency plans?

The nightly TV and radio reporters quickly got onto the story. They all hoped that this wouldn't happen in September 2000 when the Olympics was on! Well,at least we have SOME time to plan eh?

Gee,and here I'm thinking I'm glad Australia are one of the leaders in the world for Y2k!

Kind regards Dorian

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

Answers

On the hard-drive of an administrative assistant's PC? In file folders in a cabinet in her office?

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

Interesting reading, don't want to read into it more than is there. Don't know what it means except that it wasn't a heat wave and it wasn't an ice storm.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/9910/13/pageone/pageone4.html

http://www.smh.com.au/news/9910/14/national/national13.html

http://www.news.com.au/news_content/aus/4326678.htm

http://www.smh.com.au/news/9910/13/pageone/pageone3.html

http://www.smh.com.au/news/9910/13/pageone/pageone2.html

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

Do you all have squirrels in Australia? Hey, speaking of that, do squirrels actually eat through powerlines causing widespread blackouts? Or is that just a joke?

-- Anonymous, October 13, 1999

No, it's not a joke Norm. I am directly aware of refineries which have been brought down by a single squirrel. We're talking about a facility that refines 350 thousand barrels of crude oil per day. That oil is worth 8 million bucks per day just in raw cost, never mind the products it makes and it can all be stopped by one little nut chewer. Kinda like life here in the US of A. In this case our squirrel is named Kospinem.

-- Anonymous, October 14, 1999

Speaking of which I heard they were old computer systems that were brought down by a single bug crawling around in the inards

-- Anonymous, October 14, 1999