Joe:
May 14, 2012 marks the 16th anniversary of the great blackout of Delmarva.
Let's refresh the memories of some of the folks about this:
It was on that day at approx 10:12 AM that the power went out over most of Delmarva, and stayed out for most of the workday.
It was a Tuesday, a bright sunny day, clear blue skies, slight breeze, and temperatures in the 50's. Too cool to require any sort of air conditioning, and just warm enough that one could make do without needing any heating systems working.
Ideal conditions to conduct a test of emergency preparedness if you wanted to pick a day to do so. I'm not saying that this event was carried out on purpose, but the results are the same: It was an ideal day.
We live in an area that can experience hurricanes, ice storms, earthquakes, and even tornadoes. Not to mention the possibility of solar flares, or terrorists acts that could cripple the power grid for at least a short duration.
The outage of May 14, 1996 occured due to a series of circuit breakers tripping out at a major power substation in Glascoe, Delaware. Once the power was out, it takes more effort to restore than just merely flipping the switches back on. You see, things like motors, compressors, and the like require 6 times the energy to get started than they do to keep running. Even incandescent light bulbs need more juice to light up when first turned on. During the normal course of any given day, motors are starting and stopping all the time. But they are never all trying to start up at once. What would have happened if they just flipped all those breakers back on? They would have tripped out again right away.
The power has to be restored in small areas gradually, to be able to handle the starting loads. When dealing with an area as large as the entire Delmarva Peninsula, this procedure takes hours to accomplish. This is why it took them over 6 hours to get everything restored to normal operation.
Here are a few things to ask/consider:
1) Where were you on that day, and what were you doing?
2) How did the outage affect your activities, and what did you do about it?
3) Was there any backup power available where you were, and did it function properly?
4) What changes (if any) have you made to be prepared for a similar event in the future?
Now the 4th question postulated here is a very important one. For several days after this event, news stories surfaced about how backup systems, generators, etc. failed to operate or provide adequate power during this brief period.
So here is an opportunity to see how you would deal with an outage. Next weekend, try this experiement: Go to your main electrical panel, and switch off the main breaker. Leave it off for most of the day. How would you be able to handle the loss of utility power? Do you have a stand-by or backup generator? Is it properly serviced and ready to go? Do you have sufficient fuel for it to operate over a long period of time? Have you tested it lately?
If you do this exercise at a time of your own choosing, you can make repairs if needed, go get more fuel, or ice for your fridge, or draw water ahead of time, etc. If you wait until power fails again before acting, will your systems handle the task?
If you don't have a generator, are you prepared to deal with your fridge and freezer warming up? Do you have sufficient water on hand?
We have had storms on Delmarva like Isabel in 2003, and Irene last summer. My power went out for 16 hours during Irene. Others had no power loss at all!
There was an ice storm in the mid-1990s where the worst of it left a swath that went across Tabot county to Milford and beyond. Several of the rural areas were without power for over a week, and that was in winter with freezing temperatures! While Salisbury also had lots of ice, things here were not as bad as Talbot county, MD and Kent county, DE.
We take things like reliable electricity for granted most of the time. But power grids can and do fail from time to time, whether by a faulty circuit breaker, or bad weather, or ...?
Are you prepared?
Ken Twining
Parsonsburg, MD
DelMarVa's Premier Source for News, Opinion, Analysis, and Human Interest Contact Publisher Joe Albero at alberobutzo@wmconnect.com or 410-430-5349
4 comments:
wow, wonder how people surived before the invention of electrucity! guess it would be the end of the world! Maybe I should watch more of that tv show on the nuts who prepare to survive doomsday!
As usual I was totally unprepared.We spent the day in the park.We bought Chinese carryouts from the place in the strip mall behind the Royal Farms on Snow Hill Rd.All we really had to do was keep the refrigerator shut.I felt for those running businesses.
Oh I remember clearly THAT day! We too were unprepared so thankfully it didn't last too terribly long. I do remember hearing reports of alot of people running out of gas on the side of the road since all gas stations had to close.
I could manage for a few days without electricity. The worst for us is since we have a septic is not being able to flush the toliets. When Irene was predicted I filled up both of our tubs so we could flush I have about an acre pond so we could haul water if neccessary for that function. I also bought an extra bag of charcoal and of course stored some drinking water.
At that time my husband worked at the Indian River Power Plant of Delmarva Power. He was up on a ladder changing a light bulb in the industrial area...had turned off the breaker to do so per OSHA. About the same time that his helper turned the breaker back on, there was a "pop" noise and within 5 seconds the whole, extremely noisy power plant was shut down and silent. He said he looked at his helper and said "There's no f*cking way!!!!" ...that them turning back on the breaker had caused the shut down. This was the first time such a shut down had every happened in the many years he'd worked there before this.
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