A massive power outage has hit the Eastern Seaboard. As always Glenn Reynolds is on case with links and reports from the scene. It appears that Manhattan is currently without power.
It’s easy to jump to conclusions and blame this on terrorism, but even if it isn’t related to terrorism, this shows just how vulnerable we really are to major disruptions of our power grid…
UPDATE: FoxNews is showing the FDR turnpike, and it’s a massive of cars and people like nothing else. Thousands of New Yorkers are stuck in the subways – I’d hate to be one of them. NYC mayor Michael Bloomberg is saying that this is a natural problem and not related to terrorism.
UPDATE: Here’s some interesting background information on the 1965 Northeast blackout that is quite similar to this blackout. One wonders if the causes weren’t similar…
UPDATE: It appears as though a lightning strike may be behind the power outage.
One would guess that a situation like this would command the immediate presence of the nation’s President. Oh wait! This just in! Bush can’t be bothered to deal with the current crisis because the timing interferes with his San Diego re-election fundraiser.
Chalk one up for the strengths of deregulation! Woo-hoo!
How many drastic utilities failures does it take before utility deregulation is seen as a bad idea?
Ah Mark, able to leap to massively foolish assumptions in a single bound. Realistically what would the President do in this situation. It’s not terrorism, there’s nothing he could do to rectify the situation, and local authorities were already doing everything they could. The President was briefed on the situation, and there’s no need for him to change his schedule for something he can do nothing about.
Nor does this have anything to do with power deregulation – this was very likely an issue of a power usage spike that caused some kind of technical flaw to create a cascading failure of the Eastern power net. It could be something as simple as the failure of a single piece of equipment that caused the whole net to collapse.
Before one starts making wild allegations it’s best to have some idea as to what is actually going on.
Well Chet, it looks like that if the government hadn’t deregulated lightning this outage would never have happened…
Jay, if Bush had signed onto Kyoto, then there would be no global warming, which obviously to me created the lightening strike that shut down the east coast.
I feel quailified to say this because I have no background in weather, science, electricity, climatology, etc. But it just HAS to be Bush’s fault, doesn’t it?
Now where’s my tinfoil hat…..
Agreed James, what the hell is Shrub supposed to do about this?
Anyway, about the lightning: http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/08/14/power.outage/index.html
Back to square one…
Oh goddamnit forgot the tags.
You should really invest in an edit post option, it couldn’t be that hard to code…
Government regulation is supposed to be about ensuring minimum saftey and reliability standards.
Deregulation clearly allowed for Niagra Mohawk to get away with a system so poorly designed that an outage at a single point of failure could knock out power to several states and provinces.
Would that have happened under regulation? Who can say – it depends on the regulations. But under none at all it’s obvious that companies will be only as safe and as reliable as they can get away with most of the time.
Chet: So you know exactly what caused the outage? And you know that some regulation was removed thus causing the problem?
Since you appear to have godlike powers over space and time, would you mind telling me next weeks lottery numbers?
The fact remains that it’s foolish to try to jump to conclusions and blame this on deregulation when A: we don’t know what caused the outage and B: it could very well have nothing to do with the current regulatory climate.
Then again, when one lives in their own partisan bubble common sense seems to fall aside to political dogma.
So you know exactly what caused the outage?
Well, you apparently do. Or didn’t you say “this was very likely an issue of a power usage spike that caused some kind of technical flaw to create a cascading failure of the Eastern power net.”
Since you appear to have godlike powers over space and time
Naw, just common sense and powers of observation. All you need, really. (Who plays the lotto, anyway? It’s like a tax on idiots.)
Then again, when one lives in their own partisan bubble common sense seems to fall aside to political dogma.
Partisan bubble? I voted for Bush, you know. Shows how well you know your opponents, I guess.
All I was doing was stating the blindingly obvious. Clearly a safeguard failed somewhere causing an outage that spread across the whole of the Hiawatha-Mohawk power network. The same thing happened in 1965 and the results were one thing. Now where that failure originated I’ve no clue, but it hardly takes Sherlock Holmes to figure out what happened generally.
Here’s what you said:
In order to prove that assertion, you would have to know conclusively that there was a regulation on the books that would have prevented this, and you’d have to show that this regulation was removed as part of a deregulation. In order to know that, you’d have to know exactly what failed and why. There is no way you could know that information therefore your statement is clearly one made from bias rather than logic.
But anyone in public policy can tell you that’s rarely what regulations do. The kind of rules struck down in deregulation are the rules that create monopolies, impose barriers to entry, and prevent new companies from providing services. (See my post on this from today for why government control is economically boneheaded based on the fundamental rules of supply and demand.)
Well, I’ll certainly give you credit for that one. 🙂 Unfortunately I don’t have godlike powers over space and time, so I can’t reach into your mind and know who you voted for. (And believe me, if I had that kind of power I’d be sitting on a beach in Sydney right now slurping mojitos next to a supermodel who thinks I’m the best thing sinced sliced bread while my private jet is being fueled up… But I digress…)
However, your logic still is flawed, and one of my two biggest pet peeves are sloppy logic and bad public policy. Increasing government control over such a key industry would only combine the two.
You don’t believe in bad public policy??? Seems like you don’t believe in public policy at all, only private policy that affects the public.
Well, that sucked. Was sitting by my pc at work (LI) when the screen went blank and lights went out. Drove home at 6pm, though, cause I knew there would be mad traffic if I left right away. There was no traffic (from LI to Brooklyn)at 6pm, but driving through streets without traffic lights was an interesting experience (though not as bad as I initially thought it would be). My parents ended up crossing the bklyn bridge on foot. Dad was lucky to grab a yellow cab in downtown bklyn. My mom ended up walking for hours and hours with her co workers, till one of the co worker’s sister got in touch with them and gave her a ride.
I think the real reason for the outage wast that skynet took over. The end is nigh!
Well, that explains the menacing yet attractive blonde that kept asking me "Where is John Connor?"…
🙂
Power failures and election chaos in the US, poor economy, encroaching “soft fascism” in Europe…
John Connor isn’t who we should be worried about, when we all know that it’s John Galt who is responsible… 🙂