10 days to get electric to 350,000 in Buffalo? Are we a 3rd world country?

[Bonobo]

Is it "normal" for an advanced country to take 10 days to get electricity back to a major city or is this a sign that we have slipped closer to being a 3rd world nation? Is it because Katrina lowered our expectations through the floor? is it directly attributable to the weakening of the National Guard?

[Captain Hilts]

1. Aren't Pennsylvania and Ontario helping? Virginia? Maryland?? Ohio?

[Bonobo]

2. Hey! How 'bout those Mets tonight! Mookie was one of my favorites.

But I didn't understand your comment. Shhh...

[Captain Hilts]

11. With major outages there are plans for other regions to help, such as...

during the big winter icestorm in Quebec, Hurricane Isabel in VA and NC...etc.

Virginia Power people restored power to my friends in Rhode Island after Hurricane Bob.

They've got cooperative agreements, so, why no help to Buffalo?

Mookie and his lovely wife, Rosa were in the stands of the game this evening! Good to see the Mook! I saw him play in Norfolk and he followed me to Toronto. BIG win tonight!

[gulfcoastliberal]

3. Deregulation... there's a reason FDR regulated utilities... if only we got

TVA-style systems nationwide...

[Robbien]

4. I believe cost cutting is one of the major reasons

Very little infrastructure maintenance work along with a smaller labor force asked to do more with less.

'Third World Country' is about right.

[Webster Green]

5. Sounds about right to me..

Lots of lines are down. Snow, downed trees, branches and debris have to be removed.

Some customers will get power sooner than that, but it is a daunting task.

That's not to say that we aren't rapidly becoming a third world country though.

[spacelady]

6. There are still pockets of people on the Gulf coast that have no utilities

So, yes we are possibly even 4th world country.

[petronius]

7. It seems long, but not out of the ordinary range

I've never lived in a snowy area, but I picture a fairly comprehensive devestation of the network. It's not like flooding, where ground-level transformers and suchlike are damaged but the lines are still present - in this case I'd bet that a large percentage of the powerlines aren't there anymore.

My wife grew up in the northeast, and she says that day to weeks after a blizzard isn't an unusual time for full restoration.

[Solo_in_MD]

8. Not uncommon in MD to have isolated areas take that long

after a major storm.

Remote area, hamlets, etc have a lot of long lines that can be taken down by falling trees etc. That takes time to repair, esp if poles are down as well. In newer areas, the underground line lessen that, but there isn't much new around Buffalo.

I live in an urban area these days, but when I get back to Calif, I will much more rural. The house has a cutover point and a generator will follow.

[Dr.Phool]

9. No wonder the Bills lost to Detroit.

They didn't have any juice.

[Botany]

10. Understandable

you don't just splice the wires together w/ duct tape

[RamboLiberal]

12. How about NYC this summer - was it Queens that was out

for well over a week and Con Ed had no friggin' reasonable explanation? I've noted all over the country including my own area that the power companies even for normal thunderstorms are very slow in many cases to restore power within a reasonable amount of time.

[Rex]

13. Crumbling infrastructure

no end in sight.

[sakabatou]

14. I remember the blackout that took out the west coast

Mid 90s I believe. Took less than 24 hours to correct.

[havocmom]

Big difference between just blackouts due to gird manipulation

and massive amounts of poles being downed by wind and heavy snow

[sakabatou]

17. Ah

[magellan]

15. I wouldn't kick

Kissimmee Utility lost service to 100% of its customers -- about 70,000 -- after hurricane Charley in '04. It took six days for power to be restored to us in the hinterlands, and that was with help from out of state crews. Some customers went without for 7-10 days. Getting five times that many back online in 10 days in Buffalo with all the damage they've got is a mammoth feat.

If anyone sees a guy (or gal) out there working to put the lights back on, offer them a cup of coffee and a thank-you. They're working their fannies off.

[RB TexLa]

16. sounds pretty normal

[hogwyld]

18. It's a Rovian plot

To manipulate the Democratic vote! :tinfoilhat: If it was in a RW stronghold, he'd call out the INS, NatGuard, FBI, CIA, NSA, and all the other acronyms.

[TahitiNut]

19. The difference between business and government: "excess capacity."

Today, businesses run on "just in time" and "no excess capacity" principles. This is one of the reasons space is leased rather than owned. This is why warehouses are smaller and smaller. Inventory is cost just lying there without generating income. Paying workers to produce goods that can't be immediately sold is a 'sin' in business today - so workers get "warehoused" on the street. This is also another way of 'externalizing' costs - businesses are paying the lowest unemployment insurance rates since WW2. Training in the high tech era? Workers must get it themselves - as opposed to, say, 35 years ago when all companies paid for an average of 2 weeks of classes per year for each high tech worker.

The downside of this business 'philosophy' is that no business is prepared to deal with catastrophes or emergencies. They have "business interruption" insurance ... another way of externalizing costs.

Government, however, and especially a military force, is all about disaster preparedness. Public utilities, when run like a business, are not prepared to recover from Katrinas or early season snow storms or even regional blackouts. The lines, transformers, poles, stanchions, maintenance equipment, and work force just aren't there. Thus, the customer bears the burden of no power - particularly when it's needed most - cold weather. The argument is that the customer would have to pay increased rates ... but there's really nothing to demonstrate empirically that the "savings" are actually passed on to the consumer. Clearly, the cost in terms of deaths and disease and suffering far exceed the smaller costs of excess capacity.

This, imho, is one of the core reasons that the whole notion of running government like a business is a fraud - a fiction and a bankrupt attitude. The whole reason these corrupt bastards even push for such crap is the enormous private profits that accrue when the public treasury is open to unconstrained spending when an emergency is even declared -- and opened for a longer time, too.

[Solon]

20. Our power here in the midwest was out for 6 days, in July of this....

year. To be honest, it was unprecedented, lived here ALL my life, and usually, if the power is knocked out from a storm, it lasted a day, if that. Hell, even during the floods of '93, we had power for at least 12 hours a day(rolling blackouts).

[TrogL]

21. How long did it take Canadian cities to get their infrastructure back?

Fort Erie and Port Colborne got hit as well.