I have the power!
Oct. 9th, 2019 07:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
hrjSomehow, in my peculiarly-shaped news-verse online, I missed the point yesterday when we moved from "PG&E is contemplating selected deliberate power outages to prevent wildfires" to "OMG!!! ALL OF CALIFORNIA'S POWER IS GOING TO BE OFF FOR FIVE DAYS!!!" Except, not really. My suspicion was immediately that they were pitching a scenario well beyond the worst case so that we'd all be grateful when the outages were much more limited and mostly affecting more sparsely populated (but more heavily vegetated) rural areas.
Of course, given Bay Area demographics, there are a lot of commuters in those more sparsely populated more rural areas. But in the grand California tradition of "we'll make ordinary infrastructure security look like a victorious emergency response" Cal Trans managed to get backup generators installed to cover the ventilation in key commuter tunnels (and why is this not a standard feature, in place since forever?), and BART will carry on as usual (my guess is that they have their own electrical systems that are operated separately from the PG&E customer distribution lines that pose a fire danger).
So when I cracked my eyes open this morning and saw that my power was still on, I checked the traffic app to see what the tunnel status was, and ended up having one of the smoothest commutes of the last month. (Because, of course, other people had decided to stay off the roads for whatever reason.)
At work, the PG&E cautions got blended in with some power interruption notices specific to our job site (relating to construction and demolition) so it's all, "Well, here are our power switching protocols and facility priorities. Be aware and cope."
Am I prepared for this sort of thing? Look: a deliberate, planned power outage is orders of magnitude less impact than an earthquake. No interruption of power and gas. No interruption of routine transportation. No physical damage to worry about. Worst case scenario? It goes on long enough for my chest freezer to start warming up and I have to think about turning the meat into formats that are less perishable. No, I don't have a home generator, because its the sort of thing that I'd need so infrequently that it could be more hazardous to use it than to be without it (maintenance, proper operation, supervision, etc.). Save the worries for those with more tech-dependent lives than me (refrigerated medicines, powered medical equipment, mobility issues).
Of course, given Bay Area demographics, there are a lot of commuters in those more sparsely populated more rural areas. But in the grand California tradition of "we'll make ordinary infrastructure security look like a victorious emergency response" Cal Trans managed to get backup generators installed to cover the ventilation in key commuter tunnels (and why is this not a standard feature, in place since forever?), and BART will carry on as usual (my guess is that they have their own electrical systems that are operated separately from the PG&E customer distribution lines that pose a fire danger).
So when I cracked my eyes open this morning and saw that my power was still on, I checked the traffic app to see what the tunnel status was, and ended up having one of the smoothest commutes of the last month. (Because, of course, other people had decided to stay off the roads for whatever reason.)
At work, the PG&E cautions got blended in with some power interruption notices specific to our job site (relating to construction and demolition) so it's all, "Well, here are our power switching protocols and facility priorities. Be aware and cope."
Am I prepared for this sort of thing? Look: a deliberate, planned power outage is orders of magnitude less impact than an earthquake. No interruption of power and gas. No interruption of routine transportation. No physical damage to worry about. Worst case scenario? It goes on long enough for my chest freezer to start warming up and I have to think about turning the meat into formats that are less perishable. No, I don't have a home generator, because its the sort of thing that I'd need so infrequently that it could be more hazardous to use it than to be without it (maintenance, proper operation, supervision, etc.). Save the worries for those with more tech-dependent lives than me (refrigerated medicines, powered medical equipment, mobility issues).
no subject
Date: 2019-10-09 09:57 pm (UTC)So at least they were on the right track. I'm laughing at their project team probably going... "PG&E is doing what? NOW?!?!? They couldn't wait a year? OMG, we were so close."
no subject
Date: 2019-10-10 04:37 pm (UTC)