[EAS] No Power

[Bill Ruck]

Adrienne,

Sutro Tower has 100% generators for all tenants, broadcast and two-way 
including NCFCC 450.0375 MHz repeater and W6VSY 70 cm repeater.

Mount San Bruno is American Tower which has abandoned generators and not 
all stations have their own generators.

After the '89 'quake most TV stations now have a studio generator.  Some 
but not all SF radio stations have a studio generator.

Beyond that who knows?

Even if someone has a good battery in their laptop how much of the 
Internet will work after a long power outage is unknown.  My own Sonic 
fiber has a backup battery that may last for a while, but . . .

I don't believe that 100% of the cell sites have generators and I don't 
believe that the cell companies have enough generators to power all 
their sites.  The cell companies have fought mandatory backup power.

Personally I believe that PG&E will exceed all expectations of negative 
Public Relations if they do shut down most of the state for days.

At the moment on the west side of San Francisco winds are calm.

Bill Ruck
Curmudgeon
San Francisco

P.S.  We cook with gas, have a gas water heater, but the gas furnace 
needs power.  And we do have a "catering" stove ready.  Flashlights have 
been checked with good batteries.

C&CSF gets its own power via their own transmission lines from Hetch 
Hetchy but local distribution is PG&E.  And this outage might help C&CSF 
move more towards taking over PG&E.  Although in this case "Do you want 
your electricity to be as reliable as the MUNI?"

On 10/9/2019 5:33 PM, Adrienne Abbott wrote:
> Planned outages are being postponed until this evening for many areas that
> were scheduled to go dark at noon today. Fortunately, many Bay Area
> residents are somewhat ready, armed with flashlights, batteries, emergency
> kits and radios because there's such an emphasis on earthquake readiness in
> the communities. This might be a hopefully harmless exercise in disaster
> preparedness for most families. Daughter has the disaster kit, w/radio and
> batteries, papers, barbeque, generator, food, dog crate and dog all set to
> go.
> 
> Does anyone know what the broadcasters are doing? Have the stations moved to
> the Sutro Tower facilities? Is anyone going wall-to-wall once the power to
> SF/Oakland/San Jose is cut? Will they stream to the Internet?
> 
> Any guesses on how long the Internet/cell service will last? Wanna start a
> pool?
> 
> And do you think that CalEMA might rethink their decision to eliminate Ham
> radio from emergency ops after the outages?
> Adrienne
> 
> Adrienne Abbott, W6BCY
> Nevada EAS Chair
>