[EAS] No Power

[Sean Donelan]

On Wed, 9 Oct 2019, 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.

Blackouts are the easiest emergencies because there is little
other damage to deal with. People stuck in elevators and traffic 
accidents are usually the biggest issues during blackouts. Recovery is 
straight foward when the power is switched back on.

A scheduled, pre-announced blackout is like an open-book disaster exam.

There will be a few broadcasters off the air because they don't have a 
generator or it doesn't work. Some neighborhoods will loose cable or 
telephone service if the pole batteries don't hold their charge.

The biggest telecommunications problem during blackouts is lack of power 
at the customer premise.  Cell phone batteries don't last, cable and DSL 
modems need power, etc.

Same problem with broadcasters transmitting, but the public having working 
radios/TVs to receive because their batteries don't last.  Now you wish 
you still had newspapers publishing paper editions and newsstands on 
every corner.

Paper newspapers don't require batteries to use :-)

All the major Internet data centers and telephone switching offices (not 
cell towers) in California have days of generator backup, and built 
according to critical facility earthquake standards.  In catastrophes, 
its the outside plant, backhaul fiber and utlity pole damage that takes a 
long time to repair.  For example, hurricanes damage the cell tower 
antennas or knock them out out-of-alignment over a large area.

None of that damage happens during a power blackout.  During a blackout, 
its mostly about driving trucks to every location and keeping generators 
running and batteries charged.

Being prepared for a major earthquake makes it easy to respond to 
a blackout.  On the other hand, if a city can't handle a pre-announced 
blackout, it is not prepared to handle a major earthquake.