Way OT: Too close to home!

musicvid10 wrote on 6/7/2010, 11:31 PM
A major power substation exploded ten blocks from my house at 6:30 this evening. We felt the concussion more than heard it. Lots of thick black smoke (pcb's?). 30,000+ spent the evening in the dark. Neighborhood was like downtown Baghdad. Had to drive six miles to find some candles. Got my internet business done on my cell phone. Power is up now. Thankful it wasn't worse.

Comments

TheHappyFriar wrote on 6/8/2010, 5:22 AM
did you loose your windows?

take it from someone who looses power several times a year: glow sticks are good for the kids: they don't burn down the house. :)
YesMaestro wrote on 6/8/2010, 6:36 AM
Wow. Was anyone injured? Reminds me of something that almost happened to me. Back in the mid 80's, one morning when I was driving to college, an explosion happened about half a mile behind me. Turns out that it was a Midas shop that blew up and I was sitting in traffic next to it about 5 min before.

Paul
ushere wrote on 6/9/2010, 4:52 PM
hf, think yourself luck - we get outages at least a couple of times a month (NOT counting notified ones as they replace rotting / white ant'ed poles).

have ups on nearly every computer - thankfully my old 'save often' mentality is still pretty active, so i haven't lost anything in the last few years.

the ups on my editing system lasts 4 minutes, which is enough time to exit gracefully, as i'm going to do now.....
John_Cline wrote on 6/9/2010, 6:35 PM
The power company here in Albuquerque, PNM, is consistently rated as the best in the country in terms of up-time. I just checked the UPS log on the server which has been on 24/7 for years, the last power "blackout" was in 2004 and it lasted all of 3 seconds.
Former user wrote on 6/9/2010, 7:15 PM
Where we live (central Louisiana) the power glitches (or browns out) enough to reset everything in the house (except for what's attached to a couple of 2K UPS') at least twice a week, and goes out for 10 minutes or more almost every month. The last big thunderstorm that came through the power was out for almost 24 hours. When Hurricane Gustav came through the power was out 3 days and with Rita we were out 5 days. Katrina mostly avoided us, but the power was still out 3 days.

I have a 6500 watt generator and six 5 gallon gas containers (with sta-bil added) on stand-by. If I don't use the gas within a month or so, I put it in the car.

I find it ironic that when two recent short power outages happened I was editing videos for the local power company ;-)

Jim