Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!rutgers!sri-unix!hplabs!hp-sdd!ucsdhub!sdcsvax!nosc!humu!uhmanoa!bob From: bob@uhmanoa.UUCP Newsgroups: sci.misc Subject: Re: James Burke (what a real blackout is like) Message-ID: <254@uhmanoa.UUCP> Date: Tue, 17-Feb-87 12:57:55 EST Article-I.D.: uhmanoa.254 Posted: Tue Feb 17 12:57:55 1987 Date-Received: Thu, 19-Feb-87 07:21:27 EST References: <2818@udenva.UUCP> <7008@ut-sally.UUCP> <937@mips.UUCP> <3083@j.cc.purdue.edu> <944@mips.UUCP> <3266@j.cc.purdue.edu> Reply-To: bob@uhmanoa.UUCP (Bob Cunningham) Distribution: na Organization: Hawaii Institute of Geophysics Lines: 109 Summary: Hurricane Iwa and blackout of 1984 >>... The point is that even >>a catastrophic event doesn't destroy the "technology matrix" - electricity >>would still have been a well-known phenomenon even if the New York blackout >>had (quite frankly, unimaginably) lasted for weeks. > >To map this into the New York blackout example: yes, electricity would >continue to be an observable and controllable physical entity, in spite >of the [extended] blackout. However, things like turbines and generators >and power distribution equipment are technological items that *will* fail, >sooner or later, and will thus require human intervention for maintenance. >It is these items which will NOT "keep working the same way forever" if >they become "bits of it that you don't understand". Unimaginable as as an extended blackout might seem, such things have happened. Here's a little story that actually involves some "forgotten" technology, too. On Thanksgiving evening 1984, Hurricane Iwa---essentially without warning---hit the islands of Kauai and Oahu, destroying major portions of the electrical grids on both islands and knocking out all electrical generation. It was several days before power was restored to portions of Honolulu (incidentally, the 11th most populous city in the United States), several weeks before power was completely restored. One of the reasons it took so long was that all of the generators were designed to be "jump-started" from another running generator on the grid, and no one knew how to bootstrap up a generator all by itself. The whole story is rather too long to go into here, but here are some of the key points... There was no satellite meteorological coverage for the central Pacific, because the GOES East satellite had failed, and the GOES West had been moved over to cover the Atlantic...which the Weather Service figured was more important. Weather observations from ships told of a strong hurricane developing west of the islands, but a military reconnaisance flight sent out on Thanksgiving day failed to accurately locate the storm. There was no historical precedence for the path it took that led right to the population centers. In the afternoon, winds started rising, and the Weather Service issued a Hurricane Watch, then quickly a Warning, but still didn't have a precise fix on Iwa, nor accurate information on speed or direction. Early in the evening, after dark the winds started gusting well above 60 mph, and the electrical grid went down, surprising the electrical utilities who had taken no precautions to isolate any of their systems...taking down all their generators. [This could be a separate story in itself, but suffice it to say that the Civil Defense Emergency Broadcast system didn't work. Besides all the TV stations, all the radio stations---except one--- went off the air that night. The single radio station that had an operating emergency generator was running "on automatic", playing religious music.] By the next day, one or two other radio stations were up (and the religious station had hastily converted to all-news), but power was still out...remaining out for days. The first thing people missed was water, the water distribution system being driven by electrical pumps...though some places that had gravity feed from tanks above in the hills were lucky for a while. Traffic was a shambles since no traffic lights were working...though that became less of a problem over the next day or so since no gas stations were pumping and people realized that they were stuck with just whatever gasoline they happened to have in the tanks of their cars, and started being very careful about how they used that up. Food in refrigerators and freezers spoiled. Long lines developed at grocery stores as people tried to buy more food...and clerks had to add up by hand. Most resturants stayed closed; the few that opened---cooking with gas---soon closed again as the city gas system began losing pressure. Electrical generators (even small ones) were not available for love nor money, ice and candles (when available) went for premium prices. The most-listened-to person in the islands was the spokesman for the electrical company who spent virtually all of his waking hours on one radio station or another detailing the repair work underway Meanwhile, the electrical utility company crews worked around the clock to restore portions of the electrical grid, and devise ways to start up even one major generator. I don't know the full story behind the restart effort, except that lots of different techniques were tried, one of which finally worked on Oahu. The Navy dispatched a nuclear submarine to Kauai in an effort to "jump start" the main generator there. It seemed like forever, but it was only a few days until electricity was available to some parts of Honolulu. We lived with rolling blackouts for about a week more. Outlying areas on the islands weren't fully restored for over two weeks. There were some fatalities, due mostly to "freak" accidents of various kinds...and a small, but statistically significant "baby boomlet" some 9 months later. If this had happenedd to a major mainland city in winter there would have been considerably more fatalities, and the story would be much more widely known. As it was, if it had lasted too many more days, water would have become very critical... -- Bob Cunningham bob@hig.hawaii.edu