Fairfax County General :
Fairfax Underground
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
Welcome to Fairfax Underground, a project site designed to improve communication among residents of Fairfax County, VA. Feel free to post anything Northern Virginia residents would find interesting.
In the eye of the storm
Posted by:
*>*
()
Date: July 08, 2012 12:32PM
In the eye of the storm
Friday, Jul. 06, 2012
http://www.fairfaxtimes.com/article/20120706/OPINION/707069999/1065/in-the-eye-of-the-storm&template=fairfaxTimes
If storms are measured on scales of one to 10, it’s safe to rate this past Friday’s little derecho an 11 or 12.
And, like every other storm that’s walloped the region during the past 25 years, it seems many are eager to pin the blame on some person or agency.
When roads close as a result of snow or ice, the Virginia Department of Transportation tends to get the lion’s share of criticism.
When forecasts miss the mark by a wide margin, it’s the local weatherman.
When area homes and businesses go dark for days on end, Dominion Power inevitably finds itself in the public’s crosshairs.
In evaluating the response to this particular storm, the criticism isn’t justified.
Yes, nearly 300,000 Dominion’s customers across Northern Virginia were without power for at least 36 hours, and nearly 100,000 still were in the dark as of Tuesday afternoon. A lot of people were extremely uncomfortable, a lot of food went bad, and a lot of residents, businesses and local governments lost money.
When storms packing the punch of a Category 4 hurricane blindside a dozen states at the same time, it puts power companies in the position of dousing four-alarm fires with a garden hose.
This is not to suggest that the response has been perfect, or that a thorough review shouldn’t be conducted, but we give Dominion officials a strong early grade for communicating and executing under pressure this region hasn’t seen in decades, if ever.
Like many power companies north, south and west of here, Dominion officials spent the better part of Friday night and Saturday morning assessing damage and reaching out across the country for help. In addition to its 3,500 regular employees, contractors and retirees, Dominion secured the services of 1,500 utility workers from 13 states and Quebec.
It’s worth noting that removing a 100-year-old oak tree from tangled power lines on pitch-black side streets is dangerous, time-consuming work. It’s also important to remember that before Dominion begins restoring power to Fairfax County homes, it has to focus on critical public health and safety facilities such as hospitals, police and fire stations, water and sewer pumping stations and long-term care facilities. To Dominion’s credit, those critical facilities were up and running early Saturday.
Going forward, the one point that likely will be debated long after Fairfax County’s last light bulb goes on is why much of our region’s electrical infrastructure remains above ground, exposed to destructive elements such as wind, ice and water 365 days per year. The region had the debate after “Snowmagedon” in 2011 and August’s earthquake. And it will take place again in the days and weeks ahead.
Yes, running power lines underground is expensive and comes with a host of political and regulatory hurdles, but this week’s blackout might have been enough to get the discussion out of the starting blocks.
Either way, that’s a discussion for another day. For now, tip your hat to Dominion Power for quietly working around the clock to restore some sense of normalcy to its 1 million-plus customers.
Friday, Jul. 06, 2012
http://www.fairfaxtimes.com/article/20120706/OPINION/707069999/1065/in-the-eye-of-the-storm&template=fairfaxTimes
If storms are measured on scales of one to 10, it’s safe to rate this past Friday’s little derecho an 11 or 12.
And, like every other storm that’s walloped the region during the past 25 years, it seems many are eager to pin the blame on some person or agency.
When roads close as a result of snow or ice, the Virginia Department of Transportation tends to get the lion’s share of criticism.
When forecasts miss the mark by a wide margin, it’s the local weatherman.
When area homes and businesses go dark for days on end, Dominion Power inevitably finds itself in the public’s crosshairs.
In evaluating the response to this particular storm, the criticism isn’t justified.
Yes, nearly 300,000 Dominion’s customers across Northern Virginia were without power for at least 36 hours, and nearly 100,000 still were in the dark as of Tuesday afternoon. A lot of people were extremely uncomfortable, a lot of food went bad, and a lot of residents, businesses and local governments lost money.
When storms packing the punch of a Category 4 hurricane blindside a dozen states at the same time, it puts power companies in the position of dousing four-alarm fires with a garden hose.
This is not to suggest that the response has been perfect, or that a thorough review shouldn’t be conducted, but we give Dominion officials a strong early grade for communicating and executing under pressure this region hasn’t seen in decades, if ever.
Like many power companies north, south and west of here, Dominion officials spent the better part of Friday night and Saturday morning assessing damage and reaching out across the country for help. In addition to its 3,500 regular employees, contractors and retirees, Dominion secured the services of 1,500 utility workers from 13 states and Quebec.
It’s worth noting that removing a 100-year-old oak tree from tangled power lines on pitch-black side streets is dangerous, time-consuming work. It’s also important to remember that before Dominion begins restoring power to Fairfax County homes, it has to focus on critical public health and safety facilities such as hospitals, police and fire stations, water and sewer pumping stations and long-term care facilities. To Dominion’s credit, those critical facilities were up and running early Saturday.
Going forward, the one point that likely will be debated long after Fairfax County’s last light bulb goes on is why much of our region’s electrical infrastructure remains above ground, exposed to destructive elements such as wind, ice and water 365 days per year. The region had the debate after “Snowmagedon” in 2011 and August’s earthquake. And it will take place again in the days and weeks ahead.
Yes, running power lines underground is expensive and comes with a host of political and regulatory hurdles, but this week’s blackout might have been enough to get the discussion out of the starting blocks.
Either way, that’s a discussion for another day. For now, tip your hat to Dominion Power for quietly working around the clock to restore some sense of normalcy to its 1 million-plus customers.
Re: In the eye of the storm
Posted by:
Blurp
()
Date: July 08, 2012 04:47PM
Category 4 hurricane? What horse shit. A category 4 has sustained winds of 130 - 156 mph. The recent derecho's sustained winds maxed out at 92 mph, which on a hurricane scale makes it a Category 1, still, that storm was hardly a hurricane. It had lighting and thunder that Thor or Zeus would envy, but to call it hurricane, regardless of its wind speed, is a vast exaggeration.
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"The horse jumped over the fucking fence." - Kurt Vonnegut
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"The horse jumped over the fucking fence." - Kurt Vonnegut