I was just thinking….
The last big windstorm was known as the Inauguration Day Storm because it fell on the day Bill Clinton was inaugurated.
The worst windstorm ever in this region is known as the Columbus Day Storm because it happened on Columbus day in 1962.
Maybe we should call this one the Rummy Retirement Day Storm?
Where’s FEMA? Where’s the national guard? Why aren’t there any helicopters with generators being flown in? Why weren’t we prepared before the storm for the massive power outages?
I blame FEMA for not having the power on yet. NO I blame the president!
Question, why haven’t we heard of massive looting and hooliganism in the affected areas? hmmmmm?
For the same reason that the treament for a hangnail is different than for gangrene. Proportionality.
I take it you folks still have power out still.
Jimmy,
When I checked an hour ago, power was still out in my Redmond neighborhood. At its peak, Puget Sound Energy had 700,000 customers without power. I’m not sure how many are back on-line.
Seattle City Light is reporting 108,000 customers without power—down from 175,000 earlier this morning.
1 Question, why haven’t we heard of massive looting and hooliganism in the affected areas? hmmmmm?
12/15/2006 at 4:25 pm
The areas under Halliburton’s control haven’t reported yet.
King 6 News says some of Puget Power’s Snohomish County customers will have to wait up to 7 days for power.
@5 Yeah but I bet they are out there on no bid contracts to fix the power grid!
I mean King 5 News …
7 The Halliburton no-bid contract IS the “massive looting and hooliganism.”
FEMA is broken. Bush and his neo-con’s did a hatchet job on it, arguing that all its duties could be handled by local government agencies and contracted private enterprise. The Bush administration hired an incompetent crony to manage it while they dismantled it and reduced it and placed it under Homeland Security’s budget. The clear intent was to either abolish it or to make it a skeletal force capable only of issuing contracts to companies friendly to Republican interests. The experienced disaster professionals left the agency in the early 1990’s when the handwriting was clearly on the wall.
In its present form, I wouldn’t expect FEMA to be able to rescue a spider from a storm drain. It will probably take eight years for the Democrats to re-build FEMA, AGAIN, like they were forced to do during the Clinton administration.
You would have thought W. Bush would have learned from his father’s mistake, when Homestead Florida was destroyed by a Hurricane and the poor government response caused most of those people – military families – to vote for Clinton instead.
But W. Bush doesn’t seem to learn many lessons, does he? I hear that he’s delayed his Iraq speech until he finds someone who MAY TAKE YEARS, but he will STAY THE COURSE” until he finds someone who agrees with him.
PSE said that 50% off their high power infrastructure was damaged. That is huge! That doesn’t even take into account all the damaged sub stations…..I am planning for at least 4-5 days sans power.
Apparantly the high-tension lines bringing power into the cities took a major hit. Of course, those are the hardest to get to, and require equipment which is in limited supply. If they don’t fix those, all the local clearing of limbs of neighborhood power lines won’t have any affect.
I understand that virtually the entire day today was dedicated to Rumsfield’s retirement celebration. Bush and Cheney were both there, giving speaches about what a great public servant Rumsfeld was. Bush did take time out to give a Presidential Medal of Freedom award to William Safire, former Nixon speechwriter and conservative NYTimes columnist.
Yup,
gotta fix the high power system before they can focus on distribution. there were too many trasnformer “explosions” to count last night. Seemed like every 10-20 seconds there was one. It lasted from about 11:00-3:00. I can’t even imagine how long it will take to replace all of that!
“I can’t even imagine how long it will take to replace all of that!”
My guess, based upon past experience, that we will be well into the middle of next week with a lot of people still waiting for the power to come on.
I was trying to get hold of a colleague. She lost power over the Thanksgiving weekend, and it took six days before she got it back, only to lose it again two days later. Calls to her work just go to voice mail, and calls to her home aren’t getting through. I’m guessing that both the power and phone lines are down where she lives. Living in the foothills of the Cascades does have some real disadvantages, I guess.
I remember tje January 20 1993 Inaugural Day storm. I also remember that a little less than two years later we dems got our collective asses handed to us. It was a slaughter through and through. Funny how more things change the more things stay the same.
Wow, that explains why the power has been out at Microsoft all day. They probably have one or two of those high-voltage power lines all to themselves.
14 I can’t even imagine how long it will take to replace all of that! 12/15/2006 at 5:20 pm
The inefficient socialist public power entity, Seattle City Light, will have everybody up within 24 hours. Some customers of the more efficient private sector for-profit company, Puget Sound Energy, will have to wait 7 days. Capitalism discredits public ownership again! (snicker)
The inefficient socialist public power entity, Seattle City Light, will have everybody up within 24 hours. Some customers of the more efficient private sector for-profit company, Puget Sound Energy, will have to wait 7 days. Capitalism discredits public ownership again! (snicker)
12/15/2006 at 8:45 pm
Leave it to a Seattle Liberal to brag about how fast the lights come back on in Seattle while telling people in the Suburbs they cant cut down trees (CAO). snicker snicker
1 Looting and hooliganism? Well, maybe not quite…but you should have seen the Overlake Safeway at about 10:30 this morning. A frantic mob of Microsofties grabbing all the junk food off the shelves to see themselves through the crisis.
I’m old enough to remember the Columbus Day storm. This was more like that one than that piddly-ass one in ’93.
The thing that I found ironic here in the South Sound was that while PSE has been doing a pretty decent job overall (only 18 hours in the dark here), even though there are still a lot of people in the dark here, Capital Mall apparently never lost power at all, and the Saturday crowds were still pretty dense. I guess that’s where the priorities were, right?
Just got power back.
That was one impressive storm.
At least as crazy as the power outage were the downed trees… weaving in and out between trees on a local road with no streetlights is certainly interesting.
Roger Rabbit said:
Oh, the public power systems aren’t the only folks that are doing a terrific job. Out here in Gig Harbor, our power folks at Peninsula Light are getting power on faster than anyone could have hoped, and they aren’t a “public” system.
They’re a co-op, owned collectively by their customers. Oh and we have a few trees over here, too. Seems that the Soviet of Gig Harbor is doing pretty well, considering how hard we were hit.
Now, if I could just get my privately-owned water company to follow the law that requires them to install backup generators so that we have fire-fighting water during a blackout… Seems that every time we have a power outage, the generators are “down for maintenance”.
Glad to hear that everyone here came through the mess. Remember to check on your neighbors and friends in areas where they still don’t have power.
Local Fremont legend is that the Inauguration Storm blew the commorants into the Fremont Cut poplar trees for the first time. So I watched these web footed creatures in the trees (winter and fall only) to see if, like the monkeys in Gibraltar (the Treaty of Utrecht requires the return of the colony to Spain if the monkeys leave), their absence would signal Clinton’s demise at the hands of the repugs. But the cormorants are still there and that is the end of the story.
Right Stuff says:
Where’s FEMA? Where’s the national guard? Why aren’t there any helicopters with generators being flown in? Why weren’t we prepared before the storm for the massive power outages?
I blame FEMA for not having the power on yet. NO I blame the president!
Question, why haven’t we heard of massive looting and hooliganism in the affected areas? hmmmmm?
Hey the dems won the last election. The dems and the “right wing” media outlets have everything covered. No worries., hehehe
I am Republican – I lie, steal and cheat when I’m not being a family man (fat whore) or crying about liberal Democrats. I share the same view as 1 billion worldwide Mooooooooooooooslims, I hate fags – Ted Haggard and Friends. Hail Hitler
I am Republican – I lie, steal and cheat when I’m not being a family man…..
why are liberal constantly trying to convince everyone that republicans are just like Democrats when it comes to morals.