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Dec. 27th, 2008 11:50 pmThe past couple of days have been nothing if not interesting.
Yesterday (Friday), around 6:50pm, I was at work when I noticed the lights flicker a bit. A few minutes later they flickered again. Some time after that, the lights cut out and the building switched over to generator power. Some digging on the internet revealed that lightning had caused an islandwide power outage on Oahu and that power was not expected to be restored before morning.
That said, we powered off non-essential equipment and continued operations until the end of my shift. Then the fun began.
Fortunately, people seemed to remember that when traffic lights are out at an intersection you're supposed to treat it as an all-way stop. I was able to make it onto the freeway and head home, but it felt eerie seeing a sea of moving headlights and no other lights along the road and very few off the road. In fact, I think only condos (which have emergency lighting for their hallways and elevators) and the red blinking lights of radio and TV towers were all that I saw on the way home.
Also keep in mind that my drive home isn't just a five-minute drive and I'm there. I was commuting from the Aloha Stadium area to my home in Kaimuki, a drive that under normal conditions would take me roughly 20 minutes at 55-60mph. In terms of mileage it's something like 10 to 15 miles one way.
When I got home I had to use a flashlight to make my way around the house. Sleeping was a bit eerie as all I had was a battery powered radio and no light to see by since it was mostly cloudy to completely overcast. I slept off and on all night.
Today (Saturday) I helped![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
technocollie run a pawful of errands, including getting something to eat. I also got to my place around 10am to find that the power had finally come back on.
Some people were calling into a local radio station (KSSK) complaining about why it was taking so long to get power back. One thing to remember, folks... we're on an ISLAND, so that means we don't have any neighboring states whose power grid we can tap into, so it's not like we can just tap into California's power grid or anything like that.
I think one of the planned measures to help mitigate future such outages is another power plant at Campbell Industrial Park. It's supposed to be more robust than the aging Kahe Point plant and would become the primary power source for the island. Trouble is, it'll take a year to build. But I hope it gets done as long as it can help us get power a little faster (every little bit helps).
The only thing about this whole incident, though, is that if a terrorist really wanted to take down the island of Oahu, all s/he would have to do is attack the power grid. Of course, a terror attack in Haweaii might do little to affect the U.S. as a whole, but with our President-elect from here, who knows?
Yesterday (Friday), around 6:50pm, I was at work when I noticed the lights flicker a bit. A few minutes later they flickered again. Some time after that, the lights cut out and the building switched over to generator power. Some digging on the internet revealed that lightning had caused an islandwide power outage on Oahu and that power was not expected to be restored before morning.
That said, we powered off non-essential equipment and continued operations until the end of my shift. Then the fun began.
Fortunately, people seemed to remember that when traffic lights are out at an intersection you're supposed to treat it as an all-way stop. I was able to make it onto the freeway and head home, but it felt eerie seeing a sea of moving headlights and no other lights along the road and very few off the road. In fact, I think only condos (which have emergency lighting for their hallways and elevators) and the red blinking lights of radio and TV towers were all that I saw on the way home.
Also keep in mind that my drive home isn't just a five-minute drive and I'm there. I was commuting from the Aloha Stadium area to my home in Kaimuki, a drive that under normal conditions would take me roughly 20 minutes at 55-60mph. In terms of mileage it's something like 10 to 15 miles one way.
When I got home I had to use a flashlight to make my way around the house. Sleeping was a bit eerie as all I had was a battery powered radio and no light to see by since it was mostly cloudy to completely overcast. I slept off and on all night.
Today (Saturday) I helped
technocollie run a pawful of errands, including getting something to eat. I also got to my place around 10am to find that the power had finally come back on.Some people were calling into a local radio station (KSSK) complaining about why it was taking so long to get power back. One thing to remember, folks... we're on an ISLAND, so that means we don't have any neighboring states whose power grid we can tap into, so it's not like we can just tap into California's power grid or anything like that.
I think one of the planned measures to help mitigate future such outages is another power plant at Campbell Industrial Park. It's supposed to be more robust than the aging Kahe Point plant and would become the primary power source for the island. Trouble is, it'll take a year to build. But I hope it gets done as long as it can help us get power a little faster (every little bit helps).
The only thing about this whole incident, though, is that if a terrorist really wanted to take down the island of Oahu, all s/he would have to do is attack the power grid. Of course, a terror attack in Haweaii might do little to affect the U.S. as a whole, but with our President-elect from here, who knows?
