Reuters | Nearly 50,000 Without Power in San Francisco

Sun December 21, 2003 02:26 PM ET

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Nearly 50,000 customers were without power in San Francisco on Sunday following a substation fire that left one-third of the city in the dark and wreaked havoc on one of the busiest shopping days of the year.

Brian Swanson, a spokesman for Pacific Gas and Electric Co.., said that at the peak of the power outage on Saturday evening, 119,000 business and residential customers had no electricity.

<snip>

The areas of San Francisco hardest hit by the outage were the civic center, the financial district and the Mission district south of Market Street, the city's main thoroughfare.

more...http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=domesticNews&storyID=4028298

what has happened? Arnold was to make it "alright"

I speak German and don't know what the heck he's saying...

IIRC, SF voted overwhelmingly - 80% or thereabouts - against the recall. Schwarzenegger came in 3rd, after Bustamente and the Green candidate, Camero. That'll show them :)

Seriously, not everything is the result of a conspiracy. Fires, earthquakes, storms and other things do happen.

linda

Exactly! This was apparantly the result of an overnight fire in a substation. No terrorism, sabotage, or anything else was suspected here. Occasionally things like this really do happen....

Move along folks, nothing here to see.....

the pukes would be blaming him left and right...

So in light of that I say this - IT'S ALL ARNOLD'S FAULT!!!

blaming him left,but I'm not so sure about right.:)

and from the vice-pResident, cheney, who developed this secret energy policy.....


DC Holiday Decorations...


and shrub has already fled OUR Nation's Capital...to entertain his campaign donors and war-profiteers in private, at OUR taxpayer- financed Camp David....

with a fire at a PG&E substation?

It happens. Happily, my neighborhood was unaffected.

friends, and campaign contributors, and war-profiteers...

glad your neighborhood was unaffected...

my neighborhood is heavily bombarded by mercury from coal-burning power plants everyday...lots of little children here suffer from autism and other neurological problems caused by shrub's energy policies...

something about Jeb Bush, who said, "San Francisco may have occasion to be sorry soon", or something to that effect.

Any connection?

but can't remember the details of the story.

Time to go totally SOLAR San Francisco!!!!!

I looks like it's about 55 in SF right now. Cold, damp, miserable, but hopefully not life threatening.

I've been without power in WI during the winter for an extended period only once. After just a few days without heat, your plumbing self-destructs, and you have a pool in the basement once it warms up again. All your plants die, though it's not obvious until the heat comes back on, and they droop into puddles of green goo. And then there's the fun of chipping ice out of the toilet with a stick, and having to pour charcoal-grill-warmed water into it to flush it because the tank is frozen.

That was after only 3 days without power during a nasty February in the 80's.

I just hope this doesn't happen to a city in the Northern US during the winter. Due to a lot of news bits from various sources, I'm starting to get concerned about Natural Gas shortages this winter in the US. After just a day or so without heat -- think Paris during the heatwave, but in Chicago, Detroit, Milwaukee, or Minneapolis, etc...

There is an backup coal power plant on the isthmus of Madison near my house (it's old, but they use it for peak periods), but vast areas of the country are dependent on electrical plants far, far away from them, often without any local backups.

It's a huge vulnerability, and it's become clear that it doesn't take an Al Queda to bring it down from time to time. Given the disastrous effects of even 72 hours without it during some times of the year, there should be more decentralization of power generators.

But I think it's 'market forces' that are the real danger to the power grid, since they push toward centralization, and profit extraction (case in point: Niagra Mohawk Power's profits from 2002 came almost entirely from laying off maintenance staff...look at the annual report).

If all of the interstate highways were allowed to be 'profit centers' for private corporations, how much drag would the extra transportation costs be on the economy?

Talk about a financial hit...