I’m guessing that a lot of our BLF constituents in the eastern part of the USA are getting more than their normal flashlight usage. Lots and lots of folks without power for an indefinite period of time.
They clearly aren’t getting access to Internet either, so I’m hoping this thread is a place that we can hear their story when power returns.
Good luck, guys, keep the home torches burning!
Amazon cloud servers got knocked out and thus Netflix was down friday night. Bummer
I wanted to watch that night but not so much to whine like the entitled internet posters. How sad.
I like using my torches just like anyone else here, but honestly, I’ve had enough with power outages between last summer’s hurricane and October snow storm. I am perfectly happy stepping outside after dark to get my fix :).
Plus, no power = no fans, no A/C!! That would really suck!
We’ve been having some pretty heavy (for the UK) storms over here, unfortunately, no power outages yet :( my hobby is yet again unjustified :(
Just curious, but on what kind of territory do you live in? How dense habitat, suburbs or far away from cities?
What kind of places are prone to outages there?
I know in here, we get outages only in the parts of country, where powerlines (small ones) are not underground.
Usually always the same, not too dense inhabited places. Cities very seldom… Not at all bad storms here, though…
It would not be considered bad situation, since day is bright all night here at summer but it is quite rare to get many properly too warm days in a row - outages are not that bad issues.
On the winter, houses freeze if it continues for too long…
I’m addicted to electrons. I was so pissed off at our power outages (due mainly to corrupt utility companies/utility commission shutting down power plants at the worst possible time so they could force a 50% increase in wholesale peak power prices) that I had a 20 kW natural gas/propane powered automatic backup generator installed. Power goes out, generator comes on, transfer switch switches.
The Power Nazis just got their wish. Utility commission just raised the peak rate to $4500/megawatt… with absolutely no guarantee that any new generating capacity will ever be added.
Half of my city is down. I have power but most of my friends and family don’t I offered to give some light to them but they seemed to laugh at me. I tried to give my friend a Sipik68 but he just looked at it and didn’t seem interested. He left it on my table when he left my house. Whatever. Some just don’t get it.
It’s not just the east coast. In Indiana we got hammered. Out since Friday @ 2:30 pm and they say we will likely be down until Wednesday according to AEP. Comcast is down too so our Internet is offline. AT&T is the only thing keeping us connected at this point. The 95 degree humid weather hasn’t been much fun either. Another line of storms that just moved through cooled us off nicely, but it also brought repairs to a halt.
Sure am appreciating my iPad right now!
I was on my bike this morning when that storm hit, Archer. 25-40 mph gusts hitting us from the side and the temps dropped 20 degrees almost instantly. Rain held off thankfully til after we reached our cars. Power went out 5 hours later, still out. No Internet, just using my iPhone.
Nice to hear some first hand information.
texaspyro: that sucks!! How’s that even possible??
It certainly been a tuff few years for many central states. Im in NJ and 1/4 of households wont have drinking water for another 3-4 days. I’ll say this and my wife will have to grudgingly agree when electricity has been down and evening sets in 8-9pm our home is far from dark. You can hear people walk by and say ” oh, he must gave a genrator ” . Fact is i do but i run it during day time hours…At night JetBeams and Surefire’s with endless run times make sure were not in the dark. Summer is just starting too
If you only knew… the Texas power grid is rather isolated from the rest of the country. So when the grid gets overloaded, buying power from out of state is not an option. We are held hostage to the local power generation plants. They have their hands so far up the utility commissioners and politicians asses that they can scratch their noses.
During a big cold spell last winter and hot spell last summer, we had blackouts. During those periods several key power plants were mysteriously offline. The power generators basically said, “give us more money, or it’ll happen again.” That last wholesale price cap increase is supposed to spur them into building more power plants… yeah, like that’s gonna happen. There is absolutely no requirement for them to do so.
Thats a terrible situation to be stuck in Tex. Out east i cant say we have a monopoly on intelligent leadership.
The masterful jack wagons that run this state decided that selling off public utilities to private investments would
somehow provide citizens with better service. They didn’t tell us the new owners would be foreign and customer service would be foreign to the owners.
I’m on the east coast of Canada, weather has been beautiful and hot. Not much use for a couple new lights I got. : (
Glad you made it back to your car, BR! Those winds were simply nuts. Friday we had straight line winds clocked at 91 mph less than a mile east of us. Like you the temps on Friday dropped faster than anything I’ve ever seen. In the course of driving 11 miles into the storm I watched my truck thermometer go from 94 to 64 degrees.
Today we had another big storm move in. We had 60 mph winds from what I heard and the temp dropped about 25 degrees in less than 10 minutes. Didn’t see any new trees down or trampolines on the roofs of homes today, though! This afternoon heat coupled with the humidity is really putting some energy into the air!
It’s been a crazy ride the last couple of days. Can’t wait to enjoy it from an air conditioned view! Office is in my home so I can’t even look forward to a break at the office tomorrow!
Hats off to those linesmen working outside in this heat to restore our power! Many thanks to them whoever they are. I heard today we had some arriving this afternooni from Kansas! I’ve never been so pleased to have some corn hunkers in the Hoosier state. I hope they receive a heroes welcome!
That describes the vast majority of the US….
I finally got to do something more with one of my Hellfighters (Yep, I have 2 of them) than just play with it. I’m guessing I got about 30 hours of runtime doing SAR at one of the lakes here and general helping folks out when the power went out. Darn thing works GREAT! Runs about 8 hours on a pair of BB-2590 batteries.
Also supplied several friends with various lights and batteries for all the obvious reasons. Most of the town has power now but it was nice helping out. Vindication/Validation of my sickness.
Surely not a small job to dig’em under in a country size of a US :weary:
The main transfer grip goes by airlines here but they have rather good grounding for thunder and they can overcome the minor storms here.
Basically blackouts happen at countryside and at places, which have summertime housing or such.
Usually at thunder storms it is safe to have stuff plugged in at cities and towns but respectively not at countryside. Thunder destroyed one or two of my modems back in the days when I lived at countryside…
Outages all around me but my little enclave is still kicking “cold air” in my home. Thank God.
Keith
One more question considering blackouts:
Does your electric company cover up losses etc. if blackout lasts for days or so? Do they have to by law?
I’m not aware of exact amounts, but here if power is out over 12h, some amount is deducted from your next electricity bill.
Max amount to be covered is IMO 900$…