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10 Blackout-Proof Preps You Need To Get Through Extreme Weather Emergencies

August 16, 2020

10 Blackout-Proof Preps You Need To Get Through Extreme Weather Emergencies

Generally speaking, the American lifestyle is largely dependent upon the power grid. And when the grid goes down during the hottest times of the year, our eyes are opened to the need to have essential off-grid preps to survive.

10 Blackout-Proof Preps You Need To Get Through Extreme Weather Emergencies

A sweltering heat wave that has enveloped most parts of California causing a surge of demand on the power grid and energy companies made the decision to start rolling blackouts during the hottest part of the day.

The heat wave is ramping up this weekend, and some areas could reach triple-digit record highs, weather.com meteorologist Jonathan Belles said, adding that the temperatures are more typical of mid-summer than August.

An excessive heat warning was issued by the National Weather Service for Friday through Tuesday, and the combination of heat and wildfires prompted air quality warnings as well.

Ozone pollution in some areas reached levels Friday afternoon not seen in 10 years, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Gonzales said several different factors would play into whether the rolling blackouts continue.

“We’re dealing with weather, clouds, wildfires … these are quickly evolving situations, quickly changing,” she told the AP.

The situation will be evaluated on a day to day basis, she said.

Source

Learn more about rolling blackouts

Many believed rolling blackouts were a thing of the past and, in California’s case residents have not experienced one for 20 years. But all that changed Friday when the lights went out on 350,000 thousand homes. Many were caught off guard and felt PG&E had not fully communicated the likelihood of this occurring. But the worst is yet to come as more rolling blackouts are planned for the coming week. That said, it is important to know that certain preparedness items can provide safety and protection when you are off the grid during the hottest part of the year.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

California Fires Spark Massive Mandatory Evacuations; Wineries Burn As Winds Hit 93 MPH

October 27, 2019

California Fires Spark Massive Mandatory Evacuations; Wineries Burn As Winds Hit 93 MPH

California’s annual wildfires are back despite a series of planned power outages aimed at preventing them – the latest of which is expected to affect as many as 3 million people across huge swaths of the state.

The most intense fires raged through Sonoma County, with some 180,000 residents ordered to evacuate.

“The next 72 hours will be challenging,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said on Saturday. “I could sugarcoat it, but I will not.”

Josh Edelson/Getty Images

As of midnight, Sonoma County resembled a disaster zone.

✔

Approx 180,000 people under evacuation order due to #KincadeFire. This is the largest evacuation that any of us at the Sheriff’s Office can remember. Take care of each other.

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Latest Evacuation map. Mandatory evacuations have been expanded and now include much of western and northern Santa Rosa. For most up-to-date map:http://bit.ly/2PlbvDp 

#CAwx #CAFire #KincadeFire

View image on Twitter

Highway 101 was closed indefinitely through Santa Rosa as wind gusts of up to 93 mph were reported by the National Weather Servicein Healdsburg Hills in the northern part of the county. That said, the NWS now reports that the winds will “start to reduce compared to the peak experienced in the last few hours, but remain strong today with a ramp up tonight.”

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

California Faces “Biggest Blackout Ever” As 2.5 Million PG&E Customers May Have No Power For Days

October 25, 2019

California Faces “Biggest Blackout Ever” As 2.5 Million PG&E Customers May Have No Power For Days

Earlier this week we joked that with PG&E now scrambling to enforce intentional blackouts every time there are powerful winds for fears the bankrupt company’s aged infrastructure could cause a new fire, “every time the wind blows California will become Venezuela.”

PG&E: 1.2 MILLION POWER CUSTOMERS IN FIRE WEATHER WATCH AREA

Every time the wind blows California will become Venezuela

Turns out it wasn’t a joke.

On Friday, with its stock crashing to a new all time low amid speculation it may have been responsible for the latest California inferno, the Kincade Fire…

… PG&E warned it will shut off power again on Saturday to as many as 2.5 million people as violent winds batter the state, in what according to Bloomberg will be “California’s largest intentional blackout ever.”

According to a Friday statement, approximately 850,000 homes and businesses in Northern California, including much of the San Francisco Bay Area, may be impacted beginning Saturday evening. And with data models indicating the weather event could be the most powerful in California in decades, with widespread dry Northeast winds between 45-60 miles per hour (mph) and peak gusts of 60-70 mph in the higher elevations through Monday, large swaths of the region could be without power for days.

California Fire-Threat Maps, source: CPUC

“The upcoming wind event has the potential to be one of the strongest in the last several years. It’s also likely to be longer than recent wind events, which have lasted about 12 hours or less,” said Scott Strenfel, Principal Meteorologist with PG&E.

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

“This Country Has Gone To Hell”: Total Chaos In Venezuelan Oil Capital After Blackout

March 16, 2019

“This Country Has Gone To Hell”: Total Chaos In Venezuelan Oil Capital After Blackout

Venezuela’s oil capital, Maracaibo, was ransacked and looted in the midst of a blackout that hit the country around March 7. Even as the lights started to come back on, looting continued and residents overpowered disputed President Nichloas Maduro’s security forces. Store owners are just now starting to clean up, according a new Bloomberg article, which paints a picture of Venezuela as a country on the edge of total anarchy. 

Enrique Gonzalez, an 18 year old bus conductor said: “If people made enough to make ends meet, we wouldn’t be trying to get by like this. This country has gone to hell.” His driver, at the time, was pillaging a Pepsi warehouse, where thousands of bottles had been looted in hours and where people were now ripping out spare copper wire and scrap metal. 

Empresas Polar SA, a Venezuelan food giant, reportedly saw its Pepsi plant lose thousands of cases of beer and soda, 160 pallets of food, 22 trucks and five forklifts. A home improvement shopping center also saw its 50 stores looted by people who broke through its iron gates and glass doors. Travel agencies, cosmetic stands and snack shops were all pillaged among the chaos. 

Bernardo Morillo, 60, who built and manages the mall told Bloomberg: “It’s hard to swallow. The national guard stood by as this vandalism happened and the firefighters didn’t even show.’’

Ricardo Costa, vice president of the Zulia state chapter of the Fedecamaras business group said: “…security forces were useless as people took anything of value, including cash machines, door frames, ovens, computers and surveillance cameras…”

The country’s Centro 99 food market saw looters pick its shelves clean. “They even carried off the lard and flour to bake bread in their bare hands,’’ the store’s manager said. 

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Looters Pillage Venezuela Supermarkets As Crippling Blackout Hits Day Five

March 11, 2019

Looters Pillage Venezuela Supermarkets As Crippling Blackout Hits Day Five

Looting and violence are rapidly on the rise as Venezuela enters its fifth day without power across most of the country though some reports suggest as much as 30% of power has returned to parts of the capital city Caracas. 

The UK Daily Mail has published a series of shocking photographs showing the aftermath of mobs looting supermarkets in Caracas as things turn desperate. The already politically unstable Latin American country was plunged into darkness after last Thursday night all but one of 23 statessuffered mass blackouts. Scene after looting in Caracas, via Reuters

As reports of approaching 20 or more deaths at hospitals attempting to operate with faulty back-up generators came in over the weekend, Reuters noted, “Electricity experts said that outage was most likely due to failures in the transmission system, and that the government lacks the equipment and staff to repair them.”

Embedded video

The scene of looting in Baruta, Caracas earlier today. Security forces arrived in large numbers and eventually gained control of the situation there. #Venezuela

Reuters further described “already-scarce food rotting in shops, homes suffering for lack of water and cell phones without reception.”

And the Daily Mail reported “Pictures reveal that some supermarkets in the capital have been left ransacked by desperate residents as they struggle to find food.”Looting in Caracas, via Reuters

Security personnel have been deployed throughout Caracas to prevent mass looting, though we can imagine that since reports of the water supply being impacted by the outage, people are simply reaching desperation and are attempting any way possible to endure the nightmare circumstances. 

Photographs showed in some instances looters being piled into police trucks and vans — this as US-backed opposition leader Juan Guaido over the weekend called for nationwide anti-Maduro protests over the failing infrastructure. Most analysts agree the electrical grid mass failure is the result of generally failing infrastructure after years of underinvestment and neglect. 

 …click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Catastrophic Power Outage Poses a “Profound Threat” to the US, New Government Report Finds

December 12, 2018

Catastrophic Power Outage Poses a “Profound Threat” to the US, New Government Report Finds

The United States is not prepared for a catastrophic power outage, according to an alarming new report from the President’s National Infrastructure Advisory Council (NIAC).

The report, titled Surviving a Catastrophic Power Outage, explains the findings of the council, which is tasked with examining the nation’s “ability to respond to and recover from a catastrophic power outage of a magnitude beyond modern experience, exceeding prior events in severity, scale, duration, and consequence. Simply put, how can the nation best prepare for and recover from a catastrophic power outage, regardless of the cause?”

It begins with a grim statement in the Executive Summary:

After interviews with dozens of senior leaders and experts and an extensive review of studies and statutes, we found that existing national plans, response resources, and coordination strategies would be outmatched by a catastrophic power outage. This profound risk requires a new national focus.

The NIAC defines a catastrophic power outage as:

  • Events beyond modern experience that exhaust or exceed mutual aid capabilities
  • Likely to be no-notice or limited-notice events that could be complicated by a cyber-physical attack
  • Long duration, lasting several weeks to months due to physical infrastructure damage
  • Affects a broad geographic area, covering multiple states or regions and affecting tens of millions of people
  • Causes severe cascading impacts that force critical sectors—drinking water and wastewater systems, communications, transportation, healthcare, and financial services—to operate in a degraded state

Actions that all levels of government need to take to prepare are discussed in the report, as summarized in this chart:

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The Morning After: Mexican Earthquake Leaves Over 248 Dead, Millions Without Electricity

September 20, 2017

The Morning After: Mexican Earthquake Leaves Over 248 Dead, Millions Without Electricity

Across central Mexico, rescue workers including soldiers and volunteers worked late into the night Tuesday to free the living who were still trapped in the rubble of collapsed buildings following Mexico’s deadliest earthquake in more than 30 years.

The death toll from the 7.1 magnitude quake – which bizarrely occurred on the anniversary of a 1985 quake that left 5,000 dead – has climbed to 248, with more than half of those deaths occurring in the Mexican capital city.  It also comes two weeks after another powerful quake left nearly 100 dead in Mexico City. The quake was unusually close to Mexico City, located just 60 miles south of the capital in Chiautla de Tapia, a small town in neighboring Puebla state, according to Mexico’s seismological service.

More are feared dead, including possibly dozens of teachers and schoolchildren feared buried in the rubble of a Mexico City school, one of hundreds of buildings that was destroyed by the quake, according to Reuters.

Additionally, several buildings collapsed in the chic neighborhoods of Roma and Condesa in central Mexico City, where many foreigners live. In Condesa, rescue workers scrambled to find eight to 10 people believed trapped under the debris of a building that collapsed near Mexico Park, one of the city’s most famous parks. Hundreds of volunteers formed a human chain to help clear rubble and bring food and water to rescue workers.

Mexico was also hit earlier this month by Hurricane Katia, which killed two. Even the Popocatépetl volcano southeast of the city sent a large cloud of ash into the sky on Tuesday. “This is too much. It’s like we’re cursed or something,” said Marcos Santamaría, a 62-year-old retiree.

Philippines and the United Nations have offered to support the recovery effort. At least 30 second-grade students are still missing, along with eight adults.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The EMP Threat: All It Would Take Is A Couple Of Explosions To Send America Back To The 1800s

April 7, 2015

The EMP Threat: All It Would Take Is A Couple Of Explosions To Send America Back To The 1800s

Our entire way of life can be ended in a single day.  And it wouldn’t even take a nuclear war to do it.  All it would take for a rogue nation or terror organization to bring us to our knees is the explosion of a couple well-placed nuclear devices high up in our atmosphere.  The resulting electromagnetic pulses would fry electronics from coast to coast.  Of course this could also be accomplished without any attack.  Scientists tell us that massive solar storms have hit our planet before, and that it is inevitable that there will be more in the future.  As you will read about below, the most recent example of this was “the Carrington Event” in 1859.  If a similar burst from the sun hit us today, experts tell us that life in America could suddenly resemble life in the 1800s, and the economic damage caused could potentially be in the trillions of dollars.  This is one of the greatest potential threats that we are facing as a nation, and yet Barack Obama has essentially done nothing to get us prepared.

The technology necessary to conduct such an electromagnetic pulse attack against the United States has become much more accessible in recent years.  According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, even rogue nations such as North Korea and Iran either already have or will soon have the capability to hurt us in this way…

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

 

Quebec ice storm: Why it’s impossible to storm-proof the power grid

January 6, 2015

Quebec ice storm: Why it’s impossible to storm-proof the power grid

The ice storm that left an estimated 155,000 Quebecers in the dark this weekend had echoes of the Great Ice Storm of 1998, which left millions of homes in Eastern Canada without electricity for weeks.

This time, power was restored relatively quickly – within 12 hours for the majority of Quebecers – which reflects some of the lessons hydro-electricity producers have taken from the 1998 blackout to make their power grids more reliable.

At the same time, however, they have also resisted some of the more costly ideas from the Great Ice Storm, such as retrofitting entire cities with underground cables.

“I think the industry recognizes that perfect reliability is unaffordable,” says Tom Adams, an independent adviser and researcher in the energy sector.

Current estimates are that it would cost five to 10 times more to distribute electricity to a big city via underground cables, and that not all of nature’s problems would be alleviated even if that were done.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Hydro-Québec Restores Electricity To Most, But 8,500 Still In Dark

January 5, 2015

Hydro-Québec Restores Electricity To Most, But 8,500 Still In Dark

Freezing rain, high winds and a rapid drop in temperature created a host of problems for people living in the greater Montreal region and elsewhere in southern Quebec.

On Sunday, a dangerous mix of precipitation followed by freezing cold made for extremely slick road conditions.

The weight of the ice that formed on trees caused many to snap, sending large branches down onto sidewalks, roads and power lines.

At the height of the power outages, more than 150,000 Quebecers were without electricity.

Power has been restored to most Hydro-Québec customers, but about 8,500 households and businesses remain in the dark — and could stay that way well into Monday afternoon and even evening, depending on the area.

Hydro-Québec has a map on its website of which neighbourhoods are affected and at what time they expect to have the lights back on. Find out what time the utility expects to restore power by clicking on the voltage sign in your neighbourhood.

 

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