Law Enforcement Shines In Power Outage

July 3, 2012 | Filed under News | Posted by

One of the things I noticed during this weeks massive power outage in the mid-Atlantic states was that while those of us without power undoubtedly suffered the effects of the 100+ daily heat with no air conditioning, the area police departments really stepped up and made sure that traffic ran smoothly at thousands of intersections where traffic lights were out. These public servants stood all day in blistering heat directing traffic in the uniforms. Think about the dehydrating and exposure effects of that for a minute.

Those of us without power found refuge in our cars and filled the roads. Those roads were made safe and passable due to these fine officers. I observed hundreds of separate officers and uniformly they were pleasant and helpful in spite of the insufferable conditions.

There are still thousands of these local law enforcement officers pulling extended shifts, as tens of thousands of traffic lights are still out of service. The mid-Atlantic area owes them all a tremendous debt of gratitude for protecting and serving.

While the pace of service restoration is insufferably slow, these folks have kept use safe in our vehicles and prevented mass traffic jams, which would have only made an already bad situation worse. If you’re in an area affected by blackouts, and can do so safely, you really should make a point of saying a quick word of thanks to these officers.

« « Colorado County Officials: ABC Took Colorado Fires/Terrorism Comments Out of Context
Happy Independence Day! » »

Shortlink:

Posted by on July 3, 2012.
Filed under News.
Tagged with: • .
Kevin founded Wizbang in 2003. He still contributes occasionally and handles all the technical and design work for the site.

You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
  • http://www.facebook.com/people/Jack-Zimms/100003653414389 Jack Zimms

    Standing on hot asphalt with hot engines and exhaust passing
    by sounds fun. Sound like road workers.

  • Guest

    That’s what union people do. Step up and deliver.

    • http://wizbangblog.com/author/rodney-graves/ Rodney G. Graves

      DERP!

    • jim_m

      So the cops in New Orleans who decided that disaster was a great time to slack off or otherwise violate people’s civil rights… they were all nonunion?

      • http://wizbangblog.com/author/rodney-graves/ Rodney G. Graves

        You forgot some were caught on camera looting as well, jim_m.

        • jim_m

          Oh so that’s what union people do they step on the little people. No so much step up.

      • http://www.shockandblog.com/ Jay McHue

        Union or no, they were just idiots.

    • http://www.shockandblog.com/ Jay McHue

      Yeah, right. If they felt they weren’t being paid enough, were lacking benefits, or were working under conditions they simply didn’t like, people who care more about their unions than their actual jobs would walk out in protest without a second thought even though circumstances might call for them to “step up and deliver.” Don’t try to deny it because you know it, I know it and so does everyone else here. I dare you — I frickin’ double-dog dare you — to seek out one of these officers out there and ask if standing out there on blacktop directing traffic for hours on end has anything to do with their union. Record it on video so you can share the response with the rest of us. Of course, you won’t actually do this because (A) you’re a coward and (B) you’re full of crap.

      • jim_m

        Indeed. Those who believe in their jobs are the ones out there doing them. Those who believe in the unions above the job are not the ones sacrificing themselves.

      • ackwired

        Well, they are “union thugs” according to some.

  • Commander_Chico

    Interesting stat, power failures in the USA are increasing year-by-year. That’s what happens when you have an extractive elite which takes short-term profits at the cost of long-term capital investment.

    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2TFMKwo394o/T8uuMgO0rxI/AAAAAAAAB7g/Ki-zwVPMegc/s1600/PowerOutages.jpg

    • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ryan-Murphy/100001624276605 Ryan Murphy

      THat is what happens when the government listens to the false Prophets of Envirodoom instead of science.

      • Commander_Chico

        Dolt, this has nothing to do with means of generation – it has to do with failing transmission and distribution infrastructure.

        “It’s a system that from an infrastructure point of view is beginning to age, has been aging,” said Gregory Reed, a professor of electric power engineering at the University of Pittsburgh. “We haven’t expanded and modernized the bulk of the transmission and distribution network.”
        http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/03/easy-fix-eludes-power-outage-problems-in-us/#ixzz1zeM6XYJQ

        • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ryan-Murphy/100001624276605 Ryan Murphy

          And? You think Environmentalists wouldn’t protest, and aren’t protesting it if someone tries to improve that infrastructure? You think if someone lays a power line that the Sierra club isn’t trying to stop them?And the money spent on the global warming nonsense would be plenty to upgrade the infrastructure … now wouldn’t it?

      • http://wizbangblog.com/author/rodney-graves/ Rodney G. Graves

        That’s what happens when they force generating facilities to close without replacement.

    • Plinytherecent

      You may not have noticed, but utilities are highly regulated by the government. In addition to the government limiting rates and investment recovery, one of the most serious impediments to improving the infrastructure has been the ‘environmentalist’ left.

      • Commander_Chico

        Utilities had more regulation in the past, yet somehow there were less power failures. The fact that infrastructure is rotting in the USA is not controversial.

        The power company execs are only looking at quarterly reports and their own paycheck, not proper maintenance and capital investment.

        I never heard of “the left” opposing upgrades to transmission infrastructure, cite or STFU.

        • jim_m

          Not directly. But the left, not in the form of enviro groups, but in the form of consumer watchdog groups has acted to put in rate controls that have shackled the power companies in their ability to invest anything into their infrastructure.

          The fact that company executives have a fiduciary responsibility to shareholders to return a profit is probably anathema to a leftist like you, but they do have that responsibility. You may complain that they have sacrificed infrastructure investment for profit, but then you do not pay their salaries. Go bitch to the shareholders.

          • Commander_Chico

            As a rate-payer, I do pay their salaries.

            Of course monopolies are regulated, there is no market brake on what they can charge. I suppose your view is that monopolies should not be regulated by “the left” government.

            Utilities have good PE ratios despite your complaints. PEPCO, one of the utilities in the DC/MD area affected, has a 16.89 PE, about 5.7% yield, which is pretty good in the current economy.

            They have a monopoly, they are given extensive public way rights and easements. In return they are supposed to deliver reliable service. They are not and their failure rate is increasing.

            Your ideology blinds you to reality.

          • jim_m

            As a rate payer you are a customer not their employer. That is a distinction that if you cannot understand then we cannot have a reasonable discussion.

            They did have monopolies and that was an unfortunate choice by the government. However, that era is over. In my area we now have competition for electric suppliers. I will agree that the power companies should have invested more, but my point was that regulation to suppress rates hampered that ability. Monopoly protection also eliminated the incentive of competition that would have pushed for infrastructure upgrades.

          • Commander_Chico

            Well we can’t have a reasonable discussion if you run away from what you write and try to make it something else.

            You said: “you do not pay their salaries,” not “you are not their employer.”

            Of course rate payers pay for all power company salaries. Don’t be dishonest.

            Some things are natural monopolies. Generation is not a natural monopoly, but how many electrical transmission and distribution networks can you have running in parallel? How many water and sewer systems?

          • jim_m

            To conflate the customer that supplies the revenue that runs the company with the employer that hires and fires the employees is to demonstrate amazing ignorance that I thought even you were above. Obviously I was wrong.

          • Commander_Chico

            I know you are frustrated for some reason and constantly want to lash out anonymously with insults, but try to open your mind. When I am confronted by opposing views, I listen to them and have to consider them carefully. That’s part of the job I have now.

            Now, when you denigrate the customer and exalt the boss, that makes no economic sense. In normal cases, the customer is really the “boss” of any enterprise. It might be less so when there is a monopoly, but the customer always has leverage, in the case of a regulated monopoly through political pressure if satisfactory services are not provided. It appears that you are looking at an enterprise only as a hierarchy and not organically.

            Really, in any case, the management of an enterprise has as at least as much duty to the customer as to the shareholder. Optimal business management is more complicated than you think it is.

          • jim_m

            What nonsense. The management only has an obligation to provide a product to the consumer that the consumer is willing to buy. The customer is not in any sense the boss of a company. If that were the case then we never would have had the wonderful experience of great products like Microsoft Bob and the Edsel.

            You have a screwed up concept of the marketplace. Consumers have great influence on companies and they are ignored at the company’s peril, but they are never the boss. They do not make decisions. They do not dictate policy. They do not hire and fire personnel.

            Customers are vigorously surveyed and interviewed by companies and companies sweat bullets trying to figure out what customers want because “the boss” would be telling them.

          • SCSIwuzzy

            You want to see what really scares the big wigs at the typical utility? Fines from NERC and FERC. Fines from the local utilities board or commission.
            You want to effect change, complain to these entities. They have more say over what the utilities can and can’t do than the C level executives.

          • Commander_Chico

            Customers make the ultimate decisions about a company.

          • SCSIwuzzy

            No, Chico, they pay for a portion of their salaries. Not all. Some. They make significant dollars trading power and gas to other utilities, and “retail” sales to companies and governments in and outside of their distribution territory. The choice in supplier that jim_m was talking about, above.

          • http://www.rustedsky.net JLawson

            Funny thing – we could have used the ‘Stimulus’ to significantly upgrade the electrical infrastructure… but there was an objection to it. Or, to construction jobs in general.

            http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/659dkrod.asp?pg=1

            And then again, I know there’s a move on to harden the electrical system, but there’s the question of just how to do it to be hashed out. Above-ground is easier to build and cheaper, below ground is much less prone to weather events but a LOT more expensive.

            There’s always tradeoffs. You pay your money and you make your choices – and hope that down the line they were the right ones.

          • http://wizbangblog.com/author/rodney-graves/ Rodney G. Graves

            We’re in new (less than 10 years) Construction and all our utilities are underground (including transformers). Unfortunately, the sub-grid we’re on still has a lot of above ground elements. The project to convert that to underground died when PG&E and the state had their recent unpleasantness.

          • SCSIwuzzy

            Above ground transmission lines is indeed part of the problem here. You need the crews to find the downed lines and secure the sites (spotters and screeners), then you need the trucks to clear the vegetation and then you can bring in the linemen to repair the line.

          • Commander_Chico

            Yeah, a lot of that money was not put to the best use. I can’t stand the way the Democrats pander to feminists, one reason I’m not a member.

          • http://www.facebook.com/people/Ryan-Murphy/100001624276605 Ryan Murphy

            But you approve of the pandering to ‘environmentalists’?

          • SCSIwuzzy

            Jim, you are still getting your power from the local grid, and that is owned by whomever used to be your monopoly power company. Rates paid by the typical residential customer are still regulated, even in deregulated areas. You can by generation from any number of companies for a variety of rates and terms, but your local power company has to charge a rate set by your state government. They have some input on that rate, but they have a price cap they cannot exceed, regardless of their actual costs to generate and deliver.

          • SCSIwuzzy

            Much of many utilities profit comes from trading now, not from direct residential sales.

            PEPCO is a bit of an industry joke, but they aren’t given the free hand you seem to think (or at least seem to indicate). While they (PHI, the mother ship for PEPCO, Delmarva, ACL are dealing with this event in the DC area, they are also dealing with large outages in southern NJ and across DE. Last I heard on the radio this morning, there were still about 3,000 customers in the city of Wilmington, DE without power. 30,000 are without power throughout south Jersey. Plus the people Potomac are trying to restore.

            One thing to keep in mind is that utilities tend to help each other out. When there is a weather disaster in one area, utility trucks from hundreds of miles around will cross multiple state lines to come help recover. This event hit many states, with little to no warning. So normally if DC lost power, you’d have trucks from PSEG, PECO, NRG, BGE, Dominion, PPL and even Con ED up in NY rolling down to help. But BGE had nearly 1.5 million customers out (only 79k left to go as of this AM). PECO, being owned by Exelon as is BGE, is sending their trucks to MD once PA is cleaned up (nearly done, less than a thousand customers left w/o power) before sending them elsewhere. The Midwest utilities in OH, IN and IL, and the central southers in TN, WV and KY are also tied up cleaning their own yards. And Con Ed’s union is striking, so no help from up there…

          • http://wizbangblog.com/author/rodney-graves/ Rodney G. Graves

            Unions to the rescue!

          • Commander_Chico

            Thanks for the info.

          • SCSIwuzzy

            Also, look at PEPCO’s growth, not just their current yield
            Negative on revenues and EPS and below 1% on dividends.

        • SCSIwuzzy

          Utilities had more regulation in the past, yet somehow there were less power failures. The fact that infrastructure is rotting in the USA is not controversial.

          In the past is key. In the past, the infrastructure was younger. In the past there was less load. In the past power was regional and tied to the local utility, not traded and exchanged from coast to coast. In the past there weren’t as many limits on investment recovery (they had other limits; deregulation was more of a change in regulation, not an elimination of). In the past there wasn’t as much NIMBY to contend with when trying to run new powerlines. In the past you didn’t have the greens stopping new plants and lines to protect the frog tongued turtle’s habitat.

          Some utilities are short sited. And some aren’t. But they all have harder row to hoe than they did 30+ years ago.

          • jim_m

            deregulation was more of a change in regulation, not an elimination of

            Spot on.

        • SCSIwuzzy

          A few years ago, I am on my phone so I won’t be searching for a URL (!!BBQ!!), the Nat Wildlife Fed and Piedmont Env council led a doz or so enviro groups in trying to block 2 national transmission corridors in US Dist court in PA.
          Another batch, incl the Sierra club sued in CA to block distribution expansion on the west coast.
          You can google that if you don’t believe me.
          I will not ask you to STFU, as it is vulgar and we all know you will never comply ;)

    • Vagabond661

      and wackos who shut down nuclear power. Japan wants to fire their nukes back up to prevent rolling blackouts which everyone knew would happen.