Saturday, September 13, 2003
Overseers Missed Big Picture as Failures Led to Blackout
Overseers Missed Big Picture as Failures Led to Blackout: "Overseers Missed Big Picture as Failures Led to Blackout
By ERIC LIPTON, RICHARD PEREZ-PENA and MATTHEW L. WALD
This article was reported and written by Eric Lipton, Richard Pérez-Peña and Matthew L. Wald.
Twenty-two minutes before North America's biggest blackout, officials at two agencies charged with ensuring the safe and steady flow of power across the Midwest conferred by telephone about what they thought were troubling but still routine electrical line problems in Ohio."
"In the end, then, it was not just a circuit breaker tripping or a transmission line sagging into a tree that caused the system to fail. Documents and interviews make clear that the blackout may well have resulted, just as surely, from the fact that the people whose job it was to respond to those failures lacked much of the information about what was happening."
Well, it's obvious that something needs to be done. This article is an extensive one and shows just how big a mess we're all in. The main problem is that there is no national power grid monitoring agency with any authority to order action by anyone. Couple this with a lack of the ability to see 'the big picture' and you have a recipe for disaster. And it won't get better until someone in Washington acts. That, in itself, is why we'd ALL better get ready for it to happen again. Let's hope it's not in the middle of a 'Hundred Year' blizzard, hmm?
By ERIC LIPTON, RICHARD PEREZ-PENA and MATTHEW L. WALD
This article was reported and written by Eric Lipton, Richard Pérez-Peña and Matthew L. Wald.
Twenty-two minutes before North America's biggest blackout, officials at two agencies charged with ensuring the safe and steady flow of power across the Midwest conferred by telephone about what they thought were troubling but still routine electrical line problems in Ohio."
"In the end, then, it was not just a circuit breaker tripping or a transmission line sagging into a tree that caused the system to fail. Documents and interviews make clear that the blackout may well have resulted, just as surely, from the fact that the people whose job it was to respond to those failures lacked much of the information about what was happening."
Well, it's obvious that something needs to be done. This article is an extensive one and shows just how big a mess we're all in. The main problem is that there is no national power grid monitoring agency with any authority to order action by anyone. Couple this with a lack of the ability to see 'the big picture' and you have a recipe for disaster. And it won't get better until someone in Washington acts. That, in itself, is why we'd ALL better get ready for it to happen again. Let's hope it's not in the middle of a 'Hundred Year' blizzard, hmm?
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