San Diego Hit By Major Power Outage, East And North Main Transmission Lines Cut

Failure of major transmission lines on Thursday cut power to millions of people in Southern California and northwestern Mexico.

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San Diego Officials 8:45 p.m. ET – “if you have a personal family emergency plan, please activate it now.”

 

I wonder what could be brought through border with the power turned off & everyone busy? Possible terroist getting ready for 9/11

 

KPBS says “some customers may be out for days” and that “officials do not believe it is related to terrorism.”

 

San Diego power outage map. http://www.sdge.com/outages/outageMap.shtml San Onofre Nuclear Power plant is in emergency shut down.

 

 

The problem extended from San Clemente, Calif., in southern Orange County south to San Diego, the nation’s eighth-largest city, and on to Mexico’s Baja peninsula, and east to Yuma, Ariz. It cut electricity to millions of people, including 1.4 million served by San Diego Gas & Electric.

The outage began at 3:38 p.m. when a transmission line running from Arizona to San Diego failed, triggering a cascade of events that then knocked the region’s other electricity provider — the San Onofre nuclear power plant — offline.

“Essentially we have two connections to the rest of the world — one to the north and one to the east — and both of those connections were severed,” he said. “We actually don’t know what happened to the line. All we know is the line went out.”

Gas stations are closing down, with no power to pump fuel and no means of processing transactions. Hospitals around the county were operating off back-up power generators, and officials at several facilities said patients weren’t in any danger.

At the University of California San Diego hospitals in Hillcrest and La Jolla, full power was being delivered to emergency rooms, burn units and other critical areas such as operating rooms that were in use when the blackout occurred, said spokeswoman Kimberly Edwards.

The power failure has thrown a wrench in the everyday life of a modern society that is heavily dependent on electricity. The outage shows how fragile our energy system is.

The outage also left an unknown number of people stranded in elevators across the county.

Luque said the fire department is not responding to ringing fire alarms unless there is a report of smoke and fire, and even then fewer engines may be sent than usual. The city’s contract ambulances have been swamped with calls for service, so patients at traffic accident scenes have been taken to hospitals on fire engines, Luque said.

SDPD 911 system is running on backup generators and is being overwhelmed. “People are calling 911 when they should be calling SDG&E,” Mohler said.  “Don’t call 911 unnecessarily,” Luque warned. “Legitimate emergency calls can’t get through.”

 All this is great proof that PREPARING SAVES LIVES! With no gas, no ambulances, and soon no 911 things may get messy if they don’t get the power on quick.  Be Prepared! Be Survival!

 

Short Term Water Storage

People who depend on a well for their water have learned to fill up up all available pots and pans when a thunderstorm is brewing. What would you do if you knew your water supply would be disrupted for a few hour? Assuming you don’t already have long term water preps (or you don’t want to use them up) here are a few options in addition to filling your pots and pans:

 

 

• The simplest option is to put two or three heavy-duty plastic trash bags (avoid those with post-consumer recycled content) inside each other. Then fill the inner bag with water. You can even use the trash can to give structure to the bag. (A good argument for keeping your trash can fairly clean!)
• Fill your bath tub almost to the top. Without a waterBOB Emergency Bathtub Water Storage, you won’t want to drink this water, but it can be used to flush toilets, wash your hands, etc.
• Shut off the breaker to your hot water heater and drain it into buckets and other containers (caution: surprisingly enough the water inside hot water heaters is HOT)

If you are at home, a fair amount of water will be stored in your water pipes and related systems too. To get access to this water, first close the valve to the outside as soon as possible. This will prevent the water from running out as pressure to the entire system drops and prevent contaminated water from entering your house.

Then open a faucet on the top floor. This will let air into the system so a vacuum doesn’t hold the water in. Next, you can open a faucet in the basement. Gravity should allow the water in your pipes to run out the open faucet. You can repeat this procedure for both hot and cold systems.

As mentioned above your hot water heater will also have about 40 gallons of potable water inside it. You can access this water from the valve on the bottom. Again, you may need to open a faucet somewhere else in the house to ensure a smooth flow of water. Sediment often collects in the bottom of a hot water heater. While a good maintenance program can prevent this, it should not be dangerous. Simply allow any stirred up dirt to again drift to the bottom.