🚀 go-pugleaf

>>... The point is that even
>>a catastrophic event doesn't destroy the "technology matrix" - electricity
>>would still have been a well-known phenomenon even if the New York blackout
>>had (quite frankly, unimaginably) lasted for weeks.
>
>To map this into the New York blackout example: yes, electricity would
>continue to be an observable and controllable physical entity, in spite
>of the [extended] blackout.  However, things like turbines and generators
>and power distribution equipment are technological items that *will* fail,
>sooner or later, and will thus require human intervention for maintenance.
>It is these items which will NOT "keep working the same way forever" if
>they become "bits of it that you don't understand".

Unimaginable as as an extended blackout might seem, such things have
happened. Here's a little story that actually involves some "forgotten"
technology, too.

On Thanksgiving evening 1984, Hurricane Iwa---essentially without
warning---hit the islands of Kauai and Oahu, destroying major
portions of the electrical grids on both islands and knocking
out all electrical generation.  It was several days before power
was restored to portions of Honolulu (incidentally, the 11th
most populous city in the United States), several weeks before
power was completely restored.  One of the reasons it took
so long was that all of the generators were designed to be
"jump-started" from another running generator on the grid,
and no one knew how to bootstrap up a generator all by itself.

The whole story is rather too long to go into here, but here
are some of the key points...

There was no satellite meteorological coverage for the central
Pacific, because the GOES East satellite had failed, and the
GOES West had been moved over to cover the Atlantic...which
the Weather Service figured was more important.  Weather observations
from ships told of a strong hurricane developing west of the
islands, but a military reconnaisance flight sent out on
Thanksgiving day failed to accurately locate the storm.  There
was no historical precedence for the path it took that led
right to the population centers.

In the afternoon, winds started rising, and the Weather Service
issued a Hurricane Watch, then quickly a Warning, but still
didn't have a precise fix on Iwa, nor accurate information
on speed or direction.

Early in the evening, after dark the winds started gusting well above
60 mph, and the electrical grid went down, surprising the electrical
utilities who had taken no precautions to isolate any of their
systems...taking down all their generators.

[This could be a separate story in itself, but suffice it to say
that the Civil Defense Emergency Broadcast system didn't work.
Besides all the TV stations, all the radio stations---except one---
went off the air that night.  The single radio station that had
an operating emergency generator was running "on automatic",
playing religious music.]

By the next day, one or two other radio stations were up (and
the religious station had hastily converted to all-news), but
power was still out...remaining out for days.  The first thing
people missed was water, the water distribution system being
driven by electrical pumps...though some places that had
gravity feed from tanks above in the hills were lucky for a while.

Traffic was a shambles since no traffic lights were
working...though that became less of a problem over the
next day or so since no gas stations were pumping and people
realized that they were stuck with just whatever gasoline
they happened to have in the tanks of their cars, and started
being very careful about how they used that up.

Food in refrigerators and freezers spoiled.  Long lines developed
at grocery stores as people tried to buy more food...and clerks
had to add up by hand.  Most resturants stayed closed; the few
that opened---cooking with gas---soon closed again as the city
gas system began losing pressure.

Electrical generators (even small ones) were not available for
love nor money, ice and candles (when available) went for premium prices.

The most-listened-to person in the islands was the spokesman for
the electrical company who spent virtually all of his waking hours
on one radio station or another detailing the repair work underway

Meanwhile, the electrical utility company crews worked around the clock
to restore portions of the electrical grid, and devise ways to start
up even one major generator.  I don't know the full story behind
the restart effort, except that lots of different techniques were
tried, one of which finally worked on Oahu. The Navy dispatched
a nuclear submarine to Kauai in an effort to "jump start" the main
generator there.

It seemed like forever, but it was only a few days until electricity
was available to some parts of Honolulu.

We lived with rolling blackouts for about a week more.  Outlying areas
on the islands weren't fully restored for over two weeks.

There were some fatalities, due mostly to "freak" accidents of various
kinds...and a small, but statistically significant "baby boomlet"
some 9 months later.  If this had happenedd to a major mainland city
in winter there would have been considerably more fatalities, and
the story would be much more widely known.  As it was, if it had
lasted too many more days, water would have become very critical...

-- 
Bob Cunningham
bob@hig.hawaii.edu