A major electrical transmission tower has collapsed, leaving Orleans Parish completely without power.
An official in Jefferson Parish says a transmission tower that provides power for New Orleans and the east bank of the parish has collapsed into the river near Bridge City. According to the parish’s Emergency Management Director, cables strung across the Mississippi River are now in the water...
That's not going to be a rapid repair. RUMINT is that locals are being advised that it may be two months before everyone has power back.
Even if you have solar or hand-crank power for your cell phones, the cell companies are going to be hard-pressed to keep the generators for the cell towers supplied. Even if you have a landline, eventually the switching system is going to run out of power. While I don't know for sure, it's probably a good bet that the "efficiency experts" have long ago eliminated most of the power backups that the old Bell System pointed to as a source of pride.
It may be that if you need to communicate with someone in the affected area, you're going to have to send them a letter, unless they know an amateur radio operator in their neighborhood (whose antennas stayed up).
ETA: Aaron said that Murphy came through the storm OK.
14 comments:
Typical "Big Easy" attitude...they EXPECTED the tower to fail in a major hurricane. That's why they had already told everyone that they would be without power for 6 weeks well BEFORE the storm hit.
Prolly hoping the FedGov will pay for the rebuild.
.
B, evidence to back up your assertion would be helpful.
Nice try, B. Who should pay for the new tower, btw? The ratepayers, the stockholders, or the Feds?
“I never had anyone help me. I was on food stamps.”
Craig T Nelson
DA, next time, omit the 1st sentence, please. Yellow card.
Yes when the wind blows things fall. When the wind is peaking
170MPH even stout thing fall.
Having recently done windload analysis for a trivial 30ft tower
I'd easily place the forces in the hundreds of tons region as a
result of those winds. Thats for the tower not including the
wires and insulators all in the wind.
It has nothing to do with big easy or any attitude.
Eck!
With why they went down covered.
Towers like that do exist somewhere in "stock" they will have to
be transported and likely new concreter piers laid in to support
them. What does tha mean..
Companies that make them will make more based on demand.
Many will make the associated things like bolts, insulators,
wire and connectors as demand call for them and to maintain
stock.
Raw materials such as gravel, sand and concrete has to appear.
New hole dug, and concrete poured and levels with rebar and
anchors installed.
Heavy machinery and associated people to do heavy lifting
and dig holes.
Wire, miles of it of the correct gage and insulator assemblies.
Men and women power, bodies doing work, to direct, and install
all of it. These will come from neighboring states likely edges
of the country as well.
While that going on a canteen, food, water, shelter,
and sanitation for those working on it.
At the generation facilities there will be people
working to ready it for a restart or that it can if
requested.
Some areas under water will have to be isolated
as burred lines as well as distribution above ground
maybe unsafe to power.
I would guess National guard and Army Corp of engineers to
assist as well.
The landline phone system usual battery and colocated
gensets for backup so fuel for the long haul, battery
for shorter outages (usually a day or more). That
assumes the facility is not under water.
Local area (neighborhoods) may have phone lines underwater
and those big boxes around (usually green here) are likely
in water making them non functional (local to the area
switching).
Cell tower have both battery and genset, if they are
not underwater they are good for days even without fuel
for the genset.
All of this is called infrastructure... This stuff
we depend on for life and and all that. The stuff
the party of death and disinformation have resisted.
Eck!
Well said, Eck. Many others do not take into account the associated factors that go into building power lines, junctions, and the supply stations that are required to have an electrical network. Same goes for building construction projects, road development, sewer systems, etc. The average layperson only sees the end result (wires, towers, glass buildings, concrete pavement, manhole grates, etc.) and never consider how these things came to be. But they’re the first ones to criticize when things don’t run smoothly.
Dale
Once in the '90s I delivered a refrigerator to the break room at a Pacific Bell building in Concord. On the way to the break room we passed hundreds of yards of lead-acid batteries, built into three levels and earthquake proofed with a lot of structural steel and industrial rubber mounting. That's where the DC power in the phone lines came from.
Last year we had what they called the "Mono wind event" where 60MPH winds blew a lot of trees over and shut down the power here for six extra days beyond the preemptive shut off they did to prevent wildfires. 60MPH is a lot milder than a hurricane.
Now PG&E is planning to underground ten thousand miles of power lines, because as frightfully expensive as that is, it pales in comparison to the financial liability its above ground power lines are exposing it to with the wildfires they cause every time the damn wind blows.
-Doug in Sugar Pine
My Source is a middle/upper level manager at Entergy. Claim is that the foundation had known issues. plus corrosion at the base.
No, I have no documentation. But I'd trust him with my life and I believe him.
Feel free to find a fact or two to refute my statement rather than just use ridicule.
Yes, the forces on the towers are tremendous, even without debris in the latticework, but those forces are planned for and engineered into the structure. Age and lack of maintenance are not engineered into the structure. Much like the Surfside Tower collapse: not because of bad engineering or overstress, but rather because of neglect and the failure that that engendered.
Without documentation, your claim has no validity, B. That isn’t ridicule, just a statement of fact. If your source cannot come out to a media outlet with the truth, then there can be no fact-checking of your claim.
As Bertrand Russell put it, extraordinary claims need extraordinary evidence
Russell's teapot is an analogy, formulated by the philosopher Bertrand Russell (1872–1970), to illustrate that the philosophic burden of proof lies upon a person making unfalsifiable claims, rather than shifting the burden of disproof to others.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russell's_teapot
Nice way of calling me a liar, DA,
Thanks.
Funny how you accept "unnamed sources" from Liberal News media when it suits you. (But there's that double standard you live with again)
Again, prove my source incorrect.
And I've spoken with Murphy: he has no electricity but has a diesel van so he can charge batteries and cell phones, and have some AC to cool off with and plenty of food, water, and fuel.
He's most worried about looters and folks who expect him to share his preps. Glad he has his dogs to guard while he sleeps.
To the Usual Suspects: play nice.
Dial back the vitriol or this thread'll get locked, too.
And B, if a media source reported something like this, and had no documentation and “Trust me, this guy is telling the truth, I’m vouching for him”, my response would be the same, regardless of the political affiliation of said reporter. Heck, even if he showed you documentation, you could at least tell us what was documented. And, lastly, being asked to offer proof of something isn’t saying you’re lying, just that I need more than mere verbal assurances from an unknown source.
DA, I let one of your three comments through. Driving a point home past a certain point is a bit much.
I think we’re done.
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