9/21/2004: Hurricane Ivan damage

[glatt]

Originally Posted by tw

Buried wires are automatically located and for free. Furthermore, it takes far more than a shovel to pierce those wires. Covering material (ususally a few inches of sand or other protective materail) provides warning of those wires. In short it is difficult to harm buried wires.

I agree with most of what you say, but you overestimate the typical homeowner. A wire looks a lot like a root when it is caked with dirt. Many homeowners (not most, but many) will reach for an axe or clippers when they come to a dirt encrusted wire. If there is a layer of sand before they hit the wire, many homeowners will be pleased that the digging is getting easier. Often there is yellow plastic tape in the sand above the wire. "Hmm, there's trash in the dirt."

All it takes is one in ten diggers being an idiot, and you have widespread problems. Wires in the air are safe from idiots. Idiots will be electrocuted long before they hurt the wires in the air.

Don't misunderstand me. I'm a fan of buried wires. They look better, are weather resisitant, and you don't have the electric company over-pruning the trees in the area to protect its overhead wires. But buried wires are very very expensive, and difficult to repair.

[Troubleshooter]

My mother and grandmother live in Pensacola. The city told them yesterday that they could start drinking the water again. Apparently the surge washed up far enough to flood the sewer treatment pond into the city water system.

[FloridaDragon]

I understand both sides of the arguement (buried verses overhead) but really feel that some kind of effort should be made to gradually move the wires underground. When Frances approached there were widespread power outages on Thursday morning in the Palm Beach area as the initial bands moved ashore. All of these were trees across wires. We lost power Saturday night as the eyewall hit the coastline. Our power was restored for a few hours on Sunday morning and then continuously on Monday morning. We have buried utilities due to being in a new development.

Then when Jeanne approached, we again heard of power outages (not as many this time as the trees had been somewhat pruned by the first cat 2 storm) and again, we did not lose power until late Saturday night as the eyewall was just off the coast. Power came on again Sunday about 11am and stayed on. Both of these storms were direct hits on Palm City.

The sad part is I knew people here at work that had only gotten their power back for a couple of days from Frances before Jeanne knocked it out again and they are hearing it could be as late as October 12th. Unbelievable.

Currently it seems that the power lines only get buried in new communities and you almost never see them being put underground in older ones. There are areas here in Palm City where they are tearing the roads and driveways up putting in new sewer and water lines, talk about a good time to put wires underground as well, but are they doing that? No...not much planning on their part. I know there is additional cost to putting them underground, but as a current FL resident I would be willing to bet most of us down here would pay a little extra to do it right once and for all.

FD

[CharlieG]

it doesn't require any FEDERAL money - folks, the government doesn't run the electric company, so the "Iraq Money" comments have nothing to do with it.

It IS easy to solve - but it takes time. The first part is the state, or even local community to pass a law:

All new development shall use underground utility services

Guess what? It starts getting fixed

The later they can say:

By XXXX date, all feeders below YYY volts must be moved underground (a LOT of VERY high voltage lines are in the air for VERY good reasons). Thing is, you lose the real big stuff, you lose a lot of homes, BUT you have a lot fewer wires to worry about, so they get fixed faster

[Kitsune]

All new development shall use underground utility services

I'm all for it. I'm tempted to write the city/county on it now that its become a major discussion point.

Actually, all the new development I see down here has lines going underground. In fact, for my area, there are no overhead lines visible except for the really high voltage stuff. During Frances we still lost power because, somehow, those lines ended up going down. I kind of wish I'd been around to see it, too -- they're the lines that you can hear in the rain so it had to be a spectacular explosion when they dropped! Sizzle.

Damn, I love high voltage.

[FloridaDragon]

I don't know which lines went down that resulted in us losing power during both Frances or Jeanne since our local ones are underground but it certainly was spectacular with Jeanne as we sat on the somewhat protected front porch as the eye approached and watched the sky light up every 10 seconds with another blue/green transformer explosion...now if they could solve THAT problem we would be all set! (when we lost power during Jeanne there was a quite spectacular flash off in the distance as something big went)

FD

[xoxoxoBruce]

You won't have to worry about hurricanes in your new location.

[tw]

Originally Posted by CharlieG

it doesn't require any FEDERAL money - folks, the government doesn't run the electric company, so the "Iraq Money" comments have nothing to do with it.

An outright and naive statement. One need only learn the lessons of recent history. A lesson from history so obvious that I appalled I have to explain it.

When a federal government spends money it does not have, then it does so at the entire economy's expense. Vietnam literally sucked the economic growth out of America. Massive (and secret) spending on Vietnam in the late sixties and early 70s caused American cars to suffer massive quality problems starting in the 1970s and lasting into the 1980s. American tires had a 50+% pre-mature failure rate as companies cut costs. Buildings were wired with aluminum - a problem we still live with today. Homes were built without plywood reinforced walls (instead we used a soft fiber board called Celotex). Pot holes and street resurfacing literally stopped - does anyone remember the massive pot hole problems in the late 1970s?

To continue paying those debts, America had to literally sell off the world's third largest manufacturing base - American owned industries in Europe. American wealth and economic stability (every part that was not part of the federal government) deteriorated because the federal government spent money it did not have. When a large economic entity suddenly spends beyond its budget, those funds come at the expense of everything else. Obviously.

Did we not learn from Napoleon? Turning a strong economy into a disaster even though a government budget is separate from all those other economic entities. Napoleon's wars literally undermined the entire French economy - even though the entire economy does not budget the wars.

Again, posted here is common knowledge to those who studied history or even learned the "I was there" lessons from Vietnam. Posted here is an insult against those who think it costs nothing because they are different budgets. Another painfully obvious lesson created by a lying president who spents beyond his budget - stagflation. What is affected by stagflation? Stagflation literally destroys all other budgets.

Athens was once THE world power. Then Athens decided to save the world from Sparta. Invasion of Sryacuse undermined the entire Athenian economy. Why? The war was fought in Syracuse - far from Athens. Accounting says losses in Syracuse have no effect on domestic Athenian budgets. But accounting can lie if we spin it. Reality. Massive overseas spending on useless wars causes everything else to be more expensive and the domestic infastructure to wither.

Overspending in one budget undermines all others. $400billion in Iraq means we must now stop doing the maintenance and infastructure upgrades that once kept America strong. For example, we cannot put those FL utilities underground and we cannot properly educate our kids. We spent almost nothing to rescue Kuwait. The entire expense of that war was paid for by all other nations because America did not have a 'screw you all' attitude. Japan paid the most. We spent little because we had a president then with intelligence. Therefore that war did not cause massive budget problems in state governments and electric companies.

Don't give me bean counter nonsense about those $400billion coming from another budget. Otherwise I will suspect you are George Jr - MBA and therefore a liar. It is rather silly that I even have to post what should be common knowledge to all who took history courses. Foreign boondoogles paid by a federal government means all other budgets get stressed. Simple things that would make America resilient such as underground utilities in FL will not happen because we decided to spend more on a personal vendetta in Iraq. Learn from history. The economies and infastructure that maintain massive militaries fail fastest - even though the military comes from *other* budgets.

[tw]

Originally Posted by glatt

I agree with most of what you say, but you overestimate the typical homeowner. A wire looks a lot like a root when it is caked with dirt. Many homeowners (not most, but many) will reach for an axe or clippers when they come to a dirt encrusted wire.

And so the naysayers said in the 1970s when we finally only started doing what is standard in Britian. If what you say is true, then FloridaDragon can tell us how frequently this happens in his neighborhood.

Anyone can write fiction when they don't do their homework or don't have experience. Reality says this homeowner reaching for an ax to cut a wire 2.5 feet underground simply does not happen. How often do you dig holes 2.5 feet deep with an axe? Please keep the speculations on the reality side of myths. Buried lines are far less likely to be taken down by trucks and stray automobiles. Buried wires are far more likely to be available when power is needed most - after bad weather.

[tw]

Why FL's infastructure must be hardened; must be made resilient.

from NY Times of 1 Oct 2004
Global Warming Is Expected to Raise Hurricane Intensity
Global warming is likely to produce a significant increase in the intensity and rainfall of hurricanes in coming decades, according to the most comprehensive computer analysis done so far.

By the 2080's, seas warmed by rising atmospheric concentrations of heat-trapping greenhouse gases could cause a typical hurricane to intensify about an extra half step on the five-step scale of destructive power, says the study, done on supercomputers at the Commerce Department's Geophysical Fluid Dynamics Laboratory in Princeton, N.J. And rainfall up to 60 miles from the core would be nearly 20 percent more intense.

Other computer modeling efforts have also predicted that hurricanes will grow stronger and wetter as a result of global warming. But this study is particularly significant, independent experts said, because it used half a dozen computer simulations of global climate, devised by separate groups at institutions around the world.

[Cyber Wolf]

Originally Posted by tw

Reality says this homeowner reaching for an ax to cut a wire 2.5 feet underground simply does not happen.

Nah, fully certified and licensed electricians will do that. That's the reality I lived through.

Originally Posted by tw

How often do you dig holes 2.5 feet deep with an axe?

Probably not very often, but people certainly could grab an axe if they dig down with something else, hit a root and have the room to swing up and down.

[Cyber Wolf]

Originally Posted by tw

Why FL's infastructure must be hardened; must be made resilient.

You can add just about every other state in the country for their own weather woes, specifically tornado season and heavy snow and/or ice storms.

Take heart, Florida! The Mid Eastern seaboard and New England's gonna get theirs come winter!

[glatt]

Originally Posted by tw

Anyone can write fiction when they don't do their homework or don't have experience. Reality says this homeowner reaching for an ax to cut a wire 2.5 feet underground simply does not happen. How often do you dig holes 2.5 feet deep with an axe? Please keep the speculations on the reality side of myths.

I wonder how many holes you have dug in you life? Either you have dug none, or you were incompetent when you were digging the ones you did. To dig a hole properly, you use two tools: a shovel and a mattock. A mattock is a kind of axe used for cutting roots, and breaking up hard packed dirt so it can be scooped out with a shovel. In rocky soil, a pick works better than a mattock, but a pick doesn't cut roots. While I have both, most homeowners don't have picks or mattocks, so they would use what they have on hand, which is most likely an axe or pruning clippers.

Here's a mattock. In the hands of an idiot, it would do a number on your precious underground wires. So would an axe. Understand that I'm not saying EVERY homeowner will chop up wires. All you need is one idiot out of a hundred homeowners. In the real world, that ratio is pretty realistic.

[FloridaDragon]

Originally Posted by tw

If what you say is true, then FloridaDragon can tell us how frequently this happens in his neighborhood.

At least in my experience in SoFla and CT, a homeowner cutting an underground utility line is extremely rare. The typical homeowner is intelligent enough (maybe just barely) to know that they need to call when they are putting in that new fence and all those postholes. Now the same person will probably not call when they are planting that tree and digging a single hole.

But I think the frequency of overhead wires being taken out by a truck or errant treetrimming job is also pretty rare when you think of the sheer quantity of wires out there. It is primarily these catastrophic events like these storms that do overhead lines in. We all like to live (well, most of us anyway) with lots of trees and plants around us...we set ourselves up for the fall.

The only wire I have ever cut myself was my neighbors invisible fence line for their dog. The installers hit a stump on the property line and decided to put it on my side (without my knowledge) so when I was planting some plants it got wacked.

FD

[CharlieG]

Oh please - all those wires stung in the air over the last 30-40 years are all the fault of the war in Iraq - yeah, right

Cars were shoddy in the 70s because the big 3 got lazy, and then had a bunch of "interesting" laws pushed on them - the 1st being polution controls, and then the 1973 gas crisis leading to the CAFE laws (which directly lead to the rise of the SUV, but lets not go THERE)

If your company has built a plant figuring on a 30 year life span (which the big 3 used to do) if costs a fortune to re-tool to make something else. In the mean time, if the guys you compete aginst made the right guess (small engines) they have a huge advantage