Guest guest Posted January 17, 2001 Report Share Posted January 17, 2001 Hey, Vern! Thanks for the head's up! I was at home, read Vern's message, nodded sagely and shut down my PC. (I was already getting prepared to go to work.) Signals were out at the road approaching our Area Office; one of our units was parked there, monitoring traffic. Not directing it; the State of CA Vehicle Code states signal-controlled intersections become " all way stops " when the signals are not working. (This happens to be one of the specific questions on the test to get your DL in CA, too, so don't snipe at US for not staffing every signal-controlled intersection during power outages, okay?) I heard the generator working as I walked up to the buildings. Nodded even more sagely as I entered the Comm Center. (Dang that thing is loud! Luckily it's not too over-whelming INSIDE the Comm Center.) Our RB lasted 1 hour and 5 minutes. The ISO (Independent Service Operators, I believe) had notified the local counties EOCs of a vague " schedule " for when our four counties here would be affected, and some sketchy zones for each area within these counties. Nothing real definitive. However, we were left off this particular county's " public safety/services fax dissemination " list. (That's been fixed... we didn't know they HAD any such list until one of their dispatchers said sumpin' about it when we called over there for some other reason. He said, " Well, this is supposed to be secret... " and he wasn't kidding. <ahem> Just a bit of a loop to close....) Anyway, <whistling merrily> the media is all over our butts now. Vern was absolutely right on the money when he said there'd be folks wondering WHAAASSSUP??? with the power outages. And ya know what? It's not public safety's role to be spokespersons for the utility companies. Call THEM - and if the phone number is busy or ya don't get the information you want, it's still not an emergency. (Not unless there's somebody on life support in your house - that would be different.) A TV reporter just called here to ask some questions; we both laughed over the comment I made about " What, haven't they been listening to the radio, watching the TV news, reading the newspaper? Do they need airplanes to post the energy crisis and rolling black-out news as sky-writing? " Oh, and the " planned RBs " are expected to cease around here at 2000 hrs. (Subject to change, of course.) And that's just for today. Happy to be here, proud to serve. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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