I'll be honest, I'm no expert, but I do remember a few things.
Outages happen on a grid-to-grid basis. Depending on the size of the city, a power grid could be a whole city, or a few blocks. I remember having outages in Montebello, CA (average drive time from one end of the city border to the other would be about 15-20 minutes) where my parents' place would be out and my grandma across the street still had power.
A mass power outage that would span a whole city if not more? The surest way of that happening is a malfunction in the power plant itself, I'd think.
Brown-outs used to last a few hours in the LA area. I think the longest I've experienced an actual power outage is 24 hours, roughly.
Hospitals and jails, yes, definitely. I actually can't be sure about banks. If the power's out, there wouldn't BE an alarm system to go off, I'd think, unless they thought of the backup generator idea. The power plant itself might also have one to get the computer systems up and running to FIX whatever caused an outage. Police and fire departments probably have one. Any government buildings would probably have one, too.
Again, I'm no expert. My knowledge is based off questions I'd ask when things happened and what I remember of the answers. Everything beyond that is just me applying logic LoL
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2009-11-05 11:33 pm (UTC)Outages happen on a grid-to-grid basis. Depending on the size of the city, a power grid could be a whole city, or a few blocks. I remember having outages in Montebello, CA (average drive time from one end of the city border to the other would be about 15-20 minutes) where my parents' place would be out and my grandma across the street still had power.
A mass power outage that would span a whole city if not more? The surest way of that happening is a malfunction in the power plant itself, I'd think.
Brown-outs used to last a few hours in the LA area. I think the longest I've experienced an actual power outage is 24 hours, roughly.
Hospitals and jails, yes, definitely. I actually can't be sure about banks. If the power's out, there wouldn't BE an alarm system to go off, I'd think, unless they thought of the backup generator idea. The power plant itself might also have one to get the computer systems up and running to FIX whatever caused an outage. Police and fire departments probably have one. Any government buildings would probably have one, too.
Again, I'm no expert. My knowledge is based off questions I'd ask when things happened and what I remember of the answers. Everything beyond that is just me applying logic LoL