It's strange that power outages happen so often, and yet most people don't think about them.
Heh. I lived in Alaska for a good chunk of my life, so I'm very familiar with them! They'd be caused by wind, snow, ice, avalanches, or it simply being too cold. (Seriously.) The local electric company was amazing, though, and the longest we were without power at my house was 8 hours (on Thanksgiving, of course!). (Why is that amazing? The area they had to cover was divided into two areas by mountains, and the one that we lived in was the size of West Virginia!)
Of course, the first winter we spent in Alaska, my brother and his family were renting our Upstate NY house from us (this would have been ... 1994?) and they had a MASSIVE ice storm that knocked out power for days....
Where I live now, in Western Washington, I guess the power gets knocked out quite a bit by wind storms. I've experienced the power at my work flickering out; not sure for how long, though, as the emergency generators kick in after about 10-20 seconds. (Major corporation with several office buildings.) I've heard that some neighborhoods (mostly in the big city) can be without power for days. Also, there were some power outages caused by a simple snow storm last December. (Ok, so it was really an insane snow storm for this area, but considering where I've lived, I laughed the whole way through it.)
Oh, and when I lived in Michigan, there'd be summer time outages caused by the insane thunders storms that came roaring through. Not sure if it was the wind, lightning, or twisters, but.... (Oooh, I miss those storms!)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2009-11-06 01:32 am (UTC)Heh. I lived in Alaska for a good chunk of my life, so I'm very familiar with them! They'd be caused by wind, snow, ice, avalanches, or it simply being too cold. (Seriously.) The local electric company was amazing, though, and the longest we were without power at my house was 8 hours (on Thanksgiving, of course!). (Why is that amazing? The area they had to cover was divided into two areas by mountains, and the one that we lived in was the size of West Virginia!)
Of course, the first winter we spent in Alaska, my brother and his family were renting our Upstate NY house from us (this would have been ... 1994?) and they had a MASSIVE ice storm that knocked out power for days....
Where I live now, in Western Washington, I guess the power gets knocked out quite a bit by wind storms. I've experienced the power at my work flickering out; not sure for how long, though, as the emergency generators kick in after about 10-20 seconds. (Major corporation with several office buildings.) I've heard that some neighborhoods (mostly in the big city) can be without power for days. Also, there were some power outages caused by a simple snow storm last December. (Ok, so it was really an insane snow storm for this area, but considering where I've lived, I laughed the whole way through it.)
Oh, and when I lived in Michigan, there'd be summer time outages caused by the insane thunders storms that came roaring through. Not sure if it was the wind, lightning, or twisters, but.... (Oooh, I miss those storms!)