Power Outage Across Lakewood - Updated

[Jim O'Bryan]

Less than 3 hours, but for many it seemed like an eternity. First we have naturally nervous people, of which I am not one. If I have any issues it is that I tend to be too laid back. But I have to admit as the lights flickered and died, just as dinner was starting int the pressure cooker, “god what is next,” went through my mind.

Then as I heard that the power outage had gone farther than just Lakewood I start to wonder. What is next? We had stocked the house for at least a month. But along with the COVID-19 staples, mostly canned and dried good items, there were refrigerated items. Damn, here we go.

While power outages are not scary, it is hard to forget back in the 80s went the power went down for over a week. That was the summer, this was fall. As I listened to the city truck scanner there were wires arcing everywhere. Which seemed odd considering how wide spread the power outage was.

The night before I had watched a special on the hacking of hospital with ransom wear. That first a couple hospitals on the east coast got hit. Demanding tens of thousands of dollars or they would shut them down. With the refusal, their hospital’s data was locked up. Operations, cancer treatments, even standard work shut down. Hospitals and all of their equipment is desperately dependent on computer systems. Then it started popping up in the midwest, Colorado and California. Now with the ransomware thugs demanding hundreds of thousands of dollars. All of this had been traced back to Russian Troll Farm. The same Russian Troll Farm that has been linked to hacking voter databases and power grid systems. Of which they have successfully breached many time over the past 4 years.

Was this an attack? From outside from inside. These were abstract thoughts for me, a person more into “no power a great time to grab some sleep.” Could the recent upsurge in militant moves from America’s dirty little secret the militias be involved? Will this last through the election? Again one group the Democrats seemed ready to count every sealed vote regardless of who is on it. The Republicans have already dispatched hundreds of lawyers to stop votes from being counted for any reason. Is this part of the shut down of voter rights? If that wasn’t confusing enough, do we take the meat out of the cooker and cool it down? Dow we dare put warm meat in a cold refrigerator there by releasing cool air and heating it up inside?

Who knows, like many things we all comment on, I am no expert in electrical grids and dispersal and repair of them. But wait I know someone who is, and he works at First Energy. After reaching out, the comment came back that he was shocked our power was not already back on. With that in mind, I got in the car to charge up the phones and drive around a dark very peaceful Lakewood.




.

.