The Observation Deck

Thanks Ivor.

sharon kinsella wrote:No storm last night but the power went off here at the Westerly for about 2 hours.

sharon kinsella wrote:I wonder what it was that made the power go out here.

I got this information from an executive at FirstEnergy. Because of the power outage on Friday, The Illuminating Company had to bleed the air out of the electric lines that leaked during the storm. Rather than do that at each pole (a very lengthy process), they did it centrally, at the Westlake substation master valve. That's why Sunday's outage was so widespread. Those air bubbles can really impact power transmission. The air and old static, perhaps waterlogged electrons, need to be flushed out before new agitated electrons can flow properly to our homes and businesses.

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So, unless I missed it somewhere, there were no reported injuries as a result. This is simply amazing.

Stephen, if this was a planned "central" outage, why wouldn't The Illuminating Co. tell anyone in advance? Something like:

Attention customers - This is an alert to inform residents of Lakewood, Rocky River, Westlake and Fairview Park that power disruptions will likely occur Sunday afternoon so that we can repair the lines damaged in Friday's storm. These planned outages are simply unavoidable and should last no more than a couple of hours. We apologize for the inconvenience but hope this notice will help all residents plan accordingly.

Hey gang--- I was out of town for a couple of days. Anything happen when I was gone

David Anderson wrote:So, unless I missed it somewhere, there were no reported injuries as a result. This is simply amazing.

Stephen, if this was a planned "central" outage, why wouldn't The Illuminating Co. tell anyone in advance? Something like:

Attention customers - This is an alert to inform residents of Lakewood, Rocky River, Westlake and Fairview Park that power disruptions will likely occur Sunday afternoon so that we can repair the lines damaged in Friday's storm. These planned outages are simply unavoidable and should last no more than a couple of hours. We apologize for the inconvenience but hope this notice will help all residents plan accordingly.

Sometimes you just have to deal with the waterlogged electrons first and worry about notifying people later.

That's a good point, Bob. However, I don't think the PR/communications staff was out working on the lines.

Heck, why let the elderly and other at-risk customers know when a controlled outage is going to occur. Let's just ignore the fact that when we turn the power off one and two days after the storm people will be wondering "what just happened" and "when can we expect it to come back on."

Normally, these answers are not possible when a storm blows through. However, they had them for the controlled outages. Ugh.

David Anderson wrote:That's a good point, Bob. However, I don't think the PR/communications staff was out working on the lines.

Heck, why let the elderly and other at-risk customers know when a controlled outage is going to occur. Let's just ignore the fact that when we turn the power off one and two days after the storm people will be wondering "what just happened" and "when can we expect it to come back on."

Normally, these answers are not possible when a storm blows through. However, they had them for the controlled outages. Ugh.

True, but with air in the lines and waterlogged electrons, you run a real risk of overloading the flux capacitors at the sub-station. There was a case in Mill Valley, California where 1.21 gigawatts of power was released during a lighting strike in 1955.

Sometimes the utility has to take the system down with little warning. There was a very interesting paper written by Dr. Emmitt Brown that discussed this in detail.

Tree down on Wilberrt. The owner of the house thought she remembered hearing
it was was there in 1918.

This seems to be the oldest tree that I photographed, if the rings mean anything.
One on Summit might have been older, but it was very hard to see the rings because
of the way it was cut. Most of the others seemed in the 70s-80s.


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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

May 11, 2010

MAYOR DECLARES LOCAL STATE OF EMERGENCY FOR STORM
City to Seek Assistance from County, State and FEMA for Damages

Ed FitzGerald, Lakewood’s Mayor and Director of Public Safety, has declared a Local State of Emergency in Lakewood as a result of Friday’s severe storm. The declaration enables the City to apply for county, state and federal funding to help pay for clean-up efforts.

Lakewood was hardest hit by Friday night’s storm, pummeled by tornado-force winds and quarter sized hail. In just a couple hours, city safety forces received over 100 calls reporting downed trees and power lines. Despite significant damage to homes and other property, no injuries were reported. City wide clean-up efforts continue and will for some time.

“As a result of Friday’s storm damage to private and public property, I am declaring a State of Emergency,“ stated Mayor Ed FitzGerald. “In addition to the safety forces’ response and clean-up efforts already underway, this declaration is another necessary part of our response. We’re going to ask the Federal Emergency Management Agency and other entities for help and fight for all available resources to assist the city and homeowners with the aftermath.”


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