power hit stories...

Mon Sep 9 00:47:21 UTC 1996

At a company I used to work for, we had the badge reader/controller for
the building in the security officer's office instead of the ops room.
We had a failure (the Inauguration Day storm in the Pacific Northwest)
that lasted longer than the UPS the security officer had put on his
desktop. You guessed it... the building went into failsafe mode; only
keys worked for access. None of the ops had keys and we were effectively
locked out of the building. Somehow we got a hold of the security guy's
home number and he came in and we put in an extension cord. Pretty
stupid, but not as cool as your story.

Related, but not to power, one Monday (holiday) the building went into
Day Mode, which was quite a bit less secure than Night Mode. Someone had
forgotten to enter the impending Holiday as a Night/Weekend mode day.
The main doors, loading dock, and all internal doors were wide open all
day until someone noticed none of them were locked.
--
a-ryj at microsoft.com, rjones at wicker.com
MSN WAN tools group
http://www.wicker.com/

>----------
>From: 	Bill Sommerfeld[SMTP:sommerfeld at apollo.hp.com]
>Sent: 	Sunday, September 08, 1996 5:21 PM
>To: 	nanog at merit.edu
>Subject: 	power hit stories...
>
>Reminds me of the power hit at MIT one summer Saturday in 1988.  Ask
>Jeff Schiller about it some time...
>
>Short version:
>
>MIT had just installed a 5ESS as its new PBX; they put in the usual
>batteries for backup, and opted to not include a generator just for
>the switch, because MIT had its own generator.
>
>All the multi-line phone sets were ISDN sets, powered from the phone
>closets.  The phone closets supposedly had emergency power (from the
>generator) and (small) backup batteries.
>
>Anyhow, something bad happened somewhere in Cambridge (transformer
>explosion or some such), with the result that most of town lost power.
>For a long time.
>
>One might expect the generators to come on.
>
>Nope.  They were off-line for maintainance.
>
>Phys plant had brought in portable generators on trailers.
>
>They didn't work either.
>
>oops.
>
>So, there were now three grades of power at MIT, and two of them
>weren't working.
>
> - normal power (from the local power grid, now dead)
> - emergency power (from the generator, now dead)
> - switch power (from the switch's batteries, still working)
>
>Unfortunately, the main phys plant emergency number was on one of the
>ISDN phones.  As one might expect, that phone got a lot of calls after
>the lights went out, and the phone went dead when its phone closet's
>batteries went out..
>
>Jeff was summoned to fix the switch so that the emergency number would
>work again.. I happened to be nearby at the time and wound up getting
>an impromptu tour of the switch.
>
>We noticed, on arrival, that the lights in the nearby room housing the
>modem pool were evidently on switch power.. which was clearly a wiring
>mistake.
>
>Jeff tried to get into the switch room with his key card, but some
>part of the card reader/electronic lock setup which controlled access
>to the door to the switch room was not on switch power, and it
>wouldn't let us in.
>
>Our ears soon verified that the switch's burglar alarm, on the other
>hand, *was* on switch power.  
>
>Once we shut up the alarm, we discovered that switch console terminal
>was *not* on switch power...
>
>Things went on like this for a while..
>
>Moral:
>
>If there are multiple grades of power available, make *darn* sure that
>nothing plugged into the highest grade depends on anything plugged
>into a lower grade..
>
>					- Bill
>