East Coast outage?

Fri Aug 15 20:28:23 UTC 2003

On Friday, 15 August 2003, at 16:19PM, Dragos Ruiu wrote:

> This is the third such outage
> the American power grid has seen since dc isolated zones were set up,
> the first in 1965, the second in 1978.  There was also another incident
> about half this size in 1996 in the western region, where most but not
> all of a region went out.
>
> The power system as a network probably counts as one of the most 
> reliable
> things humans have ever built.

I don't recall any any incidents during which similar numbers of people 
lost all internet access, or all telephone access, for as long as the 
power has been out -- and it's difficult to imagine a scenario in which 
that could happen (other than another widespread power failure).

Reliability is in the eye of the beholder, I guess.

Joe