Los Angeles powers down

[Doctor Q]

I'm just coming back online after a city-wide power failure here in Los Angeles. Such outages are rare here. The blackout covered at least the area from downtown west to the beach and north to the the San Fernando valley.

This is the first time my Power Mac G5 has ever crashed, and given the sudden loss of power I can't blame it. We used battery operated radios to try to get news, and I could see cars trying to negotiate intersections with traffic lights out. We're still waiting for news about the cause.

Routers news link

 

[Lacero]

56% to be exact.

 

[narco]

I'm on the Hollywood/Los Feliz border and I just figured that I didn't pay my DWP bill. Luckily I have my Treo 650, so I just checked Google to see what was up. Good thing is, I can take the rest of the day off and just blame it on the power outage to my out-of-state clients!

Fishes,
narco.

 

[Doctor Q]

"An official with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said it appeared the problem originated shortly after 1 p.m. when two power receiving stations failed."

We just heard an unconfirmed report of the cause: a worker for the electrical utility (Dept. of Water and Power) accidentally cut a line.

Power in downtown Los Angeles is reportedly still out, but the San Fernando Valley and West Los Angeles are mostly back up. Los Angeles International Airport was not affected.

 

[bankshot]

Interesting coincidence that it came a day after that terrorist tape naming Los Angeles as a specific target. Of course they're saying it had nothing to do with that, thank goodness.

I have several websites hosted at DreamHost, which as of this moment is still unreachable. I believe their datacenter is located pretty close to downtown, so no big surprise. If it doesn't come back up fairly soon, we may start getting some impatient customers wondering what the heck is going on.

My personal email also goes through one of our dedicated servers there, so I can't get to that either. Weeee!

 

[asif786]

yep, i've learned the hard way. it seems to have taken (mt) mediatemple and a few other data centers down.

i was wondering why all our sites are down..should've checked here first

hopefully everyone's ok

asif

 

[JupiterTwo]

"An official with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power said it appeared the problem originated shortly after 1 p.m. when two power receiving stations failed."

We just heard an unconfirmed report of the cause: a worker for the electrical utility (Dept. of Water and Power) accidentally cut a line.
.

I hope you hear more details on the cause, as one cable taking out two key power receiving stations seems a little bit suspect to me . Lets hope it's just bad planning, rather than anything more sinister.

 

[wrc fan]

aaaaaahhhh! it's terrorist! we're all gonna die cause the power is out!!!!!!!!












really, how did people manage to live before electricity?

 

[Lacero]

They better fix it soon. By nightfall, we're going to see rioting and looting in the streets.

 

[wrc fan]

They better fix it soon. By nightfall, we're going to see rioting and looting in the streets.

That'll be fun. LA hasn't had a good full blown riot in a long time. Last one I can remember was because some cop got let off for killing a gang member... but we need something bigger, like the Rodney King riot. C'mon people LA needs to keep it's rep up.

 

[Doctor Q]

I have several websites hosted at DreamHost, which as of this moment is still unreachable. I believe their datacenter is located pretty close to downtown, so no big surprise. If it doesn't come back up fairly soon, we may start getting some impatient customers wondering what the heck is going on.

When they overbuilt downtown and ended up with a lot of unused space in the older office buildings, a lot of server companies located their equipment there. Cheap space with (usually dependable) power.

I lost only one file in the outage - a Photoshop file I had created and not yet saved. When your Mac never crashes, you tend not to save very often.

 

[narco]

They better fix it soon. By nightfall, we're going to see rioting and looting in the streets.

Last I heard, 95% of the power was back up. The last time my power went out it took 14 hours to restore.

Fishes,
narco.

 

[wrc fan]

Cheap space with (usually dependable) power.

Even if they have dependable power, shouldn't they still have emergency generators. I remember when walking past Real Networks in Seattle, they had a huge emergency generator, and then an emergency emergency generator if the emergency generator broke. I wouldn't want to host my equipment at a place without power and network redundancy.

 

[DeSnousa]

That must of been one big cable for such a devastation. I hope that every one is safe.

 

[Doctor Q]

Even if they have dependable power, shouldn't they still have emergency generators. I remember when walking past Real Networks in Seattle, they had a huge emergency generator, and then an emergency emergency generator if the emergency generator broke. I wouldn't want to host my equipment at a place without power and network redundancy.

Companies might have backup power, but sometimes the purpose of backup power is to let them shut down gradually and properly, rather than to keep running indefinitely from another power source, which can be very expensive. And in a city where this doesn't happen very often, it might not be worth the investment for many service companies.

 

[bankshot]

I lost only one file in the outage - a Photoshop file I had created and not yet saved. When your Mac never crashes, you tend not to save very often.

That's what a UPS is for. They work great with OS X.

 

[mpw]

That must of been one big cable for such a devastation. I hope that every one is safe.

My boss used to build power stations and oil rigs etc. and once saw a guy dig into a power cable, BANG. They never found a body, it got vaporized.

 

[EGT]

Maybe this is to blame?

 

[Dale Sorel]

And they thought there was lawlessness in New Orleans...

 

[Doctor Q]

News link

The Los Angeles Power and Water Department said a power cable was cut. Spokeswoman Kim Hughes said the cause was believed to be 'accidental'.

Some areas were black for up to 2 hours and the outage did affect Los Angeles International Airport, temporarily, after all.

Nit picking: Why did the newswriter put quote marks around the word accidental? It's nice to avoid making claims that haven't been confirmed, but it already says "Kim Hughes said" and "believed to be", so a third-level of caveats is caution overkill.

 

[wdlove]

News linkSome areas were black for up to 2 hours and the outage did affect Los Angeles International Airport, temporarily, after all.

Nit picking: Why did the newswriter put quote marks around the word accidental? It's nice to avoid making claims that haven't been confirmed, but it already says "Kim Hughes said" and "believed to be", so a third-level of caveats is caution overkill.

I'm happy to hear that you and the Mrs. are alright. I immedialty thought of you when I heard the news. Was concerned, now feel relief. You should get a APC battey backup, it also comes with a program to shutdown yoru Mac properly.


http://www.apcc.com/tools/ups_selector/index.cfm?action=build_form_a&device_type=workstation&app_type=workstation&showChassis=1&showMonitor=1&showProcessor=1&showVoltages=1&showIntDrives=1&showPeripherals=1&showPrinter=1&appUsed=basic&cgi_referer_check=&return_query_string=

 

[Jon'sLightBulbs]

Look on the bright side. It's a good thing this power company worker doesn't work for the bomb squad. WHOOPSIE!

 

[Knox]

Companies might have backup power, but sometimes the purpose of backup power is to let them shut down gradually and properly, rather than to keep running indefinitely from another power source, which can be very expensive. And in a city where this doesn't happen very often, it might not be worth the investment for many service companies.

I'd imagine a lot of 'normal' companies would use this method, but for a hosting company to not have a permanent backup power source is worrying. One of the companies I use (EV1) had one of their transformers blow up (literally) and took out power the whole building. I didn't find out about it until several days later - none of the servers lost power and they ran on generator supply for a week I believe.

[edit] Just noticed their blog. They do have generators, but they failed and the building had been evacuated at that point so no-one was there to restart them. In addition, their uplink connections also went down.[/edit]

 

[Koodauw]

I wish the power would go out here. Just for a few short hours. It really gets people out of the house and you meet a lot more of your neighbors etc.