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United States Bug

NERC Releases Interim Report on Aug 14th Blackout 426

Posted by michael from the candlelight-vigil dept.
will writes "The North American Electric Reliability Council has released four documents concerning the August 14th power outage power outage in the North East. The blackout investigation homepage lists all NERC's documents relating to this event. Press coverage is at The Washington Post, CNN, and CBS News. The take home message: FirstEnergy did it. The are, of course, denying it." The report is also available at reports.energy.gov. Reader stinkydog writes "According to Yahoo News part of the blame for the big fizzle of 2003 lies with a failing SCADA system, GE's XA/21 power management system. 'Not only did the software that controls audible and visual alarms stop working at 2:14 p.m. EDT, but about a half hour later, two servers supporting the emergency system failed, too.' According to the product specs, it is a Unix system with X Windows."
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NERC Releases Interim Report on Aug 14th Blackout More

NERC Releases Interim Report on Aug 14th Blackout

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  • Go get 'em! (Score:5, Funny)

    by grub ( 11606 ) <slashdot@grub.net> on Thursday November 20, 2003 @12:44PM (#7521249) Homepage Journal

    "According to the product specs, it is a Unix system with X Windows."

    Good, let's sue SCO!


    ps: f1st pr05t

    • Re:Go get 'em! (Score:5, Funny)

      by orthogonal ( 588627 ) on Thursday November 20, 2003 @12:50PM (#7521316) Journal
      'Not only did the software that controls audible and visual alarms stop working at 2:14 p.m. EDT, but about a half hour later, two servers supporting the emergency system failed, too.' According to the product specs, it is a Unix system with X Windows.

      Darl McBride had repossessed the system, leaving a bill for $699 and a subpoena in its place.

    • Re:Go get 'em! (Score:5, Funny)

      by tekspot ( 531917 ) on Thursday November 20, 2003 @12:51PM (#7521330)
      "According to the product specs, it is a Unix system with X Windows."

      The reason they use X is because their systems are managed by MCSEs.

    • No, Sue the End User (or at least the analyst)! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by FreeUser ( 11483 ) on Thursday November 20, 2003 @12:58PM (#7521406)
      Good, let's sue SCO!

      heh! :-)

      Alas, as Microsoft apologists are wont to point out (even in the many cases where the crash or security flaw doesn't stem from mismanagement or configuration errors), a misconfigured system ins't going to work regardless of what OS it is running.

      In this particular case, quoth the article

      One of MISO's monitoring systems required technical repairs that afternoon, but the technician who fixed it forgot to turn on an automatic feature that updated information every five minutes, preventing it from operating normally, the report said. "Thinking the system had been successfully restored, the analyst went to lunch."


      The technician forgot to restart the monitoring software. Oops.

      Following in $CO's illustrious footsteps, I think perhaps it is time we sued the poor schmuck who forgot to restart the monitoring program. Or better yet, the company dumb enough to hire him, the electrical company. After all, according to Our Lord and Master Darl McBride, End Users should pay (and pay heavilly).
    • According the the vendor's PDF, the XA/21 runs on IBM AIX6000, SUN Solaris, or Motorola AIX.

      Not SCO.
  • it is a Unix system with X Windows

    Send in..... the Trolls.

  • Are they into warez? (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    http://www.nerc.com/~filez/

    just wondering if their webmasters are into the warez business...

  • X Windows? (Score:2, Informative)

    by loconet ( 415875 )
    X Window not X Windows

  • Flame bait (Score:2, Funny)

    by gnuLNX ( 410742 )
    My god was the unix comment WITH X WINDOWS really necassary. ok so I will bite. SHoulda been a linux computer then it would not have crashed. HA!
    • Whoa there just a minit, chief! The report says the UNIX systems FAILED, not crashed. You can have a hardware failure no matter what kind of operating system you were running.
      Even the most stable UNIX systems are vulnerable to hardware failures.
      • Ok, but you're expecting these guys in blue suits to really distinquish the difference between a failure and a crash?

  • Told Ya So (Score:2, Funny)

    by Valiss ( 463641 )
    See, if they were using MS Windows, it would have crashed LONG ago and we wouldn't be talking about it today. We'd be talking about it years ago. And then again last year. And then again this... uh nevermind.

  • Microsoft sucks (Score:5, Funny)

    by Meor ( 711208 ) on Thursday November 20, 2003 @12:48PM (#7521302)
    [Slashdot]
    You shouldn't use MS products for such a critical system.

    What? It was a unix system?

    Must have been a hardware failure then.
    [/slashdot]
    • That's not Slashdot, that's the real world. /me ducks

  • Memo to power company: (Score:5, Funny)

    by SuperBanana ( 662181 ) on Thursday November 20, 2003 @12:48PM (#7521303)
    Not only did the software that controls audible and visual alarms stop working at 2:14 p.m. EDT, but about a half hour later, two servers supporting the emergency system failed, too.

    Memo to power company:

    Put power-system controlling servers on UPSes :-)

    (yeah yeah, I know, it wasn't because they lost power. Its a joke :-)

    • Sounds about right for a really decent UPS to have its batteries run dry. It would have helped had the alarms gone off, and started the backup generator.

      (probably not the true scenario, but still stupid enough to be possible)

  • Now we know... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by zeux ( 129034 ) * on Thursday November 20, 2003 @12:49PM (#7521308)
    I think it's really hard to perform that kind of investigation and looking at the results I think they did a good job making the results widely available. Anyway, it's still unacceptable that such things happens in the most powerful country in the world.

    Flame me if you want but France is known to have one of the best electrical system in the world. The government owns it [www.edf.fr] and some laws do protect the costumer. It allows France to export a lot of power to other European countries thus making a lot of money from it and playing a big role in Europ energy.

    I think France made good choices for power:
    - nuclear (or nuculear whatever). Much cheaper and cleaner than oil. France is very strong on nuclear technology and do export its knowledge to other countries. To date we didn't have any major incident and I think it's pretty secure as long as enough money is spent.
    - public service. There is a law in France stating that every citizen, wherever he lives, as the right to have access to electricity for free. Of course we pay bills but if you live in the country the government MUST bring you access to electricity even if you live far from everything. It's a law so sometimes it's not really followed but most of the time the government sticks to it.

    When I arrived in the USA I was shocked by the poor quality of your electric system. Many outages, expensive bills and thousand of wires in the sky ! I think that it's a very advanced country with an outdated power system. I've seen on the TV recently that many companies as starting to produce their own power. I really think it's pretty bad since the installations needed are dangerous, potentially explosive and very expensive.

    What happened on August the 14th also suggests that a country really depends on its energy distribution system and that it could be, in the near future, target for terrorists.

    • Re:Now we know... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by (startx) ( 37027 ) <slashdot@nOSpAm.unspunproductions.com> on Thursday November 20, 2003 @01:04PM (#7521489) Journal
      It's all about early adopter. We invested huge amounts of money to wire up the whole country before nuclear was an option, and there's no way we can spend that much again to rip it all out and replace it with newer/better/safer alternatives. Same thing with our telephone system, cable tv, internet, etc. We're trying to squeeze every last ounce of usefulness out of the existing system, while so-called "3rd world" countries are getting the latest and greatest tech because they have no prior investments.
      • So we can spend as much as the rest of the world combined (almost) on "Defense," yet can't spare a billion or so to bring our power grid to a point more modern than the 60s?

        Does this make sense?

      • It's deregulation (Score:5, Insightful)

        by laird ( 2705 ) <lairdp@gmaSLACKWAREil.com minus distro> on Thursday November 20, 2003 @02:25PM (#7522409) Journal
        "It's all about early adopter. We invested huge amounts of money to wire up the whole country before nuclear was an option, and there's no way we can spend that much again to rip it all out and replace it with newer/better/safer alternatives. Same thing with our telephone system, cable tv, internet, etc. We're trying to squeeze every last ounce of usefulness out of the existing system, while so-called "3rd world" countries are getting the latest and greatest tech because they have no prior investments."

        I disagree completely -- until the US deregulated, we had an extremely reliable power system that was able to expand dramatically for many decades to keep up with demand while keeping prices low. Then some lunatics convinced enough people that it was a good idea to make power companies unregulated monopolies (i.e. they were no longer required to invest in maintenance and infrastructure, or to maintain excess capacity to cover emergencies or power spikes, and removed the cap on profit margin), after which the power companies did what you'd expect -- raised rates like crazy while slashing spending on infrastructure maintenance and expansion. The result is that a bunch of investors and CEO's made tons of money while the capacity and quality of service that they provided suffered. The problem was not just the big outage -- the number of instabilities in the power grid that didn't result in actual outages has been increasing dramatiaclly for decades.

        See http://www.ncpa.org/iss/ene/2003/pd081503a.html for some more info.

        Who do I blame? The politicians who allowed themselves to be bought off (or conned) by the power companies, to the detriment of the entire country.

        • Re:It's deregulation (Score:3, Informative)

          by Orne ( 144925 )
          And to this, I disagree completely. Until the US deregulated, we had a vertically-integrated system that was completely comfortable at over-charging the end users (we people in residential load) when the true price of electricity was much lower. Did you know the average locational price of energy in PA last year was $0.027/kWh on the bulk market? How much are you paying per hour to your local utility?

          Deregulation simply gave the utilities the opportunity to operate in three parts: Transmission, Generati

    • Re:Now we know... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by JoeBuck ( 7947 ) on Thursday November 20, 2003 @01:13PM (#7521570) Homepage

      The biggest difference is that France puts their power lines underground. Here in Silicon Valley, some French colleagues were shocked at the frequent power disruptions during the winter. Well, of course the power was out, the locals tell them, there was a big storm! (The "big storm" consists of an inch of rain and a short period of 40 mph winds, which knocks down all the power lines).

    • I'm American, have been all my life, and I agree. Fundamentally, I believe the Power Grid is too important to leave solely in the control of private individuals.

      That blackout should have been a terrifying wakeup call to everyone in the country. Had it been caused by an act of deliberate sabotage (a large bomb on that same place on the power grid would achieve the same effect) the hypothetical attackers would have had an entire weekend to pummel New England with virtually no way for the area to respond.

      • Would the power grid be better managed if the government were in charge of it though? I'm not sure it would be. I think we'd have all the same problems we have now, plus others including most likely longer delays due to outages. Do you really think a government employee would work all through the night to restore your power? ha!

        And on top of those problems, every time we the people demand an upgrade the government would happily raise our taxes by twice whatever the upgrade would cost and then take twic

        • Re:Now we know... (Score:3, Interesting)

          by JayBlalock ( 635935 )
          Simple scientific method-approach to a problem. A Problem exists. If you cannot logically derive the solution beforehand, you try Solution A. If, given adequate time, Solution A fails to solve the problem, you move on to Solution B.

          Our power grid has not been upgraded significantly in decades. The power companies have shown quite well that, without direct regulation, they are not going to willingly do so. (especially as the costs of upgrading go up every year technology advances and the grid goes up)

    • It's easy to supply power to a country that doesn't have air conditioners.
    • Actually, we use to have a good system. It has been decaying for the last 8 years. Sad but true.

    • Anyway, it's still unacceptable that such things happens in the most powerful country in the world.

      What, Canada? Don't say such things, we're really very shy.

      The government owns it and some laws do protect the costumer.

      Wow that's some country, laws to protect costumers no less. What about mimes and jugglers?

      When I arrived in the USA I was shocked by the poor quality of your electric system

      Well, you're definitely French, I'll grant ya that.

  • First Energy [house.gov] has been a major concern of Congressman Kucinich for a while now. There is a long standing feud [nationmaster.com] between Kucinich and First Energy-at this point it looks like Dennis was right about these folks.

  • Disaster again (Score:5, Funny)

    by Camel Pilot ( 78781 ) on Thursday November 20, 2003 @12:50PM (#7521323) Homepage Journal
    If I remember correctly wasn't a "Unix system" also implicated in the chaotic havoc that was Jurassic Park?

    • Re:Disaster again (Score:3, Funny)

      by Enry ( 630 )
      No, just bad writing. Ugh.
      • Bad writing? How's that?
        • It's been a while since I read Jurassic Park, but I seem to remember a lot of "chaos will find a way" statements by Jeff Goldblum's character (Ian Malcolm).

          There's one thing to have foreshadowing clues (Asimov, for example) and another to leave them scattered all over the place so that not only do you keep tripping over them, you eventually fall and get hurt. That's just bad writing.

    • Yeh, it was, that's right...but I think the chaotic havoc was caused by the guy with the taste for snacks, and a little bit of corporate espionage. Speaking of it though, what the hell was the file manager they were running anyways?? I remember that it looked kind of neat but seemed really slow and unresponsive (I just know that my dinosaur parks' servers would be running in CLI mode only).

      It's a classic case of human error, not computer.

      • The file manager is a fancy thing that SGI cooked up for demos many moons ago. I forget the name, but I'm sure you could find it if you looked. It is an actual working file manager, though.

    • Re:Disaster again (Score:3, Funny)

      by mcc ( 14761 )
      Yes, but the Unix systems were running the now-widely-discredited "AH AH AH YOU DIDN'T SAY THE MAGIC WORD" security system product.

      It was a third-party-application issue, not an OS issue. Unix itself is not to blame.

  • Report vindicates First Energy (Score:3, Funny)

    by gordguide ( 307383 ) on Thursday November 20, 2003 @12:53PM (#7521345)
    In a press release First Energy spokesmen said that the report "totally vindicates us" and the blame "clearly lies with the uncontrolled and inherently dangerous actions of something called 'trees'. We are calling on Government Agencies to immediately ban the use, propegation, and distribution" of all trees, which "apparently reproduce unaided" by some "poorly understood virus-like activity".

    From CNN Money's link:
    " ... He noted that Ohio-based FirstEnergy (FE: Research, Estimates)'s failure to trim trees growing alongside major transmission lines contributed to the massive blackout. ..."
  • I can just see good ol Steve and Bill "coming to the rescue" with an NT based solution. The press would love it, "Microsoft replaces aging UNIX system".

    Ugh.

    Seriously, though, the failure of a SCADA system **SHOULD NOT** bring down the grid. This is just passing the buck.
  • It's interesting to read the First Energy "denial." It's not really a denial, more of a "yeah, we had a problem, but hey! look over there!" Honestly, it reads like an attempt to distract, rather than deny. For instance:

    "We recognize that our computer system experienced problems that day, which we discussed publicly immediately following the outage."

    Is followed a paragraph later by:

    "By focusing its analysis on a few selected events, the conclusions the Task Force reached don't address the complexity an
    • I think if you read between the lines about all of the things going on that day, it becomes more and more clear what actually happened. This is my theory, take it with however many grains of salt you wish:

      1. The MSBlaster worm was widespread on that day, and was wreaking havoc on both the Internet and on corporate LANs when employees brought infected machines in to work and plugged them in behind the firewall.

      2. These Unix systems are old, and are probably running on 10 mbps unswitched segments of the co
      • I think we can take it with a huge grain of salt, because if it wasn't the Blaster worm you'd be making rationalizations about something else that could be tied to Microsoft. Perhaps an "inside scoop" on how one of their employees was playing Solitaire at the time the Unix box went down, hmmmm? Anything other than what actually happened. I mean, this wasn't "M$" fault? That's unpossible!!

        You can talk about black helicopters 'till you're blue in the face, but that doesn't change what's in the report. Do yo

  • The XA/21 Did Not Break Down (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 20, 2003 @12:57PM (#7521396)
    GE's XA/21 system "controls generation and the high voltage transmission network for optimal generation and transmission of power," as provided on GE's corporate web site:

    http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/scada_ so ftware/en/xa21.htm

    On page 99 of the report the task force states specifically that,"although there were a number of worms and viruses impacting theInternet and Internet-connected systems and networks in North America before and during the outage, the SWG's preliminary analysis provides no indication that worm/virus activity had a significant effect on the power generation and delivery systems."In other words, the power generation and delivery systems (GE's XA/21) running Unix were not affected. SCADA, the alarm monitoring system, however, was affected. SCADA failedto transmit alarm conditions the the monitoring workstations because the Windows platform it was running on was under a denial of service attack. The net result is that the operators were not aware of serious trouble with the grid before it was to late.
    • Mod parent up. Windows/Blaster WAS one of the causes of the blackout, something that has been known for quite some time. Nice to see official confirmation. The submitter has taken too much SCO crack me thinks.

      SCADA failed to transmit alarm conditions the the monitoring workstations because the Windows platform it was running on was under a denial of service attack.
    • The link specified in your post:

      http://www.gepower.com/prod_serv/products/scada_so ftware/en/xa21.htm

      Brings up a 404 on Ge's website.
    • Document says on page 101 of PDF:

      There is also no evidence, nor is there any information suggesting, that viruses and worms prevalent across the internet at the time of the outage had any significant impact on power generation and delivery systems. SWG analysis to date has brought to light certain concerns with respect to: the possible failure of alarm software; links to control and data acquisition software; and the lack of a system or process for some operators to view adequately the status of electric

  • What caused the boxes to crash? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AJWM ( 19027 ) on Thursday November 20, 2003 @01:04PM (#7521481) Homepage
    It may have been a Unix box that crashed, but I've seen and heard of cases where a 'nix box crashed because of the high network load of a Windows-based worm/virus epidemic. Was this the case here?

    (There should have been better firewalling in place if so, of course.)
  • According to GE specifications, the system is comprised of one or more "computers" running an "operating system" and a "graphical user interface" (XWin == GUI nyaaah!)

    According to further documents, this computer's "operating system" was running some kind of "software program".

    C'mon guys, if it was running Windows and it BSoD'ed, then it might be worth mentioning. Other than that I don't see why we should be pointing out what OS it's running. The failure could have been caused by any piece of hardware, so
  • Well, I clicked on the link to FirstEnergyCorp and I got a 500 Error.

    Seems that their server went down. I guess this means the northeast will be experiencing another blackout.

    Blackouts by ./ Must be a first

  • During a critical hour before a final chain reaction of power line outages began around 4 p.m. Eastern daylight saving time, FirstEnergy grid controllers were flying blind, unaware of computer and power line problems on their system, according to the investigation headed by U.S. Energy Department officials and their Canadian counterparts.

    Anyone else picture Homer Simpson here?

  • Who cares about the OS or the provider? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by swordgeek ( 112599 ) on Thursday November 20, 2003 @01:22PM (#7521653) Journal
    First of all, let's be perfectly clear on this.

    Any carefully managed OS (inluding Windows) can be stable and predictable.

    Any badly managed OS (including Unix) WILL be unstable and unpredictable.

    Got it? Good.

    Now as far as pointing fingers at the guilty parties, understand that the infrastructure is really at fault far more than any individual company. Look at this from a broader perspective: One company was able to take down how wide of an area? The whole system is too fragile, too interdependent, and maintained too close to full capacity. Worse, there's absolutely no incentive for a company to maintain a large reserve capacity, since it costs a lot, and brings in no extra income.

    But of course when it happens the next time (and make no mistake--it will), we'll have another commission to once again figure out the single company that broke a rotten and unstable infrastructure, instead of fixing the root problem.

  • First Energy is a horrible corporation (Score:5, Informative)

    by puppetluva ( 46903 ) on Thursday November 20, 2003 @01:31PM (#7521759)
    Here's a timely link. . .

    FirstEnergy used to be CEI. . . a horrible company in Cleveland that allowed a nuclear core failure through negligence and then tried to bully the government of Cleveland into selling its municipal power supply to it thereby granting it monopoly status in the region.

    Check out the story here:
    http://kucinich.us/powertothepeople.htm

    The presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich was Mayor of Cleveland at the time and endured a browbeating when he refused to sell the Municipal power company to these scoundrels.

    I'm not necessarily pro-Kucinich, but I am VERY anti-FirstEnergy. They have a track record of irresponsibility and dishonesty that should be enough to have the government dismantle them.
  • ...are rarely ever computer savvy enough to maintain thier own systems.

    Usually these systems were put together by some integrator consultant years ago. The consultant goes on to bigger and better jobs, but the system remains pretty much as it had been set up.

    The problem, as we gentle slashdot readers know too well, is that nearly all computers need security patches or updates of some sort applied. In addition, there are often configuration changes, log files which need to be looked at, and a thousand ot

  • What were the failed systems running? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by mabu ( 178417 ) * on Thursday November 20, 2003 @01:36PM (#7521838)
    After browsing all the comments thus far, there doesn't seem to be a definitive answer as to what OS these failed systems were running. Let's find this out... it's also of interest that in the Windows license agreement, it specifically states that Windows shouldn't be used for mission-critical applications involving scenarios like this, so it would be further hilarity if they were running Windows in contrast to the products' own licensing agreement.

  • Power outage traced to dim bulb in White House (Score:5, Interesting)

    by TheRealStyro ( 233246 ) on Thursday November 20, 2003 @01:39PM (#7521887) Homepage
    Investigative journalist Greg Palast [gregpalast.com] knows what caused the power outage - deregulation. Here are some excerpts from his article [gregpalast.com] on the subject...
    I can tell you all about the ne're-do-wells that sent us back to the Dark Ages last week. I came up against these characters -- First Energy and the Niagara Mohawk Power Company -- some years back. You see, before I was a journalist, I worked for a living, as an investigator of corporate racketeers.


    The power outage began in First Energy's Ohio operation. This company was the model for the film, "China Syndrome." Really. Then First Energy's Pennsylvania unit fumbled the power ball. These are the very same Homer Simpsons who melted Three Mile Island.

    ...

    Is last week's black-out a surprise? Heck, no, not to us in the field who've watched Bush's buddies flick the switches across the globe. In Brazil, Houston Industries seized ownership of Rio de Janeiro's electric company. The Texans (aided by their French partners) fired workers, raised prices, cut maintenance expenditures and, CLICK! the juice went out so often te locals now call it, "Rio Dark."

    So too the free-market British buckaroos controlling Niagara Mohawk raised prices, slashed staff, cut maintenance and CLICK! -- New York joins Brazil in the Dark Ages.
    The short of it? Bush and cronies deregulated the energy industry (and continuing even more this week) and the industry responded just as any greedy entity would - raise prices, fire workers, slack off on maintenance and pocket the savings.

    FDR enacted regulation of certain industries to insure that consumers would not get ripped-off. Bush reversed these regulations possibly because he doesn't know history, and/or he and/or friends/relatives have stock in these industries, or some other overlooked reason. Bush and his administration heavily contributed to the power outage, and is making sure that plenty more are bound to happen. Remember this on the next election day.
  • You can read a story [slashdot.org] I submitted on possible W32.Blaster links in my journal.

  • SCADA Definition (Score:5, Interesting)

    by pjkundert ( 597719 ) on Thursday November 20, 2003 @01:43PM (#7521945) Homepage
    For those of you that might be interested, SCADA is an acronym for

    Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition

    It defines nothing about whether or not COM, DCOM, OPC (Ole for Process Control), or any other proprietary communication framework is used (contrary to some other highly moderated statements you are likely to see in this discussion)

    The bulk of serious SCADA systems in place are probably legacy systems of some kind, including many variants of UNIX systems (we have old micro VAX systems still in use). Many of the newer systems are Windows based, and are obviously subject the standard Windows viri, worms, etc.

    Worse yet, these systems are very difficult to upgrade or patch, due to the critical nature of their duties. It is not unlikely that a large portion of the Windows based SCADA systems in the world remain unpatched, and are "safely" firewalled off from the internet.

    Of course, the problem is that much of the monitoring gear used to diagnose network issues is also Windows based, and carries with it the standard retinue of Windows viruses and worms, right into the heart of the control center.

    These UNIX systems have run (and will contiue to run) uninterrupted for years at a time. We have calendar alerts in place to tell us to go manually reboot unix machines after months of uptime, just to ensure that their SCSI drives will spin back up (in case of a control center power outage, etc.)

    Somehow, I don't think that is an issue for some vendor's SCADA systems based on more popular OS's, but I might be wrong...
  • Check out the last page of this. [gepower.com] What it says is server is Compaq/Unix (which is either dec unix or SCO unix) and the desktop display is NT. All the processing is done on the client side and the servers simply hold the data. HUMMMM.

  • Blame Canada (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ablair ( 318858 ) on Thursday November 20, 2003 @03:34PM (#7522981)
    Looks like the headline-grabbers like Pataki [news24.com] and Bloomberg [nynewsday.com], amongst others, now have little to say about their quick denouncements of Canada for the whole power mess. Interesting that this is the same reaction pattern for the current Canadian internet pharmacy spat [sympatico.ca], where FDA commissioners are now publicly alleging Canadian drugs to be unsafe. Is 'mouth off first and ask questions later' now an official US political strategy?

  • Cleveland eye witness to FirstEnergy (Score:3, Interesting)

    by peptidbond ( 189705 ) on Thursday November 20, 2003 @04:25PM (#7523428) Homepage
    Well, I do not post much, but I thought this was worth it.

    The day of the black out, I was heading home to my house in Cleveland. Naturally, we were hit first. It was beautiful that night because my neighbor had his 12" telescope out in his yard.

    However, what is really intriguing is what happened over the next week. Everyday, driving to and from work I would notice all of these FirstEnergy trucks out on the street. No, they were not restoring power. THEY WERE TRIMMING TREES.

    The NERC report states that FirstEnergy failed to trim trees to protect the grid. FirstEnergy knew that they had caused the problem and they tried to cover it up.

    Also keep in mind that FirstEnergy owns the troubled Davis-Bessie Nuclear plant in Sandusky, Ohio. The nuke plant was shut down almost 2 years ago because boric acid had eaten a football sized hole in the reactor lid. It has been repaired but not re-started due to "safety culture concerns".

    Finally, my G/F is a field biologist. She is constantly doing field surveys for FirstEnergy. She always speaks of their poor land use and inability to maintain their lines. She has even seen over-heated lines drooping almost to the ground.

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