AC power line question

[Chip Fetrow]

It's been interesting.  Our power stayed on, but a block away, no  
power.  Saturday, I never found a working traffic signal in Loudoun  
County.  There was ONE in Fairfax County, at the county line.  Loudoun  
did a great job directing traffic, but all Fairfax did was put up  
cones and yellow plastic tape preventing left turns at intersections.

About 2/3's of the restaurants are closed, so the 1/3 operating are  
swamped for two reasons -- they are the ones left standing, and so  
many people have no electricity so they want to eat out for the cool  
air conditioning and so they can eat cooked food!

I took my sick Prius to Rockville Saturday afternoon.  I like to  
listen to a weak AM station on Saturday afternoons to laugh at Kim  
Komando.  Normally there is a lot of power line hash interfering with  
the station.  Not Saturday.  I had no idea it was as bad as it is.

Friday, about 5 PM, Comcast Internet went down.  Two hours later we  
got the storm.  I kept being told the outage was because of the  
storm!  We maintain one POTS line for reliability.  That went down  
before the storm as well, but at least Verizon is not blaming it on  
the storm.  It is still down, though Comcast came back at about 10 PM  
Sunday.  Comcast kept telling me that falling trees took out many  
cables, and I'm sure that happened, but the Internet went out, but the  
cable TV stayed on.  They couldn't be made to understand it all comes  
in on one cable.

The Verizon phone problem is interesting.  It MOSTLY seems we cannot  
call other Verizon phones.  I can call my AT&T cell, for example,  
however the AT&T phones won't work without the Internet at home  
because the AT&T Micorcell they gave me won't work.

Now, imagine trying to report a phone outage to Verizon when you  
cannot call a Verizon number!

Add to this that the HVAC failed, and I am still awaiting permit's for  
the well(s) so we won't have AC anytime soon, and it has been one heck  
of a weekend.

The good news is that had the power gone out, my little 2 kVA Honda  
inverter portable could run everything (left) in the house, except the  
stove.

Everyone stay safe.

--chip

On Jun 30, 2012, at 1:00 PM, tacos-request at amrad.org wrote:

> Message: 3
> Date: Sat, 30 Jun 2012 12:01:14 +0100
> From: Phil <philmt59 at aol.com>
> Subject: Re: AC power line question
>
> Just heard of the power outages and storm damage. I hope everyone is  
> okay - I understand it's pretty hot out there at the moment too.  
> Fingers crossed for you guys over here.
>
> Phil M1GWZ