Fairfax County June 29 Storm Report

[Tom Azlin N4ZPT]

the report did not explain subtle story.

I was in the EOC for two shifts during this period. There was full 
activation during the day and night for several days then they shifted 
to "watch" overnight and "partial" during day. Might have been an 
expanded "watch" on the 4th. Also Fairfax has half a dozen department 
operations centers who also are involved.  Early sat am when they 
discovered the Verizon outage was when they reactivated and when they 
called in ARES. We and all others with positions in the EOC were on a 
one hour recall when they went to "watch."  Once they got the backup 
9-1-1 working was not much to do other than monitor the utilities who 
were called into the EOC to have a liaison there.

So you are mistaken on what the county did.

73, tom n4zpt
ARES EC and RACES RO for Fairfax

On 7/13/2012 12:12 AM, Mike ODELL wrote:
> thanks for the pointers.
> I admit some surprise that the FFX County EOC did not seem to be
> a 24/7 operation after the beginning of the incident, ESP. after the massive
> comms failures.
>
> what I would *really* like to see, however, is the Verizon post-mortem.
> when the ENTIRE regional inter-office trunking fabric goes down,
> there is one hell of a lot of explaining to do!! that is supposed to be
> "impossible" for any circumstances we'd be here to care about.
>
> I did notice on the slides that there is a Verizon "hub" in Arlington
> that not even the PSAPs knew about, and it seemed to have lost power.
> if that massive SONET infrastructure got single-threaded somehow,
> the guilty parties who made those decisions should be taken out and shot.
> I cannot imagine it was plant people who agreed. I'd bet lot of beer that
> engineering got overruled somewhere along the way, prolly by bean counters.
>
> it's not widely known outside the guild, but some pretty massive Internet
> server farms took it in the shorts, too, because of fiber-transport outages
> as well as some failures of multiply redundant backup power systems,
> at least one huge one caused by inadequate design of the regular backup
> power system test plans.
>
> what REALLY chaps my ass, however, are the sanctimonious pols bleating
> about their entitlement to instant restoration in the face of massive failures.
> The pols can't successfully pour piss out of a boot, but the have gall to
> insult the work ethic of all the people working 18 hour days nonstop to get
> their lights (and a/c of course) back on. I'd like to see how long Hizzonor
> Mayor Gray of DC would last as just a grunt on a line crew! Nobody in their
> right mind would let him handle a chain saw.
>
> I'll stop now, but having grown up in that industry, I can't help defending the
> guys who make it work.
>
>        -mo
>
>
>
> Sent from my iPad so please excuse the jammy fingers.
>
> On Jul 12, 2012, at 10:24 PM, "Karl W4KRL" <W4KRL at dcm-va.com> wrote:
>
>> Here are links to the after incident reports for the June 29 derecho in Fairfax County,
>>
>> 73 Karl W4KRL
>>
>> http://fairfaxcountyemergency.wordpress.com/2012/07/10/june-29-storm-report/
>>
>> PowerPoint presentation:
>> http://www.slideshare.net/fairfaxcounty/derecho-storm-responsepptx-13595187
>>
>> Report:
>> http://www.fairfaxcounty.gov/emergency/reports/june-29-derecho/
>>
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