Comments on: Los Angeles blacked out

Los Angeles blacked out

Saucy Intruder — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 13:53:52 -0800

Blackout hits downtown Los Angeles at 1 pm PDT; the LAPD has been put on mandatory overtime. The "we are fucked" meter ratches up a notch.

By: fixedgear

fixedgear — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 13:55:48 -0800

Could it be terror? D'ya think?

By: Davenhill

Davenhill — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 13:56:21 -0800

power went out in Westwood but came back on a few minutes later. I'm guessing our building has a backup generator (judging by the traffic below, it still appears to be out in the rest of the village).

By: mcwetboy

mcwetboy — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 13:57:39 -0800

Data point. The outage has knocked out DreamHost-hosted sites (including mine, which is how I know, but presumably other, more important ones as well).

By: muddgirl

muddgirl — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 13:57:42 -0800

Uhh...tis the season for brown-outs and blackouts. I'm in Eastern LA county and everything's fine here (as a status check).

By: Saucy Intruder

Saucy Intruder — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 13:58:02 -0800

LAPD spokeswoman says no terror; Al Qaeda says terror. I'm voting for a third party candidate!

By: mr_crash_davis

mr_crash_davis — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 13:58:31 -0800

I got one of those really nasty hangnails today. You know the sort, they feel like when you pull on them they tear all the way up your arm to the elbow. I'm pretty sure it wasn't terrorism, either.

By: ericb

ericb — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 13:58:36 -0800

Power went out momentarily at CNN/L.A., Cedar-Sinai, LAX, etc. - and is back on. Howeverm power remains out in downtown L.A., Hollywood -- and as far as the San Fernando Valley.

By: slf

slf — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 13:58:41 -0800

As long as the looting can be avoided...

By: Rothko

Rothko — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:00:56 -0800

Looting? Just wait 'til the no-bid contracts are handed out to build nuclear power stations.

By: fixedgear

fixedgear — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:03:00 -0800

Blackwater is patrolling the streets (and malls).

By: xmutex

xmutex — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:04:24 -0800

mcwetboy: Thanks for pointing that out! Me too. I was all full of righteous indignation for a while.

By: jeanmari

jeanmari — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:05:09 -0800

I got one of those really nasty hangnails today. You know the sort, they feel like when you pull on them they tear all the way up your arm to the elbow. I'm pretty sure it wasn't terrorism, either. You THINK it wasn't terrorism. But, today a hangnail. Tomorrow, an in-grown toenail. Then, the comes the dandruff or cold sores... We are so screwed.

By: killy willy

killy willy — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:07:16 -0800

nothing to report from orange county. we're too boring for terrorists!

By: augustweed

augustweed — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:07:20 -0800

Sorry to HAARP on the same subject, but we might be experiencing an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack. One of the feared aspects of asymmetrical warfare would be for an enemy to take out our central power grids. This is what we get for relying on a few companies to supply us power for profits rather than pushing the idea of independent power systems. If you think New Orleans is difficult to manage, Los Angeles will be a nightmare if the power doesn't come back on soon. General Thomas E. T. Brutus, I presume?

By: spunpup

spunpup — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:08:52 -0800

After explaining to someone at work the outage was city wide, I was asked if I could call someone to have it turned back on immediately !

By: sonofsamiam

sonofsamiam — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:09:56 -0800

I seriously doubt we are under EMP attack. There would have to be cheaper and easier methods of accomplishing the same thing.

By: Optimus Chyme

Optimus Chyme — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:13:42 -0800

Troubling insane rant posted by augustweed at 2:07 PM PST on September 12 Dude seriously

By: brownpau

brownpau — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:15:30 -0800

There's a solar storm going on. Don't those knock out power grids?

By: ed

ed — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:15:41 -0800

Folks, this is not terrorism. Anyone who was living in California in '99 during the frequent blackouts knows that our power grid is hopelessly deficient.

By: rdr

rdr — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:15:48 -0800

In other breaking news I lost about fifteen minutes of work. Oh the horror!

By: tpl1212

tpl1212 — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:16:17 -0800

The word "Scalar" reminds me of "Scali," as in scali bread, and that makes me really really hungry. I wish there were a scali-attack in Boston. Mmm....electromagnetic pulses...

By: mike3k

mike3k — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:16:36 -0800

I noticed that my dreamhost sites were down, but I didn't know about the blackout until I read this.

By: ed

ed — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:16:47 -0800

More here.

By: billysumday

billysumday — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:17:06 -0800

spunpup: After explaining to someone at work the outage was city wide, I was asked if I could call someone to have it turned back on immediately! Man, if that doesn't sum up the entertainment industry. Also, power's back on in most of Century City. (Over and out)

By: Western Infidels

Western Infidels — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:20:26 -0800

It looks like the silly Al Qaeda tape from a few days ago has been discredited. Or rather, it's been shown that we shouldn't have paid any attention in the first place to something purporting to be the voice of Al Qaeda. I'm guessing this blackout will turn out to be a miniature version of the big 2003 blackout, a case of a power grid pushed into doing things it was never designed for, and a few failures due to imperfect human maintenance just nudging it just over the edge.

By: nonmerci

nonmerci — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:24:40 -0800

MSNBC/Chris Matthews say "Blackout caused when worker inadvertently cut power line".

By: basicchannel

basicchannel — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:25:34 -0800

The power outage due Enron-siphoning doesn't make much sense. The power outage due to heat doesn't make much sense (it's cooled off nicely over the past few days here). Oh and the refineries in Wilmington are shooting massive fireballs into the sky and leaving massive plumes of black smoke (they don't usually burn-off like this... but I reckon they might do it to get excess fuel out of the lines in case of TERRAH?). Just some thoughts from a local here in Long Beach...

By: H. Roark

H. Roark — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:27:06 -0800

Does it seem to anyone else that the public infrastructure is falling apart?

By: augustweed

augustweed — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:27:31 -0800

There's a solar storm going on. Don't those knock out power grids? Forgot about that!

By: benzo8

benzo8 — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:28:27 -0800

Optimus Chyme writes "Troubling insane rant
"posted by augustweed at 2:07 PM PST on September 12

"Dude seriously" I shouldn't laugh. But I am. Thanks Optimus...

By: Emperor Yamamoto's Eggs

Emperor Yamamoto's Eggs — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:33:10 -0800

After explaining to someone at work the outage was city wide, I was asked if I could call someone to have it turned back on immediately ! Hah, so you work in one of those places too?

By: carter

carter — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:33:18 -0800

Does it seem to anyone else that the public infrastructure is falling apart? The weather has won!

By: alumshubby

alumshubby — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:35:18 -0800

/admires augustweed's shiny aluminum yarmulke

By: eatitlive

eatitlive — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:37:00 -0800

Do you think the dinosaurs were ever so tempted to give up? Just give up. I bet them old fuckers went extinct in September.

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:39:17 -0800

tis the season for brown-outs and blackouts. Uh-huh. Weird, this ole backwater called the UK hardly ever gets blackouts (or brownouts, WETF they are). So they happen a lot in the world's only superpower do they?

By: hackly_fracture

hackly_fracture — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:40:54 -0800

Can it, Frenchie!

By: dash_slot-

dash_slot- — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:44:10 -0800

shiny aluminum yarmulke It's funny 'cos it's polysyllabic! Actually did make me smile!

By: dsquid

dsquid — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:44:46 -0800

I blame Bush.

By: pmbuko

pmbuko — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:45:09 -0800

power's back on, according to an office I support at UCLA.

By: eatitlive

eatitlive — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:46:52 -0800

George Bush doesn't care about blackouts, people.

By: Asparagirl

Asparagirl — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:47:34 -0800

We're running off of a backup generator here on the Glendale/Burbank border. The place smells like an airport from all the diesel fumes. Blech.

By: scody

scody — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:48:03 -0800

Reporting in from Miracle Mile to say: sheesh! We're all fine, people! The lights in my office have been flickering off and on since late last week, so when it all blew I immediately assumed it was just something going on with DWP or Edison or something. When the bet's between Crumbling Urban Infrastructure vs. Terra, I think the smart money is still usually on the former rather than the latter.

By: cleverusername

cleverusername — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:49:41 -0800

Someone, somewhere in LA was hoping this was terrorism. That's probably the scariest.

By: basicchannel

basicchannel — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:49:42 -0800

With all this rationality going around I'd like to remind everyone of the following word: TERRAH! Carrots, basicchannel

By: Ogre Lawless

Ogre Lawless — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:51:22 -0800

The power outage due Enron-siphoning doesn't make much sense. Especially since Los Angeles' power generation is a self-contained grid maintained by the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power.

By: scody

scody — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:56:03 -0800

Asparagirl, did you move out of the neighborhood to Burbank/Glendale? Or do you just work up there? /derail

By: tkchrist

tkchrist — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:56:14 -0800

Blackout Hits L.A.; Godzilla Ruled Out

By: zoogleplex

zoogleplex — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 14:59:20 -0800

The power has been back on here at Olympic & Bundy on the West Side for half an hour now, and was only out for 1/2 hour. Relax, y'all! It's being restored, no worries. Asparagirl probably works elsewhere from where she lives! :)

By: StewV

StewV — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 15:07:28 -0800

I'm a Dreamhost customer. I'm very surprised their backup systems/generators aren't working. DH is a fairly good-sized hosting company.

By: dsquid

dsquid — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 15:07:42 -0800

This is obviously a ploy to distract from negative Katrina coverage. I'd check that dude that pulled the plug for links to Haliburton.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 15:07:55 -0800

Erm, did I do that?? Sorry about that guys. I haven't quite worked out the sparkgaps yet. *unplugs scary-crufty looking twenty foot tall Tesla coil made out of copper water pipe coils and sheetmetal air ducts. Dives back into warrens beneath CalTech to scurry and hide.* Solar Weather.

By: scody

scody — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 15:17:40 -0800

Asparagirl probably works elsewhere from where she lives! Well, lots of people work at home or within the same neighborhood where they live (e.g., I work two blocks from my apt.), so it seemed like a perfectly normal question to me, since last I knew Asparagirl was living in the same neck of the woods as I.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 15:19:34 -0800

Weird, this ole backwater called the UK hardly ever gets blackouts (or brownouts, WETF they are). Heh. Keep in mind that just the densely populated areas in "Greater Southern Californa" would absolutely blanket and swallow all of London, and a vast swath of Southeastern England besides. The scale of that city just boggles the fscking mind.

By: Asparagirl

Asparagirl — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 15:21:16 -0800

scody, I work in Glendale/Burbank (about 20 feet from the border between the two, in fact). But I did just move last Saturday from my old apartment in the Miracle Mile/Fairfax district to...*gulp*...The Valley. Hold down the old neighborhood for me, wouldja? And my job involves working on a Dreamhost-powered site, which as we know is down and out, so I may get out of work early today, yippee! /me runs off to update Metafilter zip code listing

By: lee

lee — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 15:24:01 -0800

This just in "Utility Error Blamed for L.A. Blackout" sorry if link doesn't click.

By: lee

lee — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 15:24:09 -0800

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050912/ap_on_re_us/la_power_outage

By: davy

davy — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 15:32:29 -0800

This "Dreamhost", it vibrates?

By: CynicalKnight

CynicalKnight — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 15:45:50 -0800

The weather has won Why does Mother Nature hate America?

By: zoogleplex

zoogleplex — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 15:58:46 -0800

"The scale of that city just boggles the fscking mind." Only because it's all low-rise. If it looked like Manhattan it would be pretty darn small. But then everyone would be really worried when the ground shakes...

By: clevershark

clevershark — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 16:10:52 -0800

augustweed writes "Sorry to HAARP on the same subject, but we might be experiencing an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack. " It's my understanding that with an EMP attack stuff just wouldn't come back online.

By: quadog

quadog — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 16:18:51 -0800

< makes note to himself to name his new funk/soul band the blackouts>

By: sonofsamiam

sonofsamiam — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 16:26:54 -0800

It's my understanding that with an EMP attack stuff just wouldn't come back online. EMP weapons will most likely semi-permanently incapacitate embedded computers in cars and possibly power infrastructure, stoplights, etc. Things like that wouldn't come up again if the power went back on. They don't have that great of range, require a lot of power, and have to be carried on a big truck. I'm down with tinfoil-territory, augustweed, but remember Occam! Sexy as EMP weapons are, they're not very practical at this point in time (bar the US military) and are unlikely to be used by either terrorists or antagonistic states.

By: fleacircus

fleacircus — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 16:28:12 -0800

If the LA metro area had the population density of Manhattan, it would cover more area than Greater London by about 68km&sup2 and a population density 5.5 times higher. According to wikipedia.

By: fleacircus

fleacircus — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 16:28:59 -0800

By: zoogleplex

zoogleplex — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 16:40:48 -0800

impressive!

By: rdr

rdr — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 16:41:12 -0800

I don't get why people would thought this might be terrorism. The blackout happened at about 2:00 p.m. on a beautiful sunny day in Los Angeles. Why would a terrorist turn off the power during the day, after the lunch hour rush? How is a power failure anything more than a minor irritation?

By: basicchannel

basicchannel — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 16:41:31 -0800

²w/u

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 16:43:26 -0800

Zoogleplex: Not all of LA is lowrise. Tallest building West of the Mississippi is there in downtown LA. The huge expansive gray area that I'm referring to in that google satellite map link above wouldn't even fit into Manhattan, not even if Manhattan was twice or three times as tall. Estimated 2004 population for all five of the counties comprising the greater NYC area: 8,008,278 Estimated 2004 population of the five counties that comprise the Greater Southern California Metropolitan area (most of which live in that "huge gray area", which really is pretty much one long and wide spread of continuous urban/suburban development: 19,650,125 Los Angeles County: 9,937,739 Orange County: 2,987,591 Riverside County: 1,871,950 San Bernardino County: 1,921,131 San Diego County: 2,931,714 Keep in mind this isn't a qualitative statement, just a quantitative one. It's about resource and logistics. I'm amazed that the power there stays on at all. Also because of the sprawl and higher individual building counts there's more wire, more substations, more connections and junctions; More things to go wrong. (IE, you generally feed power to a tower of apartments or a high rise at one point. But each house or 4 plex here gets it's own connection. Vastly more complex, even if it's not as obviously dense.) People make the mistake of trying to view Los Angeles (the City) as an independent entity. It's just a small chunk of the larger picture. Also, a lot of the land/space in LA proper isn't primarily residential like a lot of the outlying 'burbs are, which drives down census counts for the city itself. It's just the core of a huge metropolitan/suburban spread, with hundreds of satellite cores or islands of "urbanity", each with it's own hub of highrise "downtowns" and sprawls of suburban development around it. Tagline: Los Angeles: A huge gray area.

By: It's Raining Florence Henderson

It's Raining Florence Henderson — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 16:57:28 -0800

Should have called these guys.

By: litlnemo

litlnemo — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 17:07:11 -0800

quadog, the name is taken.

By: Heywood Mogroot

Heywood Mogroot — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 17:09:22 -0800

"The scale of that city just boggles the fscking mind." I lived in LA 1985-1992 and Tokyo 1992-2000. Tokyo was one helluva city.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 17:19:17 -0800

I haven't been, but Tokyo is just off the scale. And fattening itself up for Godzilla.

By: zoogleplex

zoogleplex — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 17:23:11 -0800

loquacious, ya done learned me something about my (adopted, yet nonetheless dearly loved) hometown. Much obliged! :) You have to add something to the tagline tho... Los Angeles: a huge gray area full of cars. However, being formerly from the other huge metro area, it's not proper to only look at NYC's 5 Boroughs (each of which is a county as well); you need to add in Long Island (Nassau & Suffolk counties), Westchester County, Fairfield County in Connecticut, and at the very least Hudson, Bergen, Essex, Union and Passaic Counties in NJ. I'd throw in Morris, Somerset and northern Middlesex, too, as they all have highway and train arteries leading into NYC, and many commuters travel that far. The suburban sprawl there isn't so different from here, quantitatively, though it looks a lot different. Economically the whole area is as linked as Greater SoCal. Don't have the time to look up that set of population stats, but my hunch is that it would exceed that of SoCal by a significant amount. Anyway, consider me schooled :)

By: pjern

pjern — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 17:45:41 -0800

Brown got a new job already?

By: hal9k

hal9k — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 18:03:04 -0800

Reports in of several backstabbings and feces spread everywhere. This mostly contained to the television and entertainment sections of the city.

By: muppetboy

muppetboy — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 18:22:14 -0800

maybe enron is back?

By: notmydesk

notmydesk — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 18:39:22 -0800

Sort of unsettling that one worker cutting one line could create such a huge problem.

By: fleacircus

fleacircus — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 19:38:03 -0800

zoogleplex: Taking the New York metro area population of 10.761m, we can throw in the entire states of NJ (8.7m) and CT (3.5m) and wind up with ~23m which isn't significantly above LA considering.

By: bshort

bshort — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 20:28:31 -0800

Estimated 2004 population for all five of the counties comprising the greater NYC area... That's not the "greater NYC area." That's just New York City. The city includes those five counties, each of which is what we call a borough. The NYC Metro area includes major parts of New Jersey, Connecticut and southern New York state.

By: Bugbread

Bugbread — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 20:43:33 -0800

loquacious : "Heh. Keep in mind that just the densely populated areas in 'Greater Southern Californa' would absolutely blanket and swallow all of London, and a vast swath of Southeastern England besides." Hmmm...Lived in Tokyo for 8 years, and have never experienced or even heard of a power outage, even when typhoons hit...and I suspect the Tokyo/Yokohama/Kawasaki/Chiba urban sprawl is pretty big.

By: loquacious

loquacious — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 20:53:05 -0800

Yeah, but have you seen LA? That place is held together with spit and glitter. Not bricks or steel. ;)

By: inpHilltr8r

inpHilltr8r — Mon, 12 Sep 2005 21:59:35 -0800

The Blackouts was also Frank Zappa's first band.

By: goofyfoot

goofyfoot — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 03:31:17 -0800

Tallest building West of the Mississippi is there in downtown LA. The library tower, you mean? I was solemnly informed when I worked there that it was the primary target west of the St. Louis Arch because of its stature, but jeez, it just isn't much. San Franciscans think the same of the TransAmerica Pyramid. I don't know; if I were a terrorist, I'd target a dam.

By: longbaugh

longbaugh — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 04:36:25 -0800

Good luck with that Barnes Wallis.

By: AspectRatio

AspectRatio — Tue, 13 Sep 2005 07:22:03 -0800

OMG TERRAH! Seriously, some dude cut a cable. Relax. Tell you what, though. I'm in Santa Monica... power goes out for a bit, traffic lights go out, and I couldn't get home until 9. This town has horrific traffic as it is, but you throw a little wrench like a power outage into the mix and we're hosed. /nervous