Lady Liberty

[ilbegone]

LIPA Long Island Power Authority officials are resigning. There are still hundreds of homes without power. Many homeless still.

The news reported that when the out of state utility company's came some were not told where to go or what to do. Some slept in their trucks. FEMA is just now providing trailers.

My nieces power was off. An out of state'r came and looked. He said there was a broken wire "up there" and tried to leave. She wouldn't let him. He said Con Edison reg's require rubber protection over the shoulders and we only require rubber gloves. So he sent her back in the house and said: "NO witnesses". He climbed up and fixed it. Her power was back on in an hour.

Other out of stater's from the South were non-union. They were told they couldn't work because they were not union. So a few went back home. Eventually it was straightened out but so far the culprits haven't been made public.

A storm has a lot of confusion and there is always inefficiency as to where to go, are there repair materials, and what has already been repaired. And that's with storms quite minor compared to Sandy and Katrina. Big storms like that would certainly be a "cluster f***".

Some of it's a show concerning utilities being "a good corporate citizen", flooding trucks and manpower out in a show for the public (we're doing everything we can...).

The sleeping in the truck is normal, after 2 days and two nights of minimal rest most people are essentially worthless but the power company will want them out in public for the show of presence. The first two days the public is generally pissed off and the crews get a lot of disrespect, but after four days and without power most of the public is almost kissing on the lips happy to see a crew come around (might not apply to the New York metropolitan area, those people seem to be in a different thought process category in most respects).

A lot of power companies cut down on inventory to cut costs, if it isn't on the lot there's no fix until the stuff is manufactured if conditions are extreme enough.

The public doesn't and won't ever understand the real issues, to them electricity comes out of the wall.

The guy with the rubber gloves: rules are little different everywhere (no matter what you do, someone somewhere is going to think you're a dumb ass for doing it). I think it's stupid to climb poles with primary gloves and sleeves (adds to falling hazard and potential damage to the gloves), but I once saw a lineman from Maryland climb a little guy stub (no energized conductors) to dead end a sole attachment guy wire wearing rubber gloves, sleeves, rubber booties, and a pair of funky rubber covers on his hooks, totally unnecessary here. Apparently that was the rules where he came from. And a fairly recent safety device called a "Buck squeeze" makes it more of a job just to get up a pole than actually doing the work on the pole - especially if it's congested. It's either for the insurance company or to overcome individual stupidity and either way the ideas come from people who don't do the work.

The non union issue probably comes from New York's version of trade unionism. My understanding of New York trade unionism is that no way does anyone do anything which might remotely belong to another trade or there's hell to pay. That probably comes double for "rats" doing anything. Here in California it seems everyone is out for themselves with largely unskilled non union labor (largely illegal) out to undercut everything. If it weren't for safety and other modern ethical issues as well as system reliability concerns there would be dead Mexicans strewn all over the right of way - burn up one bunch, hire another bunch because they might not know what they're doing but they sure work cheap. It's worked for more than thirty years in housing construction because everything can be rebuilt with the true completion costs hidden, doesn't work in the high voltage trades.