From Peter Gutmann Re: So what *does* happen to a city without power

[David Honig <honig@otc.net>]

I wrote: 
> 
>>A part of Aukland is finding out.
>>
>>http://www.tampabayonline.net/news/news101l.htm

Peter G replies: 
>It's pretty serious, so far it's affected (at various times) a number of 
>banking data centres (the first day the power went out was on the Thursday 
>when everyones pay is supposed to be processed - the data centres themselves 
>have generators, but the sources feeding them information don't), the stock 
>exchange, some (unidentified) central city post office buildings, customs
and 
>immigration, inland revenue, internal affairs, social welfare, the Auckland 
>City Council, the central police station, Aucklands main hospital and
medical 
>school complex (they have generators, but one of them failed, leaving the 
>childrens hospital without power for awhile), the city campus of the 
>university and technical institute (affecting 30,000 students in the
middle of 
>enrolment), several TV and radio stations, and God knows what else (the 
>government departments have tentacles all over the city, so it's not so bad 
>for them).  Although many of these places have generators, there were
various 
>glitches in switching over and one or two breakdowns which have caused 
>problems, and most of the generators can't handle anywhere near the load
being 
>placed on them but were designed to power only essential services.  One 
>comment I've heard is that the power company may not survive the lawsuits 
>which follow this (taking out some suburb is serious enough, but taking out 
>the central business district with its cluster of multinational accounting
and 
>legal firms, banks, government departments, and whatnot is really bad).
> 
>There's fairly detailed coverage of what's going on at 
>http://www.cs.auckland.ac.nz/~pgut001/pubs/power.txt, with a temporary
copy at 
>http://www.kcbbs.gen.nz/users/peterg/power.txt (the Auckland site doesn't
have 
>power at the moment, the other one is located outside the city centre, I'll 
>move things to the first site once power is restored).
> 
>Peter (usually pgut001@cs.auckland.ac.nz when we have power).
>
------------------------------------------------------------
      David Honig                   Orbit Technology
     honig@otc.net                  Intaanetto Jigyoubu

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