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North American Network Operators Group Date Prev | Date Next | Date Index | Thread Index | Author Index | Historical Re: Early warning system
> Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 22:09:38 -0800 > From: "Eric A. Hall" <[email protected]> > Sender: [email protected] > > > Cal-ISO, PG&E, etc have said they don't give warnings because they > > don't have a way of contacting lots of people at the same time. > > They could notify radio and TV stations. There's a whole emergency > broadcast infrastructure in place... > > They might not want to though, as it would also be notifying thieves about > affected areas. The outage blocks are announced as soon as they are placed by the utility, so thieves know that very quickly. That is of limited value in that the information of who is in which block is NOT public information. And the "blocks" are not contiguous areas but fairly small areas scattered all over the utility's service area (and over other utility's areas which get their power fed through the utility. the idea behind this is that the crooks will only know that block 'x' is off, but not what physical locations are in block 'x'. Reality is that the local news panning over San Francisco after sunset from Mt. Sutro makes the area without power quite obvious. > Mailing lists would probably be the most effective, but not sure that > spamming all known mailing lists is a good idea when an outage is only > goint to affect a specific area, and nobody will maintain yet another > subscription on a list that never gets any traffic. A mailing list per block seems a good idea. That way customers could subscribe to the list(s) in which they have equipment. The problem is that PG&E has been shutting down PORTIONS of a block. The next shutdown will be "within block 14". So a notification that block 14 is going down would only mean that your power MIGHT be going out. :-( R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) E-mail: [email protected] Phone: +1 510 486-8634
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