The Washington D.C. region and the federal government are just now (Tuesday afternoon) coming out of a geographically large-scale power outage/surge that hopefully will provide some lessons to individuals and institutions. It no doubt brought 9/11 back in the minds of a lot of locals, if only for a few minutes.
Instructive that a small-scale incident in a county most DC residents don't hear about much was the instigator. The first-responders to the triggering event was a volunteer rescue squad in Charles County, Maryland (which until today I could not have confidently stated the location of).
Upon hearing on the radio about "massive area outages" I immediately plugged in my phone and laptop to charge. This spurs me to re-charge my backup portable chargers, too. Am away from my house and hoping my power stayed on (refrigerator) but am otherwise not inconvenienced as I am away from the city until tomorrow.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/04/07/politics/power-outage-washington-dc/Widespread power outages sweep Washington, D.C.
By Jeremy Diamond, CNN
Updated 2:54 PM ET, Tue April 7, 2015http://www.washingtonpost.com/local/scat...ff6a_story.html"A power surge temporarily knocked out power to the White House, State Department and wide swaths of the nation’s capital and its Maryland suburbs early Tuesday afternoon."I received this message via the
DC Alert messaging system (e-mail + text).
"Pepco reports there are several power outages occuring concurrently in the DC Area. At this time the estimated time of restoration has not been determined. "Was just the other day having a discussion with friends about why I make a point of having a cash stash -- while at home and while away -- and a full tank of gas.
"What if the power goes out?" I asked them. "We'll call you," they replied.
Hmmmm....
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