There seems to be a wide discrepancy over the numbers who lost electrical power during the tropical storm.

Quote:
Utilities restored about 7.4 million customers by Wednesday, according to an Associated Press tally of company reports. Hundreds of communities are still without power.


http://moneywatch.bnet.com/economic-news...-irene/6288694/

compared with
Quote:

Over 6.4 million customers lacked power at the height of the outages, the department noted.


http://edition.cnn.com/2011/US/09/02/irene.aftermath/index.html

So how many are still without grid power now getting on for a week? Are there still over 1 million people still affected with no electrical power 1 week in? frown (assuming 1.5-2 actual people per customer)

It doesn't look to good if there really was a black start electrical grid requirement for something like a Carrington solar storm event or even a more substantial hurricane as Irene was barely a tropical storm when it passed over New York.

Maybe there are just still so many without power still that we haven't yet heard the full chorus of anger for being cut off for so long via the interweb. crazy

Question;

Rather than have a vastly expensive state internal security (DHS) and emergency response organisation (FEMA), would it not be more sensible in just making infrastructure such as Electrical grid generation and transmission supply simply more resilient?



Edited by Am_Fear_Liath_Mor (09/03/11 01:30 AM)