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My cousin lost one of the electric wires coming into their house (the ground wire of the three phase), which fried all their TVs, their microwave, their computers, their water heater, and their fridge. I'm not sure if it caused a surge or what, but it killed almost all the electronic stuff in the house.


Thanks for the excellent descriptive post on the difficulties of living without grid electricity.

Did your cousin have an RCD circuit breaker panel built in? Sounds like one of these could have saved all his kit from being fried not to mention your cousin if he was touching a metal computer case or mowing the lawn with his electric lawnmower for example when this happened.

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With the power out for 13 days they went through almost 140 gallons of gas.


I think we can safely assume that this power outage will have certainly encouraged even more folks to become prepared and will purchase large powered gasoline generators in the future making the gasoline shortages even more pronounced come the next grid outage.


Edited by Am_Fear_Liath_Mor (11/13/12 04:38 PM)