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, 2015


http://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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