Was it a bust?
Apparently, Irene was a failure, as viewed from the exalted perch of media anchors, because they themselves are still alive and Wall Street is negotiable by taxi instead of boat.
Bullshit.
In the first place, the death toll is somewhere in the twenties*. Katrina was in a class by itself and warps our sensibilities. Irene's harvest is in the medium range of casualties from tropical storms. The New York media, with their city's limited experience of tropical storms, seem not to appreciate this.
Then there's the physical damage. It may not be impressive to the anchorfolk, but it is if you're in Bennington, Brattleboro, or Woodstock, Vermont, or Campton, NH, Westport, MA, or East Haven, CT, or any similar number of places further south. I mention these because I've been in them and can appreciate the damage. Many of them haven't seen tropical storm damage in over 70 years.
Here in New England, we also have an experience that is becoming normal during and after storms. Hundreds of thousands of customers of private power providers have lost electrical power, and are being told they won't get it back for days, maybe weeks.
By contrast, I live in a town with its own municipal light department. They buy most of our power in good times, but are capable when necessary of generating electricity. Public entity it may be, it has an eye on the bottom line. That may influence the speed with which the local light department responds to outages. The longest outage I can remember in the last 20 years was three hours. Granted, the light department's customer base is a tenth or less the size of that of a private power companies. But shouldn't the private companies' outages be in proportion? If it takes our guys an hour to bring a grid back on line, it should perhaps take private enterprise ten or twelve hours, not ten to twelve days.
So much for the efficiencies of capitalism.
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*As I published this, I heard the toll had risen to 38. No, it's not a bust, especially if you knew one of the victims.
Bullshit.
In the first place, the death toll is somewhere in the twenties*. Katrina was in a class by itself and warps our sensibilities. Irene's harvest is in the medium range of casualties from tropical storms. The New York media, with their city's limited experience of tropical storms, seem not to appreciate this.
Then there's the physical damage. It may not be impressive to the anchorfolk, but it is if you're in Bennington, Brattleboro, or Woodstock, Vermont, or Campton, NH, Westport, MA, or East Haven, CT, or any similar number of places further south. I mention these because I've been in them and can appreciate the damage. Many of them haven't seen tropical storm damage in over 70 years.
Here in New England, we also have an experience that is becoming normal during and after storms. Hundreds of thousands of customers of private power providers have lost electrical power, and are being told they won't get it back for days, maybe weeks.
By contrast, I live in a town with its own municipal light department. They buy most of our power in good times, but are capable when necessary of generating electricity. Public entity it may be, it has an eye on the bottom line. That may influence the speed with which the local light department responds to outages. The longest outage I can remember in the last 20 years was three hours. Granted, the light department's customer base is a tenth or less the size of that of a private power companies. But shouldn't the private companies' outages be in proportion? If it takes our guys an hour to bring a grid back on line, it should perhaps take private enterprise ten or twelve hours, not ten to twelve days.
So much for the efficiencies of capitalism.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
*As I published this, I heard the toll had risen to 38. No, it's not a bust, especially if you knew one of the victims.
Labels: Hurricane Irene, Hurricanes, media criticism, power companies
posted by Uncle | 22:20
1 Comments:
From my chums in Vermont as well as the news reports, we were were damned lucky they took the hit for us. Bridges, roads and homes washed away and whole towns and cities inundated...that's as bad as we heard. The hundreds of trees toppled and such here in Boston don't begin to compare. Irene was a toughie in NC, VA and VT in particular.
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