Massive Blackout in Florida - Orlando to Miami

Massive Blackout in Florida - Orlando to Miami

www.cnn.com

Massive power outages struck South Florida on Tuesday afternoon, with power reported out from Miami to Palm Beach County, police said.
The outage struck about 1:25 p.m., shortly after rainstorms passed through the region, Williams said. But the cause of the blackout was not immediately known.

(visit the link for the full news article)

So 1 storm can do this? Not Katrina or Wilma or any other hurricane, but a winter storm? Whats the deal? I don't buy what they are selling.

www.cnn.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

Has America has become some third world Amerikastan ? Or are the damn power companies robbing the folks in Florida blind for sloppy services? I hope who ever is responsible for this gets fired or better sued!

i think its just a matter of chance trees are the problems with these things they just need to snap a main wire somewhere an that can happen....

an FL could just have alot more people on the same grid then other places which would be why its such a large one.

just my 2 wooden nickles.

I live in St Lucie County,Florida.Between these two areas and im not being affected. I think it is all isolated Palm Beach and south.

People are way too quick to jump on the conspiracy bandwagon.

It's entirely possible a wire got cut, pole fell over, technological malfunction, etc.. causing the power plants to shut down. Things happen.

Not everything is a conspiracy.

Power went off here about 30 minutes ago. It was off for about 10-15 minutes then it came back on. (I'm in east central Florida)


I hope we find out soon what's causing this.

reply to post by IAF101


I have a power cable that comes down the pole to the ground in the back yard that has been hanging since two hurricanes hit here in one week. Lets see thats was 2004.I caould take a pic but i wouldn't know how to post it. Its kind of funny in the middle of the pole theres electrical tape wraped around it. I guess thats the special fpl electrical tape.

Some one said that fpl tapeing power lines to a pole was bs.Well i figured out how to get the pics posted.So looks like if you smell bs you need to check yourself.
his quote

Dude - I am sorry to hear about that. We, as Americans, who pay out the nose for power and gas, should not have to worry if a storm rolls through that we are SOL for 3 weeks.If a pole goes down in my neighborhood, the rest of the city isn't dark. I am not completely sold that this is all from natural events.
Some of the stories above about downed lines for years and duct taped lines in BS. How much is your electric bill per month? How much is paid to maintenance and upkeep.
I call BS here.

heres the pics



[edit on 26-2-2008 by JBA2848]

reply to post by JBA2848


I hope you're right - I have a friend flying into Orlando International as we speak (due to land in 30 minutes). But the area talked about is HUGE. One tree down (or a few) probably wouldn't do this right?
But on the other hand - one high power wire was taken down in 2003 and plunged the Northeast into darkness...

I live in Fort Lauderdale and we had a power surge at work. The lights flickered and then came right back on where I am at. My workplace happens to be near a downtown area close to the hospitols, police stations and other "priority" power grids. The radio is buzzed with all kinds of outages all over though. My city is also under a tornado watch, but nothing has touched down. There is heavy rain though.

FPL (Florida Power and Light) is known to not be a very stable power utility though, as most south floridians already know.


FYI, during huricane Wilma, we lost power down here for close to three and four weeks. An afternoon power outage here is something we have dealt with time and time again. Gas stations down here are also soon to be required to have back up generators to power the pumps.

We're used to this.

xmad

reply to post by harddrive21


south florida runs there own electric and borrows from other areas to. They probly have a problem down there and trippped the breakers on other areas they were borrowing from.So they might be without til they find out what went wrong the others will just cut the link to them.

About 4.4 million customers across South Florida affected, utility says

That does seem like a lot more than normally would be affected by "scattered thunderstorms." That is an awful lot of people.

I sure hope it doesn't have anything to do with foreign hackers tapping our networks trying to shut down the grid. Story floating around here on that...

Originally posted by TrueAmerican

About 4.4 million customers across South Florida affected, utility says

I sure hope it doesn't have anything to do with foreign hackers tapping our networks trying to shut down the grid. Story floating around here on that...

This was my initial thought too, especially when cnn said that one of the Nuclear power plants went down for no apparent reason!

I am willing to bet money on the power outage being from..

A squirrel
Downed power line
Downed pole

I guarantee this has nothing to do with terrorists, hackers, government doing something. Power outages happen all the time. Hell, like someone said, pretty much the entire East Coast lost power because of one power line.

Things happen. Not everything has some evil malicious intent behind it.

reply to post by xmaddness


Dude - I am sorry to hear about that. We, as Americans, who pay out the nose for power and gas, should not have to worry if a storm rolls through that we are SOL for 3 weeks.
If a pole goes down in my neighborhood, the rest of the city isn't dark. I am not completely sold that this is all from natural events.
Some of the stories above about downed lines for years and duct taped lines in BS. How much is your electric bill per month? How much is paid to maintenance and upkeep.
I call BS here.

Well it's bigger than just Orlando to Miami because I live 90 miles north of Orlando and I lost power at 1:25PM also. It's only been back on for the last 10 mins or so. I don't think a squirrel blacked out power over a 300 miles swath of the state somehow..

Had to stop lurking for this one since this is about the area I live in.

I live in Boca Raton, and can report scattered surges. Last night, North Boca and north had about a 30(?) minute blackout. I was on EVE-Online with a few local buddies and watched them all drop at the same time(and about 30 miles seperate them). So I can reasonably interpolate that this started along the lines of last night, culminating in what we have today.

People are saying Turkey Points two reactors went out, without reason. I didn't know fission reactors went cold without reason. I'm not an expert on anything, just someone that lives in the area, so I'll leave the speculation to someone more versed in fission reactors.

-Alex

I am very far south here in fl.

My kids school and my husbands job was without power.

NO STORMS HERE. Storms were in Ft. Laud. area. not here. Sun is shining here. They said on the news that 8 plants went down all at once. 8 Plants is a lot to go down all at one time. Wonder what could cause that?

They're saying that 8 power plants were affected.......pretty hefty squirrel...

Our power went off here ( NW GA) about the same time!?!? ( Might be just a coincidence, our outage could have been from a local cause as we are having pretty windy conditions..... ) Any one else notice a prob?

FPL said the cause of the outage was not known, but state officials said they believed that a major transmission line failed in South Florida, possibly near Alligator Alley and U.S. 27 in Broward County, triggering rolling blackouts throughout the state,

''The system protected itself by going into rotating blackouts,'' said Bob Trapp of the state's Public Service Commission. ``It has a ripple effect throughout the state.''

www.miamiherald.com...