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I just talked to my friend Bill, one block over, who's still without power. NYC subways aren't running, a lot of stuff's out. We've both been listening to the benign porridge on the radio, and wondering "Where's the out(r)age?" Apparently the European press is really playing this up, with 24-hour coverage and tabloid headlines like "Blackout Hell." Over here, we're getting an endless string of government officials and media types praising the good nature of New Yorkers and telling one stupid human interest story after another. If I hear another official say "We got people lookin' in on the seniors in their neighborhoods and doing other nice things," I'll gag.
This is a lot like 9/11 in that no one is accountable. Apparently New York's Republican Governor Pataki took a lot of regulatory heat off the state power companies, but he admits no culpability. ("The chickens came home to roost...and all George Pataki [can] do [is] squawk," says Wayne Barrett in the Village Voice.) On the radio, Pataki speaks with anger in his voice trying to blame other regions for this mess. Lately it's "the Midwest," he won't say where, and for a while the media was working a US vs Canada angle.
An intelligence/law enforcement shakeup should have occurred after 9/11: it was a blatant, obvious failure by the people who are supposed to be protecting us. As far as I know, no one got fired except critics of Bush's various irrelevant war plans. The same will happen here, I think: some lower echelon schmuck at one of the power companies may ultimately take the fall, and the Republicans will espouse their usual "It's just life" attitude.
UPDATE 8/16/03: Okay, everything's back to normal now. Just one heat-related death and millions in lost sales, spoiled food, etc. Nothing to get mad about, really. All those people at the power companies mean well and are very nice folks--it's not like they wanted this to happen.
UPDATE 8/18/03: Via Travelers Diagram, here's a picture of a looted McDonalds. Funny, I missed hearing about that on 1010 WINS. (Also linked by TD, pictures of a lightless Times Square.)
This big eastern seaboard power outage has affected me only somewhat. I'm having brownouts on my block, but on the next block over there's no power at all. I'm OK in any event. More when service is a bit more reliable.
UPDATE: Very weird. It's night now, and looking out my back window, all the buildings on Montgomery are dark. The view out my front doorstep is completely different: streetlights are on, lights are on in apartment windows, and the chi-chi restaurant down on the corner has people sitting at the sidewalk tables like everything's normal. One block down, to the left, where Bill lives, it's dark. I'm beginning to wonder if the President of PSE&G lives on my block.
UPDATE 2 (Fri, Aug. 15, 1:00 pm): My Internet cable connection was down from 12 am to 12 pm. Since it worked fine for the first 8 hours after the power outage, I figure Comcast was just takin' a breather, or doing repairs for pre-existing problems under the cover of the "crisis." "Hey, if no one else is giving service, why should we?"
I realize that last comment didn't sound very FAIR AND BALANCED, something this weblog strives for. I guess I should qualify it by saying it was my opinion.