Wow.. we didn't even have problems like that in California!

Worst quake in my lifetime had our power out for 6 hours, but some folks went a
week or more..

They're surprisingly efficient here, maybe because the power is government
regulated..

During the Baja 1000 this year, a chopper flew into the main power line
supplying our section of Baja.. Thousands of folks with no power..
They had it fixed and power restored in 6 hours!

mac

This is the worst area I have lived in for power. Fist few years (6?)
we lived here power went out at least once a week, usually for just
1-4 hours at most. Supposedly they fixed the problem by replacing an
underground line. Well the power doesn't go out once a week anymore
but since last Feb 2007 it's gone out at least 12 times and for days
(3+) at a time. I'd prefer the more frequent and shorter outages.

This year we've had three major outages, all because of wind and
trees. Three homes on my street had trees crash thru the roof. This
last outage had a telephone pole go thru the middle of one. Two belong
to older retired couples on fixed incomes, which really sucks.

Much damage to homes; roofs ripped off, aluminum awnings ripped off,
storage sheds tossed around. A few months ago we had 3 tornadoes touch
down within a 2 mile area, of which one directly here rated a level
'0'. The 50+ foot oak between my house and a neighbor broke big
branches but hit my neighbor instead of me. It was luck of the wind.
People are still repairing from that storm when this thing hit.

Honestly, I'm amazed at the power problems and outages. I grew up on
the east coast (NY/NJ), even thru the big outage of 1973 and still it
has been worse here.

I've been thru hurricanes no problem, but tornadoes are another thing.
We've had 7 I think, one F3 during the night missing us by a few
miles. It missed a co-worker's house by a quarter mile and his family
never heard it. I believe there is nothing scarier than waking up and
realizing you could have gone poof in the night with no warning. We've
already begun looking for new area to move as soon as we can.

I've been watching footage of TX and I cannot fathom how difficult it
is, and going to be, for those folks who lost everything. The violent
weather we've had in the US in the last couple of years is just
amazing. I've been hoping for a reprieve and am now even ready to
perform pagan rituals if it will help stop bad weather and economy.

`Casper