On Fri, 27 Dec 2013 20:08:09 +0000, DerbyBorn wrote:

I heard one woman complaining that she couldn't get through to talk to
anyone on the phone about the situation.

I think the powers that be knew about the fault and were busy deploting
their workers.

Many people don't know who to contact when it is a distribution fault
anyway.

My power supplier has a website to show outages. Last time there was an
outage they did not show it since the outage "affected only a few
people". I told them that I wouldn't have to phone them if they updated
their website.
Naturally I have an emergency power supply so that I can run the
computer, broadband, phone, TV and lights. But I need to know if the
outage is going to be more than a few hours, then I'll crank up the
generator and maybe run an extension lead to my 80 year old neighbours.