"Dave Liquorice" wrote in message
idual.net...
On Thu, 2 Aug 2018 23:34:48 +0100, Steve Walker wrote:

That won't be of much use to someone with a health problem who
wakes
up one morning and finds that the power went off 5 hours ago; or
for
the able bodied who similarly find that power has been off for
some
time and they are isolated due to deep snow - as happened to many

people recently!

Sure, but the later don t need to call anyone because there is
nothing anyone can do about that.

If our power is off I call the DNO, we are the only customer on the
end of about 1/4 mile of, fused, single phase 11 kV. If that section
has failed or the fuse(s) blown they won't know. If they don't know,
they can't fix it...

So anyone in that unusual situation should ensure that they have
some way of telling them about that, like having a mobile phone.

Makes no sense to keep maintaining the entire dinosaur pots/pstn
system and all the exchanges in the country just so the very few in
that situation can tell those who need to know about that situation.

And don't try running the line about those who have no mobile
service. Any well organised operation has a number of COWs,
Cell on Wheels, which are a mobile base on a trailer with its
own generator which the Chinook can put anywhere that's useful.

That's how the scandinavians do it and they have
that situation a lot more often than you lot do.

It was bad enough that army helicopters were dropping supplies -
that's not going to happen if no-one knows that they are stuck there
without power and quite possibly without heating because of it.

It would have been better if the Chinook had actaully dropped
the supplies at the many places that where still cut off after 7
days, rather than at the village halls, or if they had to drop at
the village halls have some control on who got the supplies...

Trouble is that its impossible to know who needs supplies
and what they need with those still cut off after 7 days.

Its just not feasible to land the Chinook at each of those
places and walk over and ask them, a Chinook is a ****ing
great chopper that isnt practical to do that with.

The villagers could get out by 4x4 from day 2 and you
could get off The Moor on day 3 (not that it did you
any good as all the supermarkets had had the bread,
milk, and fresh veg shelves strippedby the panic buyers).

Anyone in that situation who doesn't have adequate
supplies of the essentials like water and dry food and
some way to cook like even a camping gas stove is a fool.

I know some one who was getting low on fire wood so when the
Chinook flew past decided to go down to the village and see what
was available. To do that he had to go to town and back out as the
short way was still blocked. By the time he got there, nothing was left...

But it appears that no one who needed to know knew which of the
scattered properties where occupied. Mind you if you have Chinook as
your delivery method, you just need to fly slowly past places at a
couple of hundred feet and the people will emerge. Chinooks are
*very* loud and at that sort of distance impossible to ignore, if only
beacasue the windows will be threatening to come in on each WHOP.

But that wont work if the occupant is disabled and can't get their
wheel chair out.

What makes a lot more sense is to use the mobile system to
tell someone you have a problem and have the Chinook drop
a COW in if there is a problem with mobile coverage there.

We have a system which allows broadcasts of texts to
all mobiles in an area so everyone can be told that the
chinook is available to deliver what they say they need.

We use that system for bushfires and floods, but it works
just as well with the result of blizzards.