Power Outtage!

[elwolf_x]

The power just came up a couple of hours ago but the problem is far from over.

good thing to hear power's back up in ottawa PowerPuff Grrl, i have family over there. i have a pretty good idea what you mean by other problems, but what do you mean exactly?

power is slowly coming back in new york - sounding better, maybe tranz already has power back, yay!

[raven ryuu]

I definitely know what power outages feel like over here on Guam. We get them when typhoons blow our lines down...or when something in the power grid trips...or even when a brown tree snake crawls on one of the power lines and fries itself to death -- can you believe that it's enough to put the entire island into total blackout? Yup
And living on a hot tropical island -- air condition is very important. So I also know what it feels like to sweat out a hot afternoon with no power
I'm really concerned about the peeps in New York / and major city areas -- cause if they live in high rises, and they don't have backup power (via generator) -- then that sucks -- they might be trapped...or something
But I think the latest news reported that things are getting better now. I hope it will all be resolved soon.

[denial]

MEMORIES OF ’77
Especially in New York, where police were nervously gearing up for nightfall, the sudden loss of power revived memories of the ruinous blackout of 1977.
On July 10 that year, power officials guaranteed Congress that another power failure like the 1965 blackout would never occur again. Three days later, the lights went off a little before 9:30 p.m. and stayed off all night — 13 hours in all.
More than 3,700 people were arrested in looting across several neighborhoods. More than 1,000 fires were set, and estimates of the damage ranged from $61 million to more than $300 million.

Source: http://www.msnbc.com/news/952578.asp

[PowerPuff Grrl]

Originally posted by elwolf_x
i have a pretty good idea what you mean by other problems, but what do you mean exactly?

Only 50% of power came back in Ottawa; so traffics lights elevators, etc are not working. As well, thousands of businesses are closed down and there are still neighbourhoods that have no electricity.

Finger pointing has already begun; the problem occured in the Niagra Falls region but people don't know whether it was on the side US's side or Canada's side. So now the States is blaming us and we're blaming them.

And we used to be such good friends.

[0newinged]

Finally!!! 21 hours and it's back! For now at least untill they roll the grid again :S The other half of the city has power since 7 PM but ah well that's how it is BTW I'm gonna leave the FTP server off for now... hope everyone who's out comes back soon!

C ya!

[ypsidan04]

Yeah, I was part of it as well. Because of the power loss, and other circumstances, this is the first time I've been here for 26 hours Im glad things are back to normal.

[Lux]

LOL. i just found this out..so the power went out in A2, and apparently the U of M has its own power supply. it can be its own little community, if need be....and everyone hung out on campus. that's so tight.

[denial]

> Just flipped on CNN, watching the masses snake through the streets of
> Manhattan as correspondents state that this could be an affect of the
> blaster worm.
>
> Interesting but I don't see how an worm of this magnitude (smaller than that
> of Slammer/Sapphire and others) could influence DCS and SCADA systems around
> the US, particularly just in the North East.


The german publishing house "heise", producing the magazines c't and ix,
got a news on their page mentioning a probable link between the worm and
the power outage.

Source:http://www.heise.de/newsticker/data/ju-15.08.03-001/

The article is in german, but I'm trying to translate the important pieces
to english:

The failing niagara power-plant belongs to National Grid USA. That
power-supplier is listed as a reference customer of Northern Dynamics.
Norhtern Dynamics labeled themselves as "Home of the OPC Experts" and
offer a range of products that use OPC for control and operation systems.

OPC stands for "Ole for process control" and is based on microsofts
COM/DCOM model. In a network affected by the W32.Blaster worm the
DCOM-communcation fails, and therefor OPC fails on unpatched systems.

OPC is employed among other things for the linking of so called SCADA
systems (Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition), as used by
power-plants.

The OPC experts from northern dynamics also list General Electrics,
Siemens AG, european power-plant constructor ABB and the european
organization for nuclear research as reference customers.

Best regards,

Dominic