[txlpo78]

I’m in Austin and I have to agree. The media and especially social media would have you believe that the literal apocalypse happened this week (if you dare, go read r/Austin and witness how many people are having ragefits insisting they are going to actually die if Adler doesn’t personally restore their power ASAP). This situation has been very bad, especially in terms of property damage (broken pipes etc), but it still has been an easier situation than something like a hurricane or the floods in Houston, yet I don’t see r/Houston turn into a harbinger-of-doom support group whenever a hurricane hits.

I think the fact that this time there is “someone to blame” is really exacerbating the outcry. When a hurricane hits, everyone sort of accepts that Mother Nature is fucking stuff up and rides it out. But this time, everyone seems to be set on being angry at state/city leaders and really wants to make their voices heard.

> Putting aside the power plants (which have been discussed to death), parts of the distribution system were going down all over the place-- lines, transformers, etc. Those who reported 24-48 hour outages were probably victims of this rather than the rolling blackouts.

That’s true for most of the state, but it is worth noting that in Austin, it wasn’t this. The people you are hearing talking about multi-day blackouts (I was one of them) are likely Austinites where the poor state of the city electrical grid meant that they could not do rolling blackouts. They turned power off for many and just left us in the dark for days. And that’s a whole other issue that needs to be addressed, along with all of the ERCOT issues etc.

[wffurr]

“They turned the power off for many and just left us in the dark” is hard to reconcile with “Mother Nature is fucking stuff up and rides it out.”

I mean, yeah, Mother Nature rode in and fucked things up pretty good. But it’s been known for years both how to prepare for this and that it’s been needed (see the FERC report about 2011). There’s pretty clearly someone to blame, and it’s the grid operators, regulators, and the politicians and voters that enabled them to cut corners this hard.

[txlpo78]

Did you misread my comment? I didn’t say this event was due to Mother Nature, and the entire second half is specifically about how the Austin Energy grid is mismanaged and victim to cut corners.

[wffurr]

I think I did. It was hard to tell if your comment was supportive or not of the people blaming leaders and the grid management.