Go to today's Chicago Tribune site: http://www.chicagotribune.com/

Read the article "ComEd darkens the day for Field Museum. To the left of that article start clicking on the related links regarding the recent spate of power outages in Chicago. Read the one dated June 30 that says ComEd is all ready for Y2K.

Read about how the mayor demanded someone's head and ComEd handed him a senior vp's, in charge of maintenance. Read about how when the loop went down (the heart of the financial center) that the cost in lost business exceeded $100,000,000. Keep reading through the articles to absorb the underlying dread that the infrastructure is already so wobbly that the mere thought of additional Y2K "glitches" has a whole host of folks running just a little bit scared.

Oh yea don't forget to take in how when the loop went down a lot of high rise back-up generators didn't generate.

Good thing the big cities will be in good shape. Too bad the rubes out in Anytown, USA will bear the brunt of the roll

-- blind pig (blind@pig.com), August 23, 1999

Answers

ComEd officials face Illinois congressmen

CHICAGO, Aug 23 (Reuters) -A senior official from power company Commonwealth Edison Co. will answer congressmen's questions about power failures in the Chicago area Monday, a day after another high-profile outage hit the city.

The latest outage shut down the Field Museum in Chicago all day Sunday, causing the museum to turn away thousands of visitors during the peak summer tourist season.

No damage was caused to museum exhibits, but 500 pounds of dry ice had to be brought in to help preserve tissue samples and other materials used by scientists at the museum, a museum spokeswoman said.

The outage was apparently caused by a faulty ComEd transformer at the museum, said Adrienne Levatino, communications director for ComEd, a unit of Unicom Corp. . Power was out for about 16 hours, she said.

Problems with ComEd's distribution system of transformers and cables have led to numerous blackouts in the Chicago area, including one that shut down parts of Chicago's central business district earlier this month. In late July, almost 100,000 customers lost power during a heat wave that drove temperatures to 100 degrees Fahrenheit and taxed ComEd's system.

The company is conducting a review of its system and fixing problems as it can, but ComEd officials have said it will take about a year for the entire system to show some improvement.

On Monday, David Helwig, ComEd's acting senior vice president of transmission and distribution will be among those appearing before a hearing on power problems held by three U.S. Congressmen from Chicago.

Unicom shares were down 18.75 cents at $38.5625 Monday morning.

========================================= End

Ray

-- Ray (ray@tottcc.com), August 23, 1999.

Chicago is not on a coast, so it doesn't count.

-- Mara Wayne (MaraWayne@aol.com), August 23, 1999.

Uh - not on a salt water coast that is, my dear Mara.

The inland waterways to the Ohio and Mississippi Rivers, to the Great Lakes, and to the Midwest in general through its hundreds of rail and train connections make Chicago one of the largest ports we've got.

But your right - all failures are local failures. We've been assured that there won't be any national failures: just a lot of local ones. 8<)

-- Robert A. Cook, PE (Kennesaw, GA) (cook.r@csaatl.com), August 23, 1999.

One thing that really isn't being clearly reported is that this outage did not just affect the Field Museum, note:

(CHICAGO) - Its happened again. Several power outages across the Chicago area Sunday. The entire Museum Campus along the Lake Shore was affected by a large power outage that forced the closing of the Field Museum. Estimated losses for the Museum total about 50-thousand dollars. ComEd officials are hoping to have power restored today. An open cable was the cause of the latest power outage that kept ComEd workers on the job overnight Sunday in an effort to restore all electricity. Chicago's Englewood area was also without power leaving 16-hundred customers in the dark.

Link

My Hubby told me this morning he heard that this outage affected three museums...(we were out of town this weekend) news to us.

Note also that the air & water show was occuring along the lakefront at the time of the outages (millions of people). The city is not very happy with Com Ed.

This outage also affected Meigs Field (lakefront airport) which reportedly continued to function because the control tower had power.

The Sun Times has a short article @:

Times

-- Deborah (infowars@yahoo.com), August 23, 1999.

bold off?

-- Deborah (infowars@yahoo.com), August 23, 1999.

Les, this reminds me of Cory's saying: "Bozo the QA Clown slamming fixes into production." He was talking about mainframes, but this sounds applicable, dontcha think? Similar result . . .

-- Margaret (janssm@aol.com), August 23, 1999.