Several electrical fires (IBM, EPA and a hotel) and power outages (including traffic lights) occurred today due to two or three power surges in the Research Triangle Park area of Raleigh-Durham. Motors were burned out. I don't know about computer equipment, nothing was said. But the fire captain on scene said they needed to call Duke Power to see if they should expect "any more of these."

In five years of working with the scanner I've never heard of such a thing before. Coincidence--sure, could be. But I can't help thinking Duke might have been doing some testing today.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), December 30, 1999

Answers

Duke Power is supposed to be in pretty good shape, but a lot of that area is CP&L which has problems anyway. However when I asked a Duke rep about Y2K back in mid-1998, she had no idea what I was talking about. It's possible, we are on Duke and we have had surges and brownouts before. Some of my freinds learned the hard way not to plug their radio equipment into the wall when power surges on CP&L fried them.

-- Forrest Covington (theforrest@mindspring.com), December 30, 1999.

Wow, OG. That's pretty heavy. There seems to be a lot perking below the surface. Cable outages yesterday in NYC and someone's IP sever down (don't know which).

-- Mara (MaraWayne@aol.com), December 30, 1999.

Fire at local hospital today too...2 power surges tonight already....HMMMMM

-- Moore dinty Moore (dac@ccrtc.com), December 30, 1999.

Duke Power has purchased some power plants here in California from PG&E. The power plants they purchased, were built in the middle 50's....glad I got candles.

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), December 30, 1999.

I live about 10 miles from one of their California plants. Yes it is old, and not sure what shape it is in or who the power is contracted to. It could be going anywhere. Many of us in CA are concerned about PG&Es ability to deliver consistent clean power. My son is coming up today to install my UPS for the computer. Right now I have the mother of all surge protectors on it

Take Care OG and Forrest. Research Triangle is a bad place to have ugly power

-- Nancy (wellsnl@hotmail.com), December 31, 1999.