10,000 Outer Banks visitors told to leave after power outage, state of emergency declaration

http://www.roanoke.com/ap/stat...36-23e5f1488867.html

A dreamy summer vacation turned into a messy, sweaty nightmare for 10,000 tourists on the Outer Banks when the power went off and air conditioners stopped humming, and officials ordered visitors to leave Friday because the outage could last days or perhaps weeks.

People and cars lined up to get on ferries, the only way off Ocracoke Island. Gas stations ran perilously low on fuel and ice. Workers at a cafe improvised by using flashlights to make sausage biscuits on a gas stove and people searched for anything cold to eat or drink in the thick, humid air.

"There's a lot of hot, sweaty people here," said Erica Plouffe Lazure, of New Hampshire.

Two restaurants on Ocracoke were using generators to stay open, but the motel Lazure booked for her vacation closed when its generator exploded minutes after it was started.

"This is a beautiful island and I waited two years to come back here because it's one of my favorite places in the world," she said. "I'm a little bummed that the power has gotten in the way, but, till next time."

Ocracoke and Hatteras Islands went dark on Thursday when a construction company building a new bridge between the Outer Banks and the mainland drove a steel casing into an underground transmission line. The company, PCL Construction, was digging at the site Friday to determine the extent of the damage. Officials said it could be days or weeks before it's fixed.

North Carolina Gov. Roy Cooper declared a state of emergency as generators were sent to the islands. Officials urged people to use them only for fans and refrigerators so that they would not overload them.

The islands, which have about 5,000 permanent residents, rely heavily on the summer tourist season for their local economies and business owners worried about how long they would be shuttered.

Ann Warner, the owner of Howard's Pub on Ocracoke Island, said she has generator power, but business had dropped as tourists streamed off the island. Her restaurant would usually be packed for Friday lunch.

She and other business owners were upset at losing business at the peak of tourism season because of human error, as opposed to tropical weather such as a hurricane.

"This is a man-made disaster, and yes people are very upset," she said.

At a deli-cafe located in the back of the Island Convenience store, Aaron Howe held a flashlight in his mouth as he made sausage biscuits on a gas stove.

"It's the only location in town where you can get a bite," Howe told The Virginian-Pilot. "It might take a while but we'll get it done."

But it's cash only with the registers down. Ice cream was selling for half price at the Slushy Stand as people tried to keep cool.

"Believe me, it was a little toasty last night," Andrea Wayda, of New Jersey, told the newspaper Friday morning before she and Patrick Jobe left on a ferry. The two had stayed in a cabana with a pool during their visit.

Once off the island, tourists may face a slow, crowded ride as they maneuver N.C. Highway 12. The two-lane road is the only north-south roadway along the Outer Banks.

The power went out about 4:30 a.m. Thursday. Officials said about 9,000 customers are without power on the two islands — about 7,700 on Hatteras and another 1,300 on Ocracoke.

Rob Temple, a boat captain on Ocracoke Island, had a large group booked for Thursday night, but only a handful of people showed up after the power outage. Still, he took it in stride Friday as he waited in a line of cars for a ferry off the island to take his daughter to a movie in Nags Head.

"We get hurricanes sometimes in the middle of the season and you have to be prepared for this," he said.

Yep. This is going to be a very expensive for the construction company. Some of the business may have business interruption insurance since this is a hurricane prone area, otherwise they are out thousands of dollars.

One of my co-workers makes a good living by suing companies who dig up ATT's cables. The City of Houston does it pretty frequently.

There is a statute that require them to call the hotline before they dig, but they often screw it up - don't call, don't dig in the place they ask about, all kinds of errors.

I hope the construction company called in a mark out. It can cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars. I have seen mark outs off by quite a distance when I was in the utility business. One of the costliest accidents are one that are of fiber optics.

I call every time. I know it is excessive, I have had lines marked before so I have a good idea where they are, or at least where they aren't, but I still call every time. The service is free and it relieves me of liability. It also protects against a memory that seems to be getting worse every year.

quote:

Originally posted by rtquig:
I hope the construction company called in a mark out. It can cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars. I have seen mark outs off by quite a distance when I was in the utility business. One of the costliest accidents are one that are of fiber optics.

True, all of the above. Also, cables can get picked up inductively, so we sometimes dig and find nothing or pothole a telephone cable and find it is power or coaxial cable.

Sucks for those forced out missing a vacation and the workers that live off the in season work.

The OBX is used to this stuff caused by storms.

A few years ago we had rental in Buxton or Frisco for November. The southern part of the island was cut off at the "S" turns. The road was gone and during high tide there was nothing. Low tide and 4x4 could get through a small section.

We took an emergency ferry onto the island. Took a few extra hours but we had a house for the week that was good to go and no refund since it was fine. We still had a good time.

The problem-causers would like to just fix the problem once, but should be forced to pay for a temporary emergency repair and then also the permanent repair.

I have a friend that didn't call. It was sprinkling and it was wet when he was digging in his backyard and hit the buried drop cable. He now has two hooks instead of hands.

This happened close to twenty years ago. You have no idea the challenges he faces every day. Think about that...

CW

quote:

Originally posted by rtquig:
I hope the construction company called in a mark out. It can cost them hundreds of thousands of dollars. I have seen mark outs off by quite a distance when I was in the utility business. One of the costliest accidents are one that are of fiber optics.

Absolutely. When I'm not in a cable vault splicing fiber, I'm locating fiber on the streets. And not FIOS residental fiber, this is fiber for big business and mostly government. If a damage occurs everybody shows up. Depending on what agency the fiber is for, that means DHS, WHCA, etc. God help the contractor whose forman on site is pushed for time and tells his backhoe operator to go ahead and start digging without checking for marks. Marks have to be accurate, but sometimes it can be a crapshoot because of interference from electrical transmission lines,and all the other shit underground.

Someone once asked me about digging for a flowerbed in his frontyard next to his porch. He didn't think it was a big deal. He was digging down no more then 6 to 8 inches. I told him to call Miss Utility, it's free,and you want to be sure. Sure enough the locator found a Comcast buried cable line right where he was going to dig at about 8 inches underground.

Here's the scene. Not your typical "call before you dig" TV cable buried 2 feet deep in somebody's yard...

Early in my career as an architect, I had an excavator hit a main fiber optic line on a construction site. He walked away, left all of his equipment on the job site and left a note on his truck,

"Go ahead and take it, you'll get it all eventually."

This happened to us. When I got to the site of the construction project he had pulled 20-30 ft of trunk line up before it finally broke. Really not sure what he was thinking. But he just left. The backhoe was still running.
AT&T showed up and dang if they didn't wake up folk and get things moving to splice in an emergency line. I thought I had seen everything but watching them do that splice was really cool.
Our school district (and region) was back up in just six hours.
We lost power here a few years ago for more than a week. People were killed trying to steal a generator.
I read somewhere there is only ever 3 days of food in america. The region was basically stripped clean of food in a day.

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
One of my co-workers makes a good living by suing companies who dig up ATT's cables. The City of Houston does it pretty frequently.

There is a statute that require them to call the hotline before they dig, but they often screw it up - don't call, don't dig in the place they ask about, all kinds of errors.

That is because Texas grants the most exemptions to One Call participation in the US.

Wow, this brings back some old memories!

Back in the mid 1970s, forty years ago, a co-worker and I did the initial design and implementation of JULIE, Joint Utility Locating Information for Excavators for a consortium of Illinois utility companies.

The software that we designed ran on DEC PDP-11 mini-computers.

There was a poster that was highly prized. It was a photo of the really hot girlfriend of somebody who was involved in the project. She was naked in the photo, and holding a sign in front of her that barely made the photo acceptable for public use. The sign that she held said "Call JULIE Before You Dig" and had JULIE's toll-free phone number.

quote:

Originally posted by C L Wilkins:
I have a friend that didn't call. It was sprinkling and it was wet when he was digging in his backyard and hit the buried drop cable. He now has two hooks instead of hands.

This happened close to twenty years ago. You have no idea the challenges he faces every day. Think about that...

CW

Geez. There's a lesson right there.

Electricity down, evacuate the area. How did we servive to this point in our evolution?

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:

quote:

Originally posted by jhe888:
One of my co-workers makes a good living by suing companies who dig up ATT's cables. The City of Houston does it pretty frequently.

There is a statute that require them to call the hotline before they dig, but they often screw it up - don't call, don't dig in the place they ask about, all kinds of errors.

That is because Texas grants the most exemptions to One Call participation in the US.

Some of those exemptions are common-sense. A farmer shouldn't have to wonder..worry about the depth of utilities in their fields.

There are independent O&G operators in the area I work that are not members of Texas 811 affiliates. I seldom-if ever-see a sign. And that sign might have been from a company sold no telling how many times. I've found gathering lines by bumping them. No idea whom they belong to, or if active or inactive.

quote:

Originally posted by Opus Dei:
Some of those exemptions are common-sense.

and the rest of the exemptions are the reason Texas has the highest 3rd party damage rate to utilities in the country.

quote:

Originally posted by Opus Dei:
A farmer shouldn't have to wonder..worry about the depth of utilities in their fields.

Agreed if he/she is tilling/discing/planting, but if they're using a back hoe, running a ditch witch, etc. then they should be calling one call just like everyone else.

quote:

Originally posted by tatortodd:
Agreed if he/she is tilling/discing/planting, but if they're using a back hoe, running a ditch witch, etc. then they should be calling one call just like everyone else.

I guess it depends on where the farmer is and what is around. We have an (unused) oil line running through the ranch that is very well understood. If I am getting within a hundred feet I call the oil company employee responsible for the line and chat with him. If he has any questions at all, he comes out, marks, and observes. All the other utilities on the ranch are my own. Of course, we are tucked back in a canyon with nothing else around and I have called 811 enough times to know nobody else has anything on the property.