My OperaThat Power Outage
Thursday, June 19, 2008 3:32:41 PM
Last Friday there was a power outage. Everyone in this neighborhood knows that.
It seems as if we now have an outage the Tenth and L substation about every two years. It didn't used to be that way. Before all this gentrification stuff, I don't recall many outages at all.
Given the map in the WaPo, it would seem as if the all of the traffic lights in the territory would be out. Friday morning, the editor stood at the corner of Ninth and M and saw those lights out, The Convention Center and Old Dominion's neon out, and all lights south out. But the lights at the corner of Ninth and N were running fine.
Which reminded the editor of an incident many years ago, when Suzanne (without whom there would be no Blagden Alley and Naylor Court Historical District) and Paul Abersold, who lived on N Street where the Zirkles now live, were giving a Thanksgiving dinner for several in the neighborhood. There had aben an outage earlier in the day but everything had been on for a while. The turkey was in the oven. Everything on the stove was cooked. The turkey wasn't. Turns out that the (electric) oven was on a separate main circuit from everything else in the house. And that circuit was still down.
Several years ago there was an outage on the 900 block of M Street and the 1100 block of Tenth. Several of the houses were out and many weren't. Not contiguous, just random. Turns out there are several circuits from the substation on these blocks, hooked up in no organized fashion.
It seems as if we now have an outage the Tenth and L substation about every two years. It didn't used to be that way. Before all this gentrification stuff, I don't recall many outages at all.
Given the map in the WaPo, it would seem as if the all of the traffic lights in the territory would be out. Friday morning, the editor stood at the corner of Ninth and M and saw those lights out, The Convention Center and Old Dominion's neon out, and all lights south out. But the lights at the corner of Ninth and N were running fine.
Which reminded the editor of an incident many years ago, when Suzanne (without whom there would be no Blagden Alley and Naylor Court Historical District) and Paul Abersold, who lived on N Street where the Zirkles now live, were giving a Thanksgiving dinner for several in the neighborhood. There had aben an outage earlier in the day but everything had been on for a while. The turkey was in the oven. Everything on the stove was cooked. The turkey wasn't. Turns out that the (electric) oven was on a separate main circuit from everything else in the house. And that circuit was still down.
Several years ago there was an outage on the 900 block of M Street and the 1100 block of Tenth. Several of the houses were out and many weren't. Not contiguous, just random. Turns out there are several circuits from the substation on these blocks, hooked up in no organized fashion.
