Better Find a "Throw Down Buzzard"

I was awakened at 0645 this morning by a loud boom followed immediately with a total loss of electricity.
Entergy, the local power company,  was on the scene within 45 minutes and had the power back.  As I watched the Electrical Journeyman replace the blown breaker, I noticed he knocked something off the transformer.  Upon further review it was the critter in the photo that caused the short and he paid dearly for his unfortunate wandering. 

Notice the black tail that was burned

The incident brought back memories of my DuPont days when you conducted "Root Cause Failure Analysis"  to learn of causes and prevent future failures.  We have investigated power outages of many causes.  Snakes have been culprits before, but usually in substations where electrical leads are crossed on floor surfaces, not fifty feet in the air.  One similar incident occurred when a mother raccoon gave birth to three babies on the top of a substation.  One of the cute, cuddly critters fell into the "Hot" part of the apparatus and shut down half of the entire plant.  The two surviving siblings were rescued and later released into the wild. 

Anytime an electrical outage occurred, you immediately begin looking for some sort of cause.  Lightning was often the reason, but not always.  Some causes were difficult to identify such as failing lightning arrestors that seem to fail only on coastal locations after twenty years of service or dirty insulators that were a result of extended droughts and not getting rinsed with normal rainfall. 

Birds were a common suspect.  You would find a charred spot on a pole or cross arm and a dead bird nearby.  This was always a preferred "root cause" as it was considered more of an "Act of God" and did not require elaborate investigations and expensive fixes to prevent recurrence. Sometimes it was necessary to ask for help from the experts.  One such expert was a company consultant, Ed Wharton.

Ed was a very intelligent Electrical Engineer that was eager to help and always provided practical analysis and solutions.

It was on one such incident that my Power Distribution supervisor, Paul Pool, had called Ed to help with an investigation of an outage that caused significant production loss.  After numerous time in the field, studying systems, prints and computer reviews, they were not coming up with any possible causes.  With tongue in cheek,  Ed turned to Paul and said,  "You need to get a 'throw down buzzard'"! 

Considering the state of current affairs where too many people don't take responsibility for their actions, it is time for our current leader to set the example. put away his "Throw down buzzard" and take responsibility for his actions and quit blaming others.

Storm in the Gulf

Just saw on the news that there is a Tropical Depression expected to be a named storm in the Gulf. Projected path is upper Texas Gulf Coast. Could we have another hurricane on the Bayou? California has its fires and mud slides. The Midwest endures tornados, the Mississsippi Valley has to worry about floods and the Northeast has blizzards. We have hurricanes!

My first recollection of a hurricane was Audrey. I can remember watching the small trees through the front window as they were almost horizontal. Audrey's storm surge killed over 500 people on the SW Louisiana coast. I remember Carla as most of the coastal area was evacuated and our high school was set up as an evacuee shelter and many of us students worked there. Alicia hit west of Houston and we saw a lot of rain and the Bolivar Peninsula received damage. Numerous other "named" storms effected the area; Beulah, Bonnie, Carmen, Camille, Francis, Allison, etc..

The action really heated up in 2005 and hasn't shown much mercy since. Everyone has been inundated with Katrina news. Believe it or not Katrina impacted Texas. People left New Orleans and won't go back. The local arena was set up as a shelter and we volunteered to wmakiork. It was interesting to see the attitudes change as the waves of people moved out and new ones moved in. The first ones were those that left before the storm hit and appreciated any help they could get and moved on to get on with their lives. The latter group was more interested in getting their $50 Walmart card than finding employment or transportation back. Many of them are still here.

One month later folks along the Bayou were evacuating prior to Hurricane Rita making landfall. We left two days before Rita center punched us. (That trip is subject for another blog)

Returned home to find 70 trees down. Not a single one on the house or barn, but the fences were destroyed and the clean up was overwhelming. About one third of the houses along the Bayou had one or more trees on the roof. Some actually in the living room, den, kitchen, etc.

Although Hurricane Rita was a more powerful storm than Katrina, it was not recognized as such. I believe that their two main differences in these storms that were a month apart.

One, the levy broke and gave all the liberal news media and politicians a reason to blame the storm on George W. Bush. Two, Texans pulled up their boot straps and got to work to get their lives, homes, etc. back in order. On the other hand, the folks in New Orleans tried to blame someone for their misfortune and expected some one else to help them out. The leadership from their mayor exemplified the overall attitude permeating all of those still left in NO.