100th Post!

Well, I didn't realize that this would be post #100 but I'm too tired to come up with a good title. After seven days and four hours, we finally got our power back around noon today - and running water again. Some snap judgments . . .

As you all well know, I generally despise unions, however in all good conscience I must praise the efforts of the National Grid and out of state and country workers (we had Quebec power crews do my road, eh) who got everyone up and running. (Well, almost; as of the time of this post several dozen homes are still down.)

There were some outlier examples of what most would consider less than desired behavior. The worst one of which I heard was in western Coventry where a crew from Ohio - that by their own accord was just minutes away from bringing a home with an infant and two toddlers back on line - told a tearful single mother as they were driving away that they had hit the eighteen hour union mandated shift cutoff.

I understand the need for the rule from a safety standpoint, and hell, these poor guys have been working mandatory eighteen hour shifts, with just six hours off before they go back out. Still, in this case, perhaps a little compassion was in order. In any event, as I said, the linemen were not a problem.

What was a very apparent problem was the inability of National Grid to cope with the results of a relatively minor (in southeastern New England) tropical storm. The damage from a line/pole problem was significant, but the whole recovery process seemed to be a total custerfluck. Had this been a winter storm that caused this damage, there would have been hundreds of thousands of people left without heat for days, and tens of thousands for a week. In fact it likely would have been longer as cold, snow and ice would have significantly slowed the repair work.

What really pissed me off is that as time progressed and the number of problem areas was reduced, the speed of repair times should have DECREASED, not INCREASED! We were supposed to be up by 10:00 LAST night. The crews from Quebec Power Co. were working on my road until about 7:00 and then left. With so few remaining outages, why was not a second crew ready to take over? Total piss-poor management in my opinion.

In the real world, in a competitive market place, National Grid would pay the price by losing customers to competition, and incompetent managers would pay the price with their jobs. Instead, in the government-regulated monopoly world, customers get screwed twice; first by losing power for so long, and second by paying the price increases that will be coming to cover the cost of all of this - anyone at National Grid ever thing about buying insurance to cover these things in addition to the mandated rainy day fund?

Another source of ire for folks out here is our esteemed governor, Lincoln Chafee. Route 6 between routes 94 and 102 was shut down for over four days, due to a stretch where eight consecutive poles were down (along with their lines). Our understanding is that in these kind of emergency situations, the governor determines where work begins, and in this case, work on the second largest trucking route (after I-95) that feeds the state was delayed by two full days. I'm not saying that the power lines should been repaired there immediately, but the road itself should have been opened to traffic.

Additionally, when the towns of Foster and Scituate asked for a couple of the National Guardsmen that Governor Photo-Op so proudly announced that he had mobilized to relieve the police officers stationed at each end of the Route 6 closure, we were told that the resources "were not available." This forced the towns to pick up the $80/hour tab (one for each side of the closure) for 24/7 coverage for four days. I guess the governor doesn't care much for the districts that overwhelmingly voted against him.

Ultimately, the biggest lesson learned from all of this was one that I already had learned yet failed to remember; when you don't rely on anyone else, you can't be disappointed. I relied on others, and was disappointed. That will not happen again. Generator City and Wood Stove Central - here I come.


Bob, RI

Ceterum , exsisto quietis Iggy!