Hurricane warning!!

[Rusty]

I wanted to make this a separate post instead of putting in Texican's because I feel it's very important.

Many people have found out in the last few years that without that thin little copper wire bringing electrons into your house you are no different from people in any third world country you care to name.

When the power does go off there is often a warning to turn off the main breaker into your house until power is restored. You ask, well how will I know if the power is back on? Well because some of your neighbors will not follow the instructions either, that's how. BUT, I would warn you to protect yourself. Usually when the power comes back on after an outage there is a large uncontrolled surge. This surge can do a lot of damage to anything that is plugged into a live outlet when the power comes back on. This did happen to my next door neighbor when hurricane Charlie came through here several years ago. The large surge damaged their stereo... 24 hours later the house burned to the ground. The stereo was the source of ignition. The fire marshal did an inspection and even found where the wires going into the back melted and "splashed" molten copper onto the cabinet it was sitting in. It took 24 hours for the unit to get hot enough to start the fire but that's what happened.

Happy Trails and God Bless,
Rusty <><

[Andrew]

Some good advice. Some people don't understand why saftey rules are put in place.

[Ysabel Kid]

Excellent advice - and a darn scary thought!

[Mike D.]

I worked directly with high voltage electricity for over 3 decades and that is what we often told folks to do. You do not have to open the main breaker, though. Just turn off all major appliancers and leave a couple of lights "on" so that you will know when the power has returned. Surges are mostly an unexplained thing, but they occasionally do happen. With today's relays and line protection, this phenomonon occurs less frequently. What does happen most often is simple human error. Incorrect voltage transformers sometimes find their way to a pole near you, especially during "b*lls to the wall" after storm reconstruction. Been there and done that too many times to mention.

Many safeguards are in place to protect both customers and the linemen out there doing their jobs. The most dangerous thing is fools that place generators in the homes and don't pull the meter. That is why we remove, or short out the "hot legs" from all overhead transformers. It may take longer to get the work done, but the loss of one man's life is too high a price to pay for fast return of service.