I don't understand this anger (from either of you)... It was a huge freaking storm. The workers are out restoring power as fast as they can... as stated in the article.
"resonance induction technology" -- are you serious? Do you know how much wasted power there is involved in this? Do you know how that will impact so many households between towers? Your speakers would blow out of their cases and you'd probably develop cancers from all the radiation. Do you realize how big these coils would have to be? It's not a simple matter of pop-up towers or expense.... I don't even... ugh.
The only thing I can think of that would be even slightly "anger" inducing is that most of the power lines are not buried. Some of them cannot be, but a greater majority can with today's technology levels.
It isn't the response, it's the planning or inadequacy thereof from the planners.
Yes, it was a big storm, a hurricane, which we can foresee. We know we get them regularly along the Atlantic/Gulf and we know sometimes they are big storms, but we don't plan adequately.
The gripe isn't about the crews working or performance; it's that someone didn't hire enough crewmen. We need more than the "let's cut costs" skeleton crews. Yes this costs money; yes they should pay it, however it needs to be paid. Hire, more, utility workers, so we can get things up and running quicker. Also trim more tree branches that are in danger of falling on power lines.
The issue is maintenance, no one wants to properly fund and pay for it. People have taken the eight letters in "overhead" and condensed them into a four letter curse word no one wants to deal with. We then have the audacity to wonder why nothing gets done/nothing works....
The repair crews are understaffed. The maintenance is underfunded and underdone as a result.
The solution is to hire and retain more skilled utility workers and do more tree trimming of branches over power lines.
No one does this, because no one wants to pay for it....
The problem isn't always trees above the lines. Debris can fly from anywhere and hit power lines. Power poles themselves can be blown or knocked over. Lines past stress points, someone's clothesline gets wrapped around the power....
Hiring 150% of your normal staff isn't going to miraculously ensure that nobody loses power, nor is it going to be cost effective (or smart). You'd have people sitting around twiddling their thumbs doing nothing (or be laid off) most of the year. When people have nothing to do they get complacent and slow. Hiring on a bunch of people like that would likely make things worse because they'd likely not be as experienced as a well worked crew who routinely fixes these issues and they'd likely make mistakes. (If you do the same work daily, you're less likely to screw up, miss a step, cut corners as if you did the work once a month.)
The "Normal" is too low.... Cost? You know how much money is lost due to power outages every year? It's easily in the hundreds of millions of dollars. Forget the wider economic losses, think about all those grocery stores that routinely throw out $50,000 + in spoiled meat and dairy.
http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2011/07/13/long-power-outages-cost-restaurants-thousands/And that's just the economic costs from spoiled food. Pay no attention to the moral implications of letting that much food rot when we could prevent it in a world rife with malnutrition and outright starvation....
Three words: "Skilled Emergency Labor." You have any idea how difficult it is to be a fully certified lineman and what you have to know/the dangers of not knowing it? We need to pay to keep skilled emergency workers on staff to retain their skills for when they are needed. Same thing with firemen, EMS. You can't purchase these services piecemeal from anyone on the street, because it takes years to master these skills. Moreover, the risk is ennormous. How much would you charge to deal with a burning building or countless downed power lines that could kill you?
Also, I believe that line workers are among the best paid "blue collar" jobs that you can get:
http://www.bls.gov/oco/ocos195.htm
That's because you don't get it. "Most line installers need several years of on-the-job training." Then of course there's the high on the job mortality (death) rate, and the fact that all those electrical fields you're pointing out give you cancer if you're a lineman too, especially so because you're around them all the time, up close and personal....
http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/156/10/913.full . Historically it was one of the single worst jobs with 1 out of every 2 linemen dying due to work related causes
http://ibew765.org/. Electrocutions were the fifth highest type of work related cause of death in the most recent reports.
http://www.cdc.gov/niosh/docs/98-131/ This is the problem with America, people don't know half of what they think they do, look at a website without knowing anything and say "I could do that, they have it pretty good!' Then the next logical step is saying they have it "too good." Then we take stuff away from others who deserve it because we haven't figured out it isn't easy, they are good at their jobs and make it look easy. "It's harder than it looks."
If you want to save costs, look elsewhere, like the bloated military budget, or corporate tax subsidies to companies that move labor overseas. <--- Tax into oblivion, please. I'm sick of subsidizing the building of Chinese factories. It seems Republicans have become soft on communism, or at least they indirectly fund it.
Nobody said anything about "ensur[ing] that nobody loses power," quite the opposite, I expect people to loose power. The issue is with restoring it.
http://www.dcnonl.com/article/id32356"America’s roads, public transit and aviation have gotten worse in the past four years. Water and sewage systems are dreadful. The basic physical backbone of American society is barely above failing, a report by top engineers says. "
This country needs to pony up the cash via taxes to keep itself from crumbling and anyone who doesn't want to but has the ability to needs to be forced to via taxation under penalty of federal prison time for tax evasion. Libertarians should forcibly have their water, electric, and gas shut off so they can see exactly how much they need society. Rabid followers of Ayn Rand, should be dumped off in the Rockies to form their own community called "Galt's Glutch." The rest of us don't need them, they are free to leave and I wish they would.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_locations_in_Atlas_Shrugged#Galt.27s_Gulch