Puerto Rico: Lack of electricity threatens telephone and internet services
On October 18, 2017, the Puerto Rican Telecommunications Alliance warned the lack of utility power in the main telecommunications centers (Metro office park, Caparra and San Patricio) may not be sustainable soon. Although the telecommunication facilities are using generators, they are not intended for long-term, continuous use. The generators will need maintenance and likely experience unscheduled failures the longer they're used. While APT is avoiding identifying specific facilities or operators, this is the general area where several submarine cable operators and telecommunication providers interconnect. https://www.elnuevodia.com/negocios/empresas/nota/faltadeelectricidadponeenp...
On 2017-10-19 03:00, Sean Donelan wrote:
not intended for long-term, continuous use. The generators will need maintenance and likely experience unscheduled failures the longer they're used.
Permanent duty diesel generators exist. Many northern communities in Canada run on them as their 7/24 power source. It *shouldn't* have taken long after Maria for locals to know how much damage there had been to electrical grid and that if it's gonna take months to fix, you're gonna need constant duty generators. What isn't clear to me is whether everything still depends on FEMA/army help, or whether business is able to function autonomously and get their own generators without the army confiscating them to be delieved to a hospital instead. And if you're a telco who is deprived of revenues because almost all your customers are without power, do you spend your own money and effort to try to get a permanent duty diesel generator to maintain your central office, or do you wait for government to install one for you ? It is one thing to be benevolent and wanting to have your network backbone up, but financial realities of the cost of running a business without revenues will eventually hit you when the disaster lasts for months instead of days.
It does make you wonder about the electrical infrastructure of the island, and how much work is being done to repair it. With the Texas and Florida hurricanes you saw fleets of electrical service vehicles (boom trucks and the like) from other power companies with joint agreements waiting to deploy into the disaster area as soon as it was safe to do so. With PR.... well, it's not like you can drive to the island, much less (apparently) around on it. Getting those vehicles and people in, assuming joint agreements with off island power companies existed in the first place, would be a case of scheduling and determining priorities. And for those crying that the US Federal Gov't ought to do it - where do you think they're going to find the people? It's not like they have armies of infrastructure level electricians just sitting around playing cards until needed for an emergency - these are the sort of people who, by and large, are already working at jobs - where they are needed as well. When it comes to infrastructure it seems like PR has been knocked back to the "tools to make tools" stage - they need to build the infrastructure to rebuild their infrastructure, which was apparently in no great shape to begin with. On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 12:06 PM, Jean-Francois Mezei < jfmezei_nanog@vaxination.ca> wrote:
On 2017-10-19 03:00, Sean Donelan wrote:
not intended for long-term, continuous use. The generators will need maintenance and likely experience unscheduled failures the longer they're used.
Permanent duty diesel generators exist. Many northern communities in Canada run on them as their 7/24 power source.
It *shouldn't* have taken long after Maria for locals to know how much damage there had been to electrical grid and that if it's gonna take months to fix, you're gonna need constant duty generators.
What isn't clear to me is whether everything still depends on FEMA/army help, or whether business is able to function autonomously and get their own generators without the army confiscating them to be delieved to a hospital instead.
And if you're a telco who is deprived of revenues because almost all your customers are without power, do you spend your own money and effort to try to get a permanent duty diesel generator to maintain your central office, or do you wait for government to install one for you ?
It is one thing to be benevolent and wanting to have your network backbone up, but financial realities of the cost of running a business without revenues will eventually hit you when the disaster lasts for months instead of days.
-- Jeff Shultz Central Office Technician SCTC (503) 769-2125 Go Big Ask for Gig -- Like us on Social Media for News, Promotions, and other information!! <http://www.facebook.com/sctcweb> <http://www.instagram.com/sctc502> <https://www.yelp.com/biz/sctc-stayton-3> **** This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. ****
Well, the problem as I understand it is that the infrastructure was not all that great to begin with. Much of it was damaged in the first storm and when this second one came through, what remained basically disappeared. That's why they say that the only thing you can do is start from the middle and slowly extend the tentacles outward. You're almost building the territory from scratch. Assuming that the reports of theft, misapproproation, and other nefarious occurences are correct, that certainly does not help matters. Still, this situation ought to make everyone sit up and think about their own DR capability. On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 03:11:37PM -0700, Jeff Shultz wrote:
It does make you wonder about the electrical infrastructure of the island, and how much work is being done to repair it. With the Texas and Florida hurricanes you saw fleets of electrical service vehicles (boom trucks and the like) from other power companies with joint agreements waiting to deploy into the disaster area as soon as it was safe to do so.
With PR.... well, it's not like you can drive to the island, much less (apparently) around on it. Getting those vehicles and people in, assuming joint agreements with off island power companies existed in the first place, would be a case of scheduling and determining priorities.
And for those crying that the US Federal Gov't ought to do it - where do you think they're going to find the people? It's not like they have armies of infrastructure level electricians just sitting around playing cards until needed for an emergency - these are the sort of people who, by and large, are already working at jobs - where they are needed as well.
When it comes to infrastructure it seems like PR has been knocked back to the "tools to make tools" stage - they need to build the infrastructure to rebuild their infrastructure, which was apparently in no great shape to begin with.
On Thu, Oct 19, 2017 at 12:06 PM, Jean-Francois Mezei < jfmezei_nanog@vaxination.ca> wrote:
On 2017-10-19 03:00, Sean Donelan wrote:
not intended for long-term, continuous use. The generators will need maintenance and likely experience unscheduled failures the longer they're used.
Permanent duty diesel generators exist. Many northern communities in Canada run on them as their 7/24 power source.
It *shouldn't* have taken long after Maria for locals to know how much damage there had been to electrical grid and that if it's gonna take months to fix, you're gonna need constant duty generators.
What isn't clear to me is whether everything still depends on FEMA/army help, or whether business is able to function autonomously and get their own generators without the army confiscating them to be delieved to a hospital instead.
And if you're a telco who is deprived of revenues because almost all your customers are without power, do you spend your own money and effort to try to get a permanent duty diesel generator to maintain your central office, or do you wait for government to install one for you ?
It is one thing to be benevolent and wanting to have your network backbone up, but financial realities of the cost of running a business without revenues will eventually hit you when the disaster lasts for months instead of days.
-- Jeff Shultz Central Office Technician SCTC (503) 769-2125 Go Big Ask for Gig
-- Like us on Social Media for News, Promotions, and other information!!
<http://www.facebook.com/sctcweb> <http://www.instagram.com/sctc502> <https://www.yelp.com/biz/sctc-stayton-3>
**** This message contains confidential information and is intended only for the individual named. If you are not the named addressee you should not disseminate, distribute or copy this e-mail. Please notify the sender immediately by e-mail if you have received this e-mail by mistake and delete this e-mail from your system. E-mail transmission cannot be guaranteed to be secure or error-free as information could be intercepted, corrupted, lost, destroyed, arrive late or incomplete, or contain viruses. The sender therefore does not accept liability for any errors or omissions in the contents of this message, which arise as a result of e-mail transmission. ****
--- Wayne Bouchard web@typo.org Network Dude http://www.typo.org/~web/
On 2017-10-19 18:18, Wayne Bouchard wrote:
Well, the problem as I understand it is that the infrastructure was not all that great to begin with. Much of it was damaged in the first storm and when this second one came through, what remained basically disappeared.
Being hit with a Cat 5 hurricane/cyclone in a caribeean island that hasn't been a direct hit from severe storms in decades will cause extensive damage no matter what state its infrastructure was in before. Vegetation that does not regular storms to "prune" it will grow to a point where it will cause major damage when a big storm hits. And a caribbean island who has never been "rich" will not have had, as a priority, increasing building codes to widthstand hurricanes. Building codes get updated after a big devastating hurricane, whether it is for Darwin in 1974 (Tracy) or ones like Andrew in Florida. It's easy for a state the size of Texas to send all of its electrical utility trucks to the Houson area to repair damage. But they too would be stretched thin if all of Texas had been leveled. If buildings were not built to widthstand a 5 or a 4, then the building itself becomes destructor of infrastructure as its materials become high speed projectiles throuwn at other buildings and especially teleohone/electrical lines. I went through a category 4 (Olivia, Australia 1996). While the town and building I was in (Karatha) were built to new standards and had little damage, I witnessed the power of it, and I can totally understand Puerto Rico being destroyed. I know a politician with tendancy to skew facts points to Puerto Rico having had terrible infrastructure. But consider that Darwin, a "rich" town" was wiped out in 1974 by Tracy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B89wBGydSvs Tracy was a 4. Maria was a 5. (note the alert sound at start of video still sends shivers down my spine because it was the same as I heard before Olivia hit). The population was evacuated by 747s because there was nothing there to support it. The road link to is (Stuart Highway) is so long that Darwin is tantamount to an island. (especially since Stuart wasn't fully paved back then). Also note: in Florida, the utilities positioned all their equipment in safe places so it could survive storm and be deployed when needed. But what happens when there is no safe place, or the safe places become isolated because roads become impassable? It is one thing when a state has some areas with high level of destruction. But when the whole state is destroyed, it is a truly different situation because its economy is also destroyed. Florida Power still has plenty of revenues from undamaged areas to pay for the repairs in damaged areas. The Utility in Puerto Rico doesn't. (and if it was finacially weak before, it makes things worse). When you see other states' utilities coming to help in a highly damaged area, don't think for a minute they do this for free. The local utility stll gets a bill at the end of the day for the work done. If the Puerto Rico company has no cash to pay, don't exopect other utilities to send crews.
participants (4)
-
Jean-Francois Mezei -
Jeff Shultz -
Sean Donelan -
Wayne Bouchard