Major Power Outage in Madison County (Huntsville: new house, buy, tornado)

[aerohead80]

As many know, the power went offline around 1000 on Sunday morning (30 December). It remained off for approximately an hour. This is the second major power outage in my area in approximately 30 days.

During this outage, as it did the last time, both my wife's and my cell phones had no service in our area and also our trusty chorded, landline phone did not work. This is absolutely unacceptable, as there was no way to contact emergency officials during this time.

There needs to be a major look at the capabilities of Huntsville Utilities, Knology, AT&T, etc for redundancy and our City Officials need to be pushing to ensure this does not continue.

Let's all contact and encourage others to contact our Elected Officials to take this as a serious matter.

[SarahBellum]

We lost power, too, but our Verizon service was uninterrupted.

[aerohead80]

Originally Posted by SarahBellum

We lost power, too, but our Verizon service was uninterrupted.

Some of the towers were not working and others were once you drove a few miles away. Regardless, there were many people with no service and those towers that were effected need redundancy of some kind.

[BMW Dave]

It was odd, I had friends from all over Madison txting me asking if my power was on, I don't know I was txted, but anyway...I had no power at the Zierdt Rd house, but oddly I had power at my new house on Slaughter, despite HSV utilities saying the outage was spread deep into research park. I am hoping that I am immune from Madison power outages more in the future!

But agreed on the redundancy.

[ToneyTiger]

Originally Posted by aerohead80

During this outage, as it did the last time, both my wife's and my cell phones had no service in our area and also our trusty chorded, landline phone did not work. This is absolutely unacceptable, as there was no way to contact emergency officials during this time.

There needs to be a major look at the capabilities of Huntsville Utilities, Knology, AT&T, etc for redundancy and our City Officials need to be pushing to ensure this does not continue.

Let's all contact and encourage others to contact our Elected Officials to take this as a serious matter.

Just a FYI, most cell towers do have a generator on them to keep them up during brief outages. Unfortunately, many tower maintenance companies(SBA, American Tower, etc) do not visit towers often enough to make sure the generators have enough gas(or are in good operating condition). This is likely what happened to you.

And if your phone is a VOIP phone through your cable company, IT WILL NOT WORK DURING A POWER OUTAGE. I know I had to sign a paper for Mediacom when we got their VOIP phone acknowledging that we understood the phone would be unusable during a power outage. VOIP phones do not get their power from the cable coming into your house, they get power from the cable modem tied into your pre-wired outlets. This means that as soon as your house loses power, your phone is useless. With the demise of Ma Bell and traditional landlines, this has become more of an issue unfortunately. Hopefully in the future there will be an answer to persistent cell towers during emergencies.....

[SarahBellum]

I totally agree there needs to be redundancy. Just thought I'd mention that Verizon seemed to be okay, at least this time.

[Wandering_Missourian]

Power never went out in the older parts of Madison east of Hughes Rd. Verizon was fine too. If you are really worried about being connected to emergency services.... get a 2 meter handheld and learn how to use it (we need more amateur radio operators anyways). Everything else is going to go down in an emergency.

As for infrastructure.... if you live in NW Madison County that has delusionally boomed for the last few decades (let's move FAR away from work and amenities, buy a house on a TINY plot in the single most tornado-prone location on Planet Earth, subject ourselves to horrible commutes on farm roads choked full of other fools like ourselves, and pay a ton of money for it!)..... congrats, your utility infrastructure is pure garbage. Expect power outages at about 5X as often as you would see in the older parts of the city of Madison or Huntsville. Most Americans are amazed we even have electricity in Alabama, so at least we got that going for us most of the time.

[Yoo Shin]

I kicked up my generator, pulled out the space heaters, got out my hand and multiband radios. I'm not a dooms dayer, but we could all be better prepared for power or system outages and not rely on the Govt or municiples to help or protect us.

A few steps we can all take to help ourselves and neighbors in case of crisis and should have at a min the following:

• A generator
• matches, and lighters
• Batteries
• Back up gas and propane
• Water
• Non perishable foods
• Chain saw, tarps, blankets and a first aid kit
• Firearms and self defense education

Again I'm not a crazy dooms day prepper, as I typically only have 10 gallons of gas, 5 gallons water, and only about a weeks worth of food, but I do have plenty of the other that I've listed. If you live in Alabama, you should be aware that something as unexpected as a tornado can put the city into the dark ages for a few days.

[BMW Dave]

Originally Posted by Wandering_Missourian

As for infrastructure.... if you live in NW Madison County that has delusionally boomed for the last few decades (let's move FAR away from work and amenities, buy a house on a TINY plot in the single most tornado-prone location on Planet Earth, subject ourselves to horrible commutes on farm roads choked full of other fools like ourselves, and pay a ton of money for it!)..... congrats, your utility infrastructure is pure garbage. Expect power outages at about 5X as often as you would see in the older parts of the city of Madison or Huntsville. Most Americans are amazed we even have electricity in Alabama, so at least we got that going for us most of the time.

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!



This is the most beautiful post I have read in some time.

[HB2HSV]

Originally Posted by Yoo Shin

I'm not a dooms dayer, but we could all be better prepared for power or system outages and not rely on the Govt or municiples to help or protect us.

A few steps we can all take to help ourselves and neighbors in case of crisis and should have at a min the following:

• A generator
• matches, and lighters
• Batteries
• Back up gas and propane
• Water
• Non perishable foods
• Chain saw, tarps, blankets and a first aid kit
• Firearms and self defense education

Again I'm not a crazy dooms day prepper, as I typically only have 10 gallons of gas, 5 gallons water, and only about a weeks worth of food, but I do have plenty of the other that I've listed. If you live in Alabama, you should be aware that something as unexpected as a tornado can put the city into the dark ages for a few days.

^^^^ THIS

We are lucky that this time our house was not affected by the power outage. But being prepared around here is always prudent.