Wednesday, July 16, 2008

Owl causes power outage

Did you wake up this morning and notice that your clocks were flashing 12:00—12:00—12:00?


According to the Seattle Times, an owl flew into some power lines around 2 a.m., causing power outage in Shoreline and Lake Forest Park neigborhoods.

Sadly, the owl was killed instantly.

It's amazing how fragile our power grid seems sometimes. The windstorms we saw this winter caused enough trouble; is it time to switch to underground cables? What do you think; would it be worth the investment?



Photo by Steve Deger, licensed under a Creative Commons attribution license.

4 comments:

  1. I'm glad I use a battery powered alarm clock. It's finally paid off. I feel bad for the owl, though. At least it (apparently) didn't suffer. Put the power lines underground? I like the idea, and the way it looks. But I don't know that it would be worth the expense. Then again, maybe it would. I'd be interested in what others think.

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  2. The village where my mom lives buried all its power cables, and it looks great (or rather it doesn't look ugly -- you don't notice that they're not there). I don't think it would be worth the expense, though. I have a kid in a Shoreline school, so of course I'd rather see money going there, and I'm sure everyone else has their own pet projects they wish had more funding.

    I wonder if there's a way to make all new lines buried? As I understand it, if you do a remodel above a certain cost you need to build a sidewalk outside your house. Maybe you should have to chip in to a "bury the utility lines" fund, too.

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  3. I've been in areas where the lines are all underground, and it makes a big difference! You don't quite notice at first, but once you do, it's very appealing. I do wish they'd do it here.

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  4. Thanks for the explanation! I woke up because my fan switched off. I wondered what happened!

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