[TowerTalk] Ice storm in eastern Canada/NE USA

[Steve Zettel]

Here I was a little put out that -20F and snow had temporarily halted my
tower work. This from Infobeat. Millions of folks in eastern Canada are
affected at the basic survival level, not to mention what this has probably
done to the towers and antenna of our VE and NE USA friends:

>*** Thousands in northeast await repairs
>
>An army of repair crews from as far away as Hawaii battled Monday to
>repair an electric system in northern New England and New York state
>left in tatters by last week's ice storm. Authorities reported
>progress restoring the downed electric lines and clearing roads, but
>thousands of people in Maine and New York remained without power and
>faced another long night of sub-freezing temperatures. The storm,
>which also hammered Quebec and eastern Ontario with freezing rain,
>ended early Saturday, but trees remained coated with ice and
>overnight temperatures dipped to well below freezing. Six deaths in
>the U.S. have been blamed on the storm. See
>http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=6913461-151
>

>*** Eastern Canada power blackout crisis deepens
>
>Montreal was due to remain shut for a fourth straight day Monday as
>the crisis deepened over a devastating week-long blackout affecting
>three million people in eastern Canada. In an unprecedented request,
>the provincial government-owned electrical utility Hydro-Quebec asked
>that schools, businesses, institutions and industry not open Monday
>in a large part of downtown Montreal and urban points west. That
>meant it would not be business as usual Monday in Canada's
>second-largest city for hundreds of thousands of workers, students
>and government employees. See
>http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=6898284-ef0

A quote from the body of the text goes on to say:
>
   The catastrophe was caused by a record 3.6 inches of
precipitation from Monday to Friday as warm, moist air flowing
up from the United States fell through a stationary mass of much
colder air, freezing as it reached ground level.
	    More than 4,000 Canadian and American repair workers were
scrambling to restore power to one million households and
businesses, most of them in southern Quebec.
	    Embattled Hydro-Quebec authorities were unable to report
much progress in restoring power over the weekend even though a
five-day ice storm had ended Friday.
	    The utility said a record 100 giant metal pylons carrying
735,000-volt lines had collapsed under heavy accumulations of
ice, while some 200 smaller ones carrying 315,000-volt and
120,000-volt lines were down near Montreal. More than 14,000
wooden utility poles had snapped or toppled in the province.
	    In some places, ice was two to four inches thick on power
lines, transformer stations and equipment.

Steve Zettel  KJ7CH
near Libby, MT USA




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