Any URLs to news coverage of this one? - Bob ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jason Brown" To: Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2000 8:39 AM Subject: Fwd: FW: A rather bad day at the office > Murphy's law in action > > Jason Brown > > > ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- > Subject: FW: > Date: Tue, 22 Feb 2000 14:44:31 -0800 > From: "Marek, Jeff" > > > -----Original Message----- > From: Howard, Brad C > Sent: Tuesday, February 22, 2000 8:35 AM > To: Marek, Jeff; Ifill, Everton; Mastrorilli, John; Rubino, Pete J; > Leighton, Bill; Fortunato, Michael J > Subject: FW: > > > For those of you that might not receive the Diblert newsletter... > > ===================================================================== > > We tested our Y2K power contingency plans a few weeks before New > Year's. The Induhviduals in IT didn't expect any downtime, so the > test was performed during the normal work day. The idea was that > when power was cut, the six generators would kick on and we > wouldn't notice a thing. > > Three generators failed to start. Two threw their breakers due to > the high load on them. The last was overwhelmed when the previous > two cut out and threw a tremendous surge through the lines, blowing > up hundreds of light bulbs, frying fax machines, radios and pencil > sharpeners along the way. The surge jumped circuits in our > industrial level surge protector and traveled through our "surge > protected" lines to every desktop in the company plus the server > room. After taking out over a hundred monitors and almost forty > PCs, the surge proceeded to destroy our server room air > conditioner, four huge UPS systems, thirteen servers and both > AS/400s. Several small fires started throughout the building, > including our now half-melted Christmas tree and our > molten-menorah. > > The surge then jumped the lines into the main power grid, blowing > up two transformers, one of which fell on the IT manager's car > (poetic justice) and cutting power on the entire block. The > remaining generator then proceeded to burst into flames, eventually > blowing up all six generators and burning up seven cars. > > This all occurred within about thirty seconds and sent 38 people to > the hospital, cost the company over $650,000 in equipment (not to > mention the impending lawsuits), destroyed eight cars and caused > weeks of downtime. Three people quit the company. One woman is > still in the hospital with electrical burns. The resulting > publicity got us on television in five states. > ------------------------------------------------------- > > _______________________________________________ > Plug-discuss mailing list - Plug-discuss@lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us > http://lists.PLUG.phoenix.az.us/mailman/listinfo/plug-discuss >