Ameritech Voice Mail down in north chicagoland today. 1,000's affected.

This service was advertised to continue working in case we (in chicago) lost electricity and our answering machines didn't work.

Now we have the worst of both worlds: no electricity, no voicemail!

-- Fu Bar (fu@bar.com), August 18, 1999

Answers

Chicago lost power in the western suburbs (Wheaton, Glen Ellyn, Downers Grove, Westmont) today at 2 am due to bad "cables."

Also the substation that from last week's outage had another transformer go out!

Having lived in Chicago for 13 years, we had more outages this year than all the years combined

-- Serio (survival@y2k.com), August 18, 1999.

wow... get outta Chicago... I don't think they'll even make it to the roll over!

Mike

who's currently waiting for "the big one" to hit LA... any moment now

=================================================================

-- Michael Taylor (mtdesign3@aol.com), August 18, 1999.

My sister's visiting from Chicago. She and her husband stayed in a hotel outside of town because it was so hot and they had no power for so long.

Hopefully, they'll be visiting again over rollover. I'll ask her tonight.

-- nothere nothere (notherethere@hotmail.com), August 18, 1999.

Here is a link to Serio's outage:

Power outages hit western suburbs

The saga continues.... COMED'S NEW SHOCK: SEARCH OVERLOOKS TROUBLE SPOTS

My personal favorite on ComEd for the day......

IT'S A DARK DAY WHEN COMED COMES TO HELP

Some highlights:

The owner of a frame shop two doors down, Charles Thomas, was the first to suspect the market had a problem. At 11 p.m. on Sunday, July 25, it didn't take much sleuthing: The lights in the store's parking lot had burst into flames.

(snip)

A few minutes earlier, the light bulbs in Thomas' apartment had burst--Pop! Pop! Pop!--like a shelf full of green tomatoes that weren't canned right. His three television sets blew out too.

The apparent source of the cacophony? A new electrical transformer that a ComEd crew had placed behind The Food Exchange building at 7162 S. Exchange Ave., just a few blocks from the old South Shore Country Club.

(snip)

Everywhere Kamberos looked, expensive equipment had melted into electronic mulch: a $5,000 security system, expensive fluorescent-light ballasts at $300 a pair, his automatic door system, a freezer compressor, some scales and cash registers.

"It just burned up everything," Kamberos says,

more @link.

Sorry to veer off topic.....

Thanks for the heads up Fu Bar, I hadn't heard.

-- Deborah (infowars@yahoo.com), August 18, 1999.

I'm sure it's just a "people panic problem." If people didn't panic there would be no outages. Just don't panic and then the lights will stay on. Change your frame of mind. Think like a polly. You see, that's all there is to it.

-- Larry (cobol.programmer@usa.net), August 18, 1999.

QUESTION? Was the power finally restored to the downtown area and is now off elsewhere?

Surely to the people of CHicago, this is their wake up call!

-- Linda A. (adahi@muhlon.com), August 18, 1999.

Linda,

Things are "on-again, off-again" all over the place here.

Downtown is ok for now, with sporadic, shorter incidents.

-- mabel (mabel_louise@yahoo.com), August 18, 1999.

Linda,

Here is another little update of the situation.

[for educational/research purposes only]

Illinois-Power Problems

CHICAGO (AP) - A state panel will investigate the reliability and management of Commonwealth Edison's distribution system as power outages blamed on the July heat wave left more customers in the dark Wednesday.

The Illinois Commerce Commission, which regulates state utilities, announced its planned investigation Tuesday. The commission could order ComEd to improve reliability and could seek fines, penalties and court injunctions if the utility did not comply.

``The level of performance we have seen in the last two or three weeks is totally unacceptable,'' said ICC Chairman Richard Mathias.

A ComEd executive, meanwhile, said it may be a year before the public sees a significant increase in the reliability of ComEd's service and three years before all problems are solved.

(more @ link)

Link

-- Deborah (infowars@yahoo.com), August 18, 1999.

---

Linda,

Here is another little update of the situation.

[for educational/research purposes only]

Illinois-Power Problems

CHICAGO (AP) - A state panel will investigate the reliability and management of Commonwealth Edison's distribution system as power outages blamed on the July heat wave left more customers in the dark Wednesday.

The Illinois Commerce Commission, which regulates state utilities, announced its planned investigation Tuesday. The commission could order ComEd to improve reliability and could seek fines, penalties and court injunctions if the utility did not comply.

``The level of performance we have seen in the last two or three weeks is totally unacceptable,'' said ICC Chairman Richard Mathias.

A ComEd executive, meanwhile, said it may be a year before the public sees a significant increase in the reliability of ComEd's service and three years before all problems are solved.

(more @ link)

Link

-- Deborah (infowars@yahoo.com), August 18, 1999.

---

Hoarding of electricity is the problem. If you folks in Chicago would stop using electricity, there would be plenty.

-- enough is (enough@enough.com), August 18, 1999.

I blame these outages on Maria, she boasts how smart she is, and how she can fix them, and they are still broke! And she's a missile expert, God help us!

-- God Help Us (GodHelpUs@GodHelpUSS.com), August 18, 1999.