Thursday, March 19, 2015

Okay, I'm Awake Plus The Famous Exploding Manholes Return To Downtown!

     ...And my back hurts.  Been hurting all week.  More stones?  Oh, please no.  I'm drinking limeade, which is supposed to help.  Messed up and had a cola with supper two nights ago and that's a no-no.

     Meanwhile, downtown Indianapolis is in exploding-manhole mode again -- just in time for the Final Four!  Much unhappiness.  These are transformer explosions: old, overstressed transformers fail, covers pop off, oil sometimes spills and burns, but it happens in concrete transformer vaults under the street, with the prime danger being flying manhole covers. The local power company has been upgrading the power system downtown but it's a very slow process -- there's not a lot of redundancy, the hardware is costly, and they have to close off and dig up streets to do the work.  --They were also supposed to have installed retention cables on the manhole covers to limit how high they fly and how far they travel, but the news pictures I've seen so far suggest that's not completed, either.

9 comments:

chuck w said...

I understand cranberry juice is somewhat effective. I take cranberry capsules when my kidneys are a little twingy.

Bruce said...

Is it true Downtown Indianapolis still uses Edison DC for power distribution?

Merle said...

Probably best to avoid cruising on two wheels for the time being.

Any forecast on when the upgrades will be done?

Merle

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

Good Lord, and it's not even hot yet.

Fuzzy Curmudgeon said...

The comments on that article make me want to find some of the commenters and strangle them with piano wire.

People without a clue about electrical infrastructure thinking they can comment intelligently on why transformers are 'sploding. And generally making themselves look like idiots.

I hate the Internet.

Anonymous said...

Glad no one was hurt. Getting hit with a several hundred pound iron tiddly-wink would not be good. Bike, car or on foot, you will get hurt if hit.

scottW said...

Have had many of them (stones) - Over the years I have found that 1.5 gallons of water per day , cranberry juice, and reduce the dairy ( my stones are of the calcium type) help me considerably. Have the medicals figured out what kind of stone it is?

Anonymous said...

Fuzzy Curmudgeon, lack of knowledge on a subject has never stopped Americans for carrying on about it. (Look up Penn and Teller's bit about dihydrogen monoxide.)

My thing, is when I encounter the "nuclear is bad" crowd to point out that bananas, nuts, and people are naturally radioactive. They argue, but that is the beauty of the internet. (Look up Banana Equivalent Dose.)

As far as electrical infrastructure is concerned, most utilities are behind the eight-ball to some degree. There are suburbs of Chicago that had weekly (near daily) outages of electric power like some third world country. I think that got fixed in the last 10 years or so, but I don't pay much attention to IL anymore.

Some electrical transformers can last 100 years or more. And the old ones tend to be filled with toxic chemicals - dioxins if memory serves. So replacing them isn't the easiest thing. A quick search shows Indianapolis has eliminated most older than 70 years, but they probably have a long way to go. Then the question is, will the new materials last as long as the old ones did?

Ritchie said...

Looked at the linked story and noted that some of the headlines in the "most popular stories" sidebar have a distinctly Onionish flavor.