4/1/2023 0 Comments Amp steps near me![]() ![]() Both are concerned with natural and climate related disasters.)Ī highlighted section called “Get Prepared in 8 Weeks” offers many useful tips with videos to prepare for a major earthquake. (Apparently there is an even newer plan from 2022, but it’s located elsewhere on the website. The City of Alameda has a page of disaster preparedness tips that has a lot of useful information-how to sign up for CERT training, how to get alerts and community notifications, documents about the City’s planning and hazard mitigation relating to tsunamis, a 100-page emergency operations plan, and a 175-page hazards mitigation plan from 2016. We have no backups to take over when things go wrong. What we do not have are redundant systems, like alternate power sources, communication networks, or transit systems. We have some systems that will operate in a power outage, as we learned from the ferries in the 1989 quake, but they do not have the capacity to evacuate our population quickly. Some residents have mitigated this by installing their own solar systems and batteries, lessening their reliance on the electrical grid, but most have not. Many Alamedans are even more reliant on electrical service than they were in years past, as they transition to electric vehicles and electric appliances and heating in their homes. We learned that even though it’s not our local electric company, when PG&E has a failure, it can affect AMP, it can affect Alameda’s bridges, it can affect traffic signals across town, and it can affect Alameda’s connectivity to the outside world. ![]() But it did come as a big warning to all of us that we are not as prepared for disasters as we thought we were. No crush of residents trying to flee the city, no need for emergency services, no 100-degree summer heat. No major disaster accompanied the blackout. No disaster, this timeĭespite all of this inconvenience, we were very lucky indeed. That experience echoed those of other members of the community in the affected areas who posted on Facebook to say they had little or no access during the outage from any of the major carriers: Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T. The only thing they could do was send and receive plain texts. In addition to their power being out, they had no voice, internet, or multimedia access on their phone. Several transmission towers lost power, causing poor signals, reduced service, or no service at all.Ī member of our staff contacted me via SMS during the outage to find out what was going on. But many residents could not get their cell phones to work and didn’t get those messages.Ĭell phones didn’t work, you say? Yes, on top of the traffic woes, many drivers who were stuck in gridlock-and countless other people in areas where power was out-had trouble with their phones. The City of Alameda urged residents on their social media and in AC Alerts to stay off the roads if possible. Traffic signals in the affected areas had no power either, leaving drivers to remember to treat the intersections as four-way stop signs. Traffic signals, homes, and businesses from Bay Farm Island to Grand Street were affected for several hours Sunday afternoon. The view from Park Street Bridge into gridlock getting off the island as a power outage affected a large portion of Alameda on February 19, 2023. This meant that all traffic had to seek alternate routes, which immediately caused traffic jams and long wait times. ![]() The Park Street bridge was open-and closed to traffic-for about an hour, while the Fruitvale and High Street bridges were not able to close and reopen to traffic until after power was restored to the city. Gridlock near the bridges, you say? Yes, three of the four drawbridges providing access and egress to Alameda were stuck open during the outage. ![]() It was a sunny, warm day, and other than some gridlock near the bridges, few if any Alamedans suffered any damage from the blackout that affected over 54,000 AMP and PG&E customers on Sunday. The four-hour power outage was caused by a fire at a PG&E substation near 50th Avenue and Coliseum Way in East Oakland, not an earthquake or a major storm. ![]()
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