[26237] in North American Network Operators' Group
Re: [announce-all] NAC Maintenance this weekend (fwd)
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Greg A. Woods)
Sat Dec 11 12:38:06 1999
Message-Id: <m11wqRI-000gAyC@most.weird.com>
Date: Sat, 11 Dec 1999 12:36:12 -0500 (EST)
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From: woods@most.weird.com (Greg A. Woods)
To: nanog@merit.edu
In-Reply-To: <385204FF.7264EB6A@NorthShoreTechnologies.net>
Reply-To: nanog@merit.edu (North America Network Operators Group)
Errors-To: owner-nanog-outgoing@merit.edu
[ On Saturday, December 11, 1999 at 03:02:07 (-0500), Steve Sobol wrote: ]
> Subject: Re: [announce-all] NAC Maintenance this weekend (fwd)
>
> The last time a transformer blew near my house, all that happened is
> that some of the neighbors lost power for a while.
Well..... The last time a transformer as big as the one I assume the
story was talking about blew in a warehouse here in Toronto, the entire
corner of the building was knocked out. I don't remember the details,
but that one's definitely in the records -- check the Toronto Star or
Toronto Sun over the past five years or so (my memory of the timing of
recent events is about as fuzzy as a bank of fog).
I've also heard a story second hand (from someone at the site) of a
backup generator (or buffer generator) that failed (it was three-phase,
something about one phase not switching over I think) which similarly
blew the side of a building out when it failed. This was back in the
early 80's or maybe even late 70's, and I believe it was a mainframe
datacentre (or factory powerplant), also somewhere in Ontario.
We had an ordinary 4Kv single-phase house transformer blow up after
being struck by lightning on our farm in the 70's too, but I guess
that's a different scale of surge..... :-)
--
Greg A. Woods
+1 416 218-0098 VE3TCP <gwoods@acm.org> <robohack!woods>
Planix, Inc. <woods@planix.com>; Secrets of the Weird <woods@weird.com>
