Do You Carry A Tactical Light When You Travel?
BY Herschel Smith
7 years ago
Officials at Georgia’s leading power provider faced tough questions Monday, a day after a massive power outage grounded travel at the world’s busiest airport for nearly 11 hours at the start of one of the biggest travel weeks of the year.
Georgia Power officials said the investigation continues into the cause of the fire-related outage at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. However, they said a piece of the utility’s switchgear in an underground electrical facility may have failed and started the blaze. A switchgear helps to manage the flow of power.
The utility had backup equipment, officials said, but it was in an adjacent room and was also damaged in the fire.
“We are doing what we can to make sure this never happens again,” Georgia Power spokesman Craig Bell said. “We truly apologize for the inconvenience.”
Well, it will happen again, somewhere. He shouldn’t have promised that.
The outage hit about 1 p.m. Sunday, plunging the airport into darkness, grounding nearly 1,000 flights and leaving 30,000 people stranded. International flights were diverted to other airports. Planes sat on the tarmac for more than six hours.
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Videos posted on Twitter showed passengers using the lights on their cellphones to make their way through darkened concourses. Other photos shared on Twitter showed TSA officers carrying wheelchairs up stalled escalators.
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“The straight answer to that question is: We absolutely do” have a redundant power supply, Reed said. “But because of the intensity of the fire, the switch that accesses the redundant system was damaged, which caused damage to two systems rather than one.”
Bowers said the utility will work with the airport to prevent a repeat of such an event. Among the strategies the company may consider: encasing the cables in concrete [Ed: dumb idea] or putting the cables in separate areas.
“Our focus is on reliability and making sure this never happens again,” he said.
“Train” separation is a good idea, because it’s not redundancy if the trains aren’t separated. But here’s the point. Power outages will happen, darkness comes every day. If you don’t have light, you’re disabled.
Do you carry a tactical light when you travel? I do. Always and everywhere. I carry a tactical light when I travel through the neighborhood with the dog.
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On December 18, 2017 at 10:30 pm, Backwoods Engineer said:
Two tactical lights, and a Streamlight coin-cell light on my keychain.
My favorite tactical light is the Streamlight ProTac 1L-1AA. Eats either 1 AA cell, or 1 lithium CR123 cell.
On December 19, 2017 at 8:26 am, DAN III said:
Yep….carry a one cell, AA Fenix along with a Made in Portland, Oregon Gerber Automatic everyday, everywhere. I won’t mention my carry pistol.
On December 19, 2017 at 9:01 am, Pat Hines said:
Yes, I travel with a high performance flashlight, though I no longer use commercial aviation.
Years ago, when I was an air traffic controller, I worked with a man who’d been ATC at Hartsfield (ATL). They had a power outage, from some sort of contruction, which killed the radar for ATL. This was in the late 1970s.
He and several others drove down to Atlanta Center which is near Griffin, Georgia, and used their radar. Center radar is long range and turns much slower than terminal radars do. He said it was excruciating to wait for the sweep to come around so he could see if the aircraft had taken his instructions.
There’s no such thing as “won’t happen again”.
On December 19, 2017 at 5:11 pm, ExpatNJ said:
Similar, along with lights in cellphone and butane-lighter (means to make fire is a survival prerequisite, too) as emergency backups. I won’t mention my EDC pistol, either.
Is there a practical or realistic limit to how much ‘stuff’ one can lug around?
On December 19, 2017 at 6:43 pm, Videodrone said:
Always have a pocket flashlight and at least a few knives on me (not to mention a .45″ hole punch when possible) my backpack and go bags have “boy scout fire starters” (Magnesium, flint and striker) and have yet to be denied that by TSA
fools
On December 19, 2017 at 8:21 pm, H said:
Here’s a good one to keep on your keychain: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0007D5TKQ/
On December 20, 2017 at 5:25 pm, ambiguousfrog said:
I live in metro ATL. Excuse the rambling up front.
To know the area and see this happen was educational. The place is nuts on a good day. Always disorganized. For the size of the airport the domestic drop-off funnels everyone curbside and doesn’t leave much room for error or escape. International is less hectic always. They’re doing all sorts of remodeling of parking and taxi areas. Initially I thought this to be the cause. Every time I’m there dropping off a friend or relative I take notice of the what the popo are doing and it isn’t much. Lots of grab ass or idleness. To be honest, I wouldn’t be looking to them to save me. The airport is probably one of the only things keeping that urban toilet afloat. On any given day you can see the waste. For now on I’ll have my tactical light. I hope the first thing I would’ve done was head for the doors and get as far away as possible. We’re not prepared by any means.
On December 20, 2017 at 5:42 pm, Herschel Smith said:
@Frog,
I’ve never been stopped by TSA for having a light. They’re not quite that stupid – not yet.
On December 21, 2017 at 2:02 pm, ROFuher said:
If not 2, it’s because I have three.
And 4 spare batteries.
And no you cannot borrow one, but you are welcome to follow my light across the tarmac or wherever their little pocket of disaster materializes.
On December 25, 2017 at 6:54 pm, Saml Adams said:
Streamlight Pro-tac “duel fuel”–uses AA or CR123 (2x brighter) plus spares in my business backpack. Also has a two way clip to attach to a hat as a headlamp. All keep a 500 lumen Fenix tucked in a small trauma kit. During my commute am in train tunnels. Can’t get out if you can’t see. Learned that during two decades of firefighting. Zero vis is no fun.