Stephen Doheny-Farina
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300089776
- eISBN:
- 9780300133820
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300089776.001.0001
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Nature
This book focuses on electric grids and tells the stories about two villages separated by time, connected by proximity, and united by the challenges of maintaining a community under duress. The story ...
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This book focuses on electric grids and tells the stories about two villages separated by time, connected by proximity, and united by the challenges of maintaining a community under duress. The story of one village presents an insider's view of a natural disaster, describing the destruction of the electric grid in January 1998 and the emergence of a community that filled the resulting void. It begins with moments in the lives of people in the village of Potsdam, New York and expands to cover the breadth of the disaster. The book concludes with a timeline of events that traces the disaster from the storm's origins in the Gulf of Mexico to the lethal flooding it caused as it moved slowly up the eastern seaboard to the icy devastation it brought to the Northeast. The story of the other village begins nearly 200 years before the ice storm in a place called Louisville Landing, about twenty miles from Potsdam on the border between the United States and Canada. This narrative provides a glimpse of what it took to build the kind of grids that made America, the grids which connect people to one another, and is told through the experiences of some of the people who sacrificed the most to build the grids.Less
This book focuses on electric grids and tells the stories about two villages separated by time, connected by proximity, and united by the challenges of maintaining a community under duress. The story of one village presents an insider's view of a natural disaster, describing the destruction of the electric grid in January 1998 and the emergence of a community that filled the resulting void. It begins with moments in the lives of people in the village of Potsdam, New York and expands to cover the breadth of the disaster. The book concludes with a timeline of events that traces the disaster from the storm's origins in the Gulf of Mexico to the lethal flooding it caused as it moved slowly up the eastern seaboard to the icy devastation it brought to the Northeast. The story of the other village begins nearly 200 years before the ice storm in a place called Louisville Landing, about twenty miles from Potsdam on the border between the United States and Canada. This narrative provides a glimpse of what it took to build the kind of grids that made America, the grids which connect people to one another, and is told through the experiences of some of the people who sacrificed the most to build the grids.
Stephen Doheny-Farina
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780300089776
- eISBN:
- 9780300133820
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Yale University Press
- DOI:
- 10.12987/yale/9780300089776.003.0006
- Subject:
- Environmental Science, Nature
This chapter discusses the impact of an ice storm on the United States and Canada. In the United States alone, the storm damaged about 18 million acres of rural and urban forests in Maine, New ...
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This chapter discusses the impact of an ice storm on the United States and Canada. In the United States alone, the storm damaged about 18 million acres of rural and urban forests in Maine, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont. In New York, the power outage lasted twenty-three days; more than 1,000 transmission towers were damaged; and power companies replaced over 8,000 poles, 1,800 transformers, and 500 miles of wire. In Canada, the outage lasted thirty-three days; more than 1,300 steel towers were damaged; power companies replaced over 35,000 poles and 5,000 transformers. The Canadian response involved the largest peacetime mobilization of military troops in the nation's history. The impact on the region's dairy herds was massive. In New York, 1,400 out of 1,800 dairy farms in the storm region suffered losses.Less
This chapter discusses the impact of an ice storm on the United States and Canada. In the United States alone, the storm damaged about 18 million acres of rural and urban forests in Maine, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont. In New York, the power outage lasted twenty-three days; more than 1,000 transmission towers were damaged; and power companies replaced over 8,000 poles, 1,800 transformers, and 500 miles of wire. In Canada, the outage lasted thirty-three days; more than 1,300 steel towers were damaged; power companies replaced over 35,000 poles and 5,000 transformers. The Canadian response involved the largest peacetime mobilization of military troops in the nation's history. The impact on the region's dairy herds was massive. In New York, 1,400 out of 1,800 dairy farms in the storm region suffered losses.
