Last Friday’s power outage forced the White House to go to backup generators and left a 30-block section of downtown Washington darkened for nearly three hours. The blackout raises anew worries that the nation’s capital still isn’t prepared to respond to an unexpected crisis nearly seven years after 9/11. At the heart of the problem are sluggish responses from public officials and an alert system that can be all but paralyzed by indecision and inaction. This must be fixed now — before there’s a real emergency.
Just one malfunctioning switch at Pepco’s Chinatown substation was ultimately to blame for unplugging more than 18,000 customers — including Pepco’s own headquarters. An unusual facet of the blackout was that Pepco executives experienced the real-world consequences of their seemingly ineffective backup planning.
D.C. officials were alerted within minutes of the power failure, but didn’t share the news with the public in a timely manner despite having received nearly $50 million in homeland security grants to help them plan for such unanticipated events. What’s the point of spending $50 million to create an emergency alert system that doesn’t alert commuters until they’re already in D.C.?
Worse was the Metropolitan Police Department’s failure to dispatch immediately personnel to 30 key downtown intersections that were suddenly left without functioning traffic signals. Three pedestrians were struck by cars as they attempted to cross the street. Thousands of lives may someday depend on a speedy and orderly evacuation, and this most recent debacle strongly suggests that MPD isn’t yet up to the task.
Metro was likewise remiss by not immediately notifying riders that power was out at five downtown stations, including DuPont Circle.
The DuPont Circle station’s 188-foot-high escalator would be a challenge to climb for many people even if wasn’t 90 degrees outside. Nine passengers had to be treated by paramedics after they were forced to climb escalators at stations that should have been closed as soon as the power went out. Two small fires along what one blogger called “the Red Line to Tardyville” turned Friday’s morning commute into hell on wheels.
Then there was the federal government, which at first failed to tell thousands of affected employees to stay home until power was restored, but then gave them the day off after they’d already made the trip downtown. Brilliant. Heaven help us if there’s ever a natural catastrophe or major terrorist attack.
