Power Outage Montogomery County

[Anonymous]

Why can't they just do 2 hours late? Power has been restored, so just have the staff check that is school is functional.
I can't take off work today and have 2 elementary school kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The airpark was rural when it was built. It no longer is. After this and the crash that killed the Gemmell family a few years ago, I think it's reasonable to have a conversation about whether continuing to host an airpark in that location, with amateur pilots and no ATC routinely overflying houses and infrastructure on the landing path, is a good idea. Obviously we don't know what happened here but 88% of plane crashes overall are due to pilot error so it's not out of line to assume the pilot may have screwed up here and not seen something, particularly in this weather. Hopefully this power outage hasn't killed anyone through losing home medical equipment or traffic lights not working, or hospital operations in the blackout zone being disrupted.

This. The air park needs to go. There’s way too much development around it as this incident clearly demonstrates. Do you think our Moco leaders will actually do it though?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Power was out for over 45 minutes for me here in Silver Spring...not a light to be seen anywhere for the first 10 minutes. Not gonna lie, I was scared and thought the Russians might've done something. I'm a bit relieved it had to do with this small plane crash. Praying the pilot and passenger are OK.

Are you ok?!

PP will be fine. Just too much CNN

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They haven’t been rescued. They’ll need to shut down the power to the lines first. Can’t believe they’ve been hanging there 3 hours. They must be cold.

How inefficient does the power company have to be not to cut power in three hours time?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why can't they just do 2 hours late? Power has been restored, so just have the staff check that is school is functional.
I can't take off work today and have 2 elementary school kids.

It probably takes more than two hours to run whatever checks they need to do.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:They haven’t been rescued. They’ll need to shut down the power to the lines first. Can’t believe they’ve been hanging there 3 hours. They must be cold.

Poor them. Just like the people whose houses now have no heat thanks to them knocking out the power. Or the patients that can't go to the MedStar Montgomery ER because it's on "mini disaster" mode.

So I agree that this situation is inconvenient for a lot of people, but....

It is 50 degrees outside. Nobody who would otherwise have heat is freezing. Nobody is unable to get medical treatment.
I could be interpreting you wrong, but are you blaming the people in that plane?

Yes. Occam's razor from the flight path suggests that the pilot screwed up the landing approach and came in too low which took him into a power line. The pilot is easy to find on Google since they released the registration number. He has previous form for crashing a plane in the '90s due to (wait for it) flying too low.

Well how old is this dude now?

In his 60s.

The dude is 65, an arrogant lawyer-type who looks in his Twitter pic like he thinks he's hot shit. Had a 66-year-old Grandma as a passenger.

Well, another lawyer famously crashed his plane into the ocean 20-some years ago. But no one was inconvenienced back then, save for the rescue crews..

I am always amazed when the arrogant “mememmemememeeee” attitudes come out here. I should not be - I should know better. “How DARE this man have an accident! How DARE he inconvenience MY day”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Why can't they just do 2 hours late? Power has been restored, so just have the staff check that is school is functional.
I can't take off work today and have 2 elementary school kids.

This this this. They made a bad call and then decided to double down. Uuugh.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Why can't they just do 2 hours late? Power has been restored, so just have the staff check that is school is functional.
I can't take off work today and have 2 elementary school kids.

It probably takes more than two hours to run whatever checks they need to do.

Moco has 209 schools. Only 44 lost power. And prob a bus depot. Open the rest. Now 160,000 students will not have school. The district is too large to operate efficiently, we have known this and seen it for decades now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:They haven’t been rescued. They’ll need to shut down the power to the lines first. Can’t believe they’ve been hanging there 3 hours. They must be cold.

Poor them. Just like the people whose houses now have no heat thanks to them knocking out the power. Or the patients that can't go to the MedStar Montgomery ER because it's on "mini disaster" mode.

So I agree that this situation is inconvenient for a lot of people, but....

It is 50 degrees outside. Nobody who would otherwise have heat is freezing. Nobody is unable to get medical treatment.
I could be interpreting you wrong, but are you blaming the people in that plane?

Yes. Occam's razor from the flight path suggests that the pilot screwed up the landing approach and came in too low which took him into a power line. The pilot is easy to find on Google since they released the registration number. He has previous form for crashing a plane in the '90s due to (wait for it) flying too low.

Well how old is this dude now?

In his 60s.

The dude is 65, an arrogant lawyer-type who looks in his Twitter pic like he thinks he's hot shit. Had a 66-year-old Grandma as a passenger.

Well, another lawyer famously crashed his plane into the ocean 20-some years ago. But no one was inconvenienced back then, save for the rescue crews..

I am always amazed when the arrogant “mememmemememeeee” attitudes come out here. I should not be - I should know better. “How DARE this man have an accident! How DARE he inconvenience MY day”

Sure. He made a personal choice to orisue this hobby which resulted in a major power outage and a lost day of school for 160k students and their parents.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:MCPS wouldn’t close all the schools in the county due to a handful of schools without power, right?

Way more than a handful…

MCPS just sent out a communication that notes 44 schools without power, plus 6 central office facilities. Sounds to me like they are planning for a closure.

Lawyer pilot should be fined to cover all these costs.

Why? It was an accident. Obviously he didn’t intend to crash into a power line and remain suspended in the air, with his life at risk, for multiple hours. The entitlement and selfishness on this thread is unreal.

I think they’re mostly ridiculous, too, but I’ll admit, the more I think about it, the less sure I am where the line is. If I accidentally crash my car into someone’s home, my car insurance is supposed to pay for the damages, right? I've never heard of that applying to the damage done to public structures or roads, but I'm not sure why it wouldn't.

And why isn’t Pepco to blame? Doesn’t seem like they are acting very expeditiously. I remember the 24 hours it took them to restore power in MoCo during a snowstorm. In Virginia, the lights would be on by now.

Reminds me of the snowstorm where people were trapped on the highway for 36 hours….in Virginia.

New Englander here. Again, that is the special entitlement of people here who think snow should not inconvenience them. It’s the reason I only drive large 4WD SUVs around here - people drive like idiots and have no respect for weather. Yesterday I had some MD yahoo push me into the right lane in a construction area because he was behind me and felt entitled to be in front of me, so passed me on the left on route 7. Just grabbed what little shoulder there was and tried to go around me. I had the choice of cutting fast into the right lane, or letting him run me and him into a jersey wall. It was only because I have quick reflexes when it comes to driving that I was able to quickly assess that I had room in the right lane. He got lucky because he was in a small sedan, and would have been crushed for sure. But he HAD to be first because HE was SPECIAL

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They haven’t been rescued. They’ll need to shut down the power to the lines first. Can’t believe they’ve been hanging there 3 hours. They must be cold.

How inefficient does the power company have to be not to cut power in three hours time?

These were not neighborhood power lines. They were enormous transmission lines. You can’t just cut power to them without affecting ting even more people than are already affected. Are you really this dense and unaware of how the world works?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They haven’t been rescued. They’ll need to shut down the power to the lines first. Can’t believe they’ve been hanging there 3 hours. They must be cold.

Poor them. Just like the people whose houses now have no heat thanks to them knocking out the power. Or the patients that can't go to the MedStar Montgomery ER because it's on "mini disaster" mode.

So I agree that this situation is inconvenient for a lot of people, but....

It is 50 degrees outside. Nobody who would otherwise have heat is freezing. Nobody is unable to get medical treatment.
I could be interpreting you wrong, but are you blaming the people in that plane?

Yes. Occam's razor from the flight path suggests that the pilot screwed up the landing approach and came in too low which took him into a power line. The pilot is easy to find on Google since they released the registration number. He has previous form for crashing a plane in the '90s due to (wait for it) flying too low.

Well how old is this dude now?

In his 60s.

The dude is 65, an arrogant lawyer-type who looks in his Twitter pic like he thinks he's hot shit. Had a 66-year-old Grandma as a passenger.

Well, another lawyer famously crashed his plane into the ocean 20-some years ago. But no one was inconvenienced back then, save for the rescue crews..

I am always amazed when the arrogant “mememmemememeeee” attitudes come out here. I should not be - I should know better. “How DARE this man have an accident! How DARE he inconvenience MY day”

Sure. He made a personal choice to orisue this hobby which resulted in a major power outage and a lost day of school for 160k students and their parents.

Life’s tough. Buck up, sunshine.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:They haven’t been rescued. They’ll need to shut down the power to the lines first. Can’t believe they’ve been hanging there 3 hours. They must be cold.

How inefficient does the power company have to be not to cut power in three hours time?

These were not neighborhood power lines. They were enormous transmission lines. You can’t just cut power to them without affecting ting even more people than are already affected. Are you really this dense and unaware of how the world works?

I think people without power for a few hours, even if there are 100s of thousands, is just fine. Did you know there are such things as generators for those that can afford them? My husband was able to convert a car battery to use to power a few lights and charge devices for emergencies in winter. Consider it practice for when our power grid is hit by the Chinese.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

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Anonymous wrote:WaPo says they've been rescued and are now out of the plane.

I bet they’re relived that’s a long time to hold your pee!

I was thinking the same.

Me too!

Ya’ll are kidding, right? They were rescued and taken to the hospital with orthopedic injuries and hypothermia. I doubt they were holding their pee.




In my defense, I pee a lot.

[Anonymous]

People don’t understand how important these specific power lines are. They are high voltage transmission lines that run the length of the US eastern seaboard. They are critical infrastructure that absolutely should not be in the flight path for some rinkadink air strip with no control tower.

Either the air field is updated or it is shut down and the land redeveloped. The status quo doesn’t work, but I bet a bunch of rich dudes with single engine planes will throw a fit.