San Clemente's Best Case Scenario Disaster

No Earthquake - No Tsunami - Know Problem 

At approximately 3:30 p.m. on September 8, 2011 south Orange County experienced an electrical outage, which extended south to Baja, Mexico, and east to Yuma, Arizona.  This was the largest power outage in Southern California history, according to @SDG&E.  San Clemente, Dana Point, and San Juan Capistrano, the three centers of population in the southern-most end of the county, all suffered a complete loss of electrical power.  As a result, traffic lights either ceased to function, or went to flashing red.  ATMs, cash registers, street lights, gas pumps, all stopped working.  Businesses, restaurants, and schools closed and sent their employees home early.  San Diego’s Lindbergh field halted all incoming traffic, and Amtrak stopped running its trains.

All of these factors led to extremely heavy traffic on both surface roads and the Interstate 5 freeway; intersections became gridlocked at the four-way flashing red lights, and freeway off-ramps backed onto the freeway itself, causing jams, wrecks, and fender-benders.  A customer at a Radio Shack in Dana Point said it took her 2.5 hours to drive the 7 miles from La Pata Avenue through the Ortega Highway interchange with Interstate 5.  Normally, this would be a 10-minute drive.  Due to the high heat, people left their engines running while stuck in traffic, and many people ended up abandoning their cars as they ran out of gas.  At 7 p.m. it took me 30 minutes to drive from Golden Lantern and the PCH in Dana Point to my home in north San Clemente, just off the freeway, a drive of usually 7 minutes.

Additionally, cellular phone reception ceased in some areas, and was severely impacted in other areas, leading to failures in service, and hampered communications between community members and loved ones.

All of this occurred under relatively calm circumstances, fair conditions, and a somewhat circumspect, tolerant attitude on the part of most people who understood, via the radio, that there was no real emergency, and that everything possible was being done.  And yet, under these “ideal” circumstances, no one could get anywhere in an efficient manner.

The optimum emergency we experienced on September 8 was a telling dress rehearsal for what might happen in a real emergency, and the results are disheartening and concerning.  In a situation where urgency and panic are high, such as a nuclear accident at San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station, or a severe earthquake, or a military incident, the resulting chaos, confusion, and gridlock are likely to be far worse.  Not only that, but in the event of an accident at San Onofre, the public would simply sit in traffic under radiation, guaranteeing fatal and/or longterm negative health consequences.

It’s my opinion that there are no simple fixes for evacuating large numbers of people from this area.   The main traffic problem was mostly on the surface streets, not the freeway, so the argument for the efficacy of the extension of the toll road completely loses ground.

I believe that educating the public about emergency preparedness needs to be re-vamped, re-started, and widespread.  People need to know what options they have for staying in place, and how to handle the threat of radiation.  The City of San Clemente could and should work with the Red Cross and local hospitals and public agencies (fire and sheriffs’ departments) to develop a new, more effective, and more realistic disaster plan for its community members and families.

Sincerely,
Beth Anne Boardman, R.N., M.A.,
San Clemente resident, and mother of two.

Great Black-Out 2011

Lets Go Solar! 

Dear Readers,

It looks like everyone survived the Great San Diego Black-Out of 2011.

I didn't even notice there was a black-out at first, other than the printer going off while I was trying to print protest books against San Onofre Nuclear Waste Generating Station.   A group of us formed up post-Fukushima, and we're going places and raising awareness.  And we need books -- lots of books!  People are pretty ignorant about the dangers, even post-Fukushima.  There's a lot of information being kept from the public and misinformation being presented to them.

San Onofre didn't help at all to keep the power on when the grid went down.

Instead, they had to shut down themselves!  Supposedly this was because "they had no place to send the power."  That's how the spokesperson for the plant describes it.

But I would say it was because they had no offsite power coming INTO the plant!  That's what probably really shut the plant down.

But one way or the other, here's the obvious thing:  San Onofre is not helping.

San Onofre is presumably currently operating on Emergency Diesel Generators as I write this -- and generating ZERO power to help alleviate the situation.

Thanks for your help, SONWGS -- NOT!

About one and a half million homes -- five million people -- were without power for at least six to eight hours yesterday and today, and many of them are still without power.

There WAS a seven-car pile-up on I-5 (the main freeway that runs near San Onofre), which shut it down in both directions, and I-5 was shut down heading out of San Diego elsewhere at the same time -- it was a mess!

But I was prepared -- or so I thought.  When the printer went out, my UPS beeped and the front panel lit up.  Those were my clues that five million of us were in the dark.  I paid little attention, being in the middle of writing a newsletter about what an atom is, an alpha particle, a beta particle, a gamma ray, a half-life, and so on.

But then the UPS beeped again, and the print job was clearly not running (the printer pauses now and then anyway, for some reason), so I went upstairs and checked the printer, and it was completely off and the on/off switch wouldn't do anything.

So then I started to grasp that there was a blackout, and shut down the computer so that I wouldn't drain the UPS battery just in case I needed it.

I tried to count up all the ways I wasn't prepared for real trouble -- like, a meltdown at San Onofre because of the "Station Black-Out" conditions (the same as occurred at Fukushima after the earthquake and tsunami, but minus the earthquake (which actually started the inexorable sequence that led to meltdown of the three reactors in Japan) and minus the tsunami (which is blamed for the meltdowns, but apparently was NOT responsible -- it was the earthquake).

We have earthquakes here, too.  Bad ones.  Right near San Onofre Nuclear Waste Generating Station.

Small-scale distributed renewable energy is a much safer way to power the grid.  In an emergency, nuclear power is unlikely to be there to help at all!  We've seen this now, time and again.

And the traffic!  Oh, the traffic!  Because the traffic lights were out everywhere, it took my wife more than an hour to get home, normally a 12 minute drive in clear traffic and a 20 minute drive at rush hour.  The 60 or so trollies in the city of San Diego all stopped at the same time, and only a couple of trains ran, so if you missed them, you missed them.

Could we evacuate five million people if San Onofre Nuclear Waste Generating Station melted down?  No!  Can San Onofre melt down?

In a heartbeat.  It's useless, wrong, and crazy to continue risking the enormous death and destruction that would accompany an serious accident at San Onofre.  Trapped as we are with only a few roads out of the area, San Onofre actually cuts in half the main evacuation route needed in case of an accident at the plant!  That is, the plant itself is located so close to the freeway that ANY accident at the plant will close I-5 immediately, and probably I-15 as well.

Meanwhile, the plant itself has been on restrictions and tightened inspections for years now because of worker apathy, anxiety, and audacious arrogance:  They faked safety inspections, fire inspections, security inspections, and medical claims, work records, time sheets, and, of course, worker's own complaints were filed in the "circular" file or actually given to the supervisor about whom the complaint was filed -- the LAST person who should be seeing the complaint!

Now, these guys are all scared the power plant WILL actually be shut down!  They put on a brave face, but scratch the surface, and you find out they are being told not to talk to the public, not to talk to reporters, not to talk to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission unless they absolutely have too -- and WHY are they so scared?

They're afraid they'll lose their jobs.  Get thrown out in the bad economy just like so many of the rest of us.  Never mind that they could be building solar and wind turbine power supplies instead.  Never mind that they are generating 500 pounds of high-level nuclear waste every day that they don't know how to store or how to get rid of.  (The most toxic stuff on earth, and, thanks to Fukushima, the most toxic stuff in your lungs and the rest of your body right now.)

Never mind that there is no way to evacuate San Diego, Orange County, Los Angeles ....

Never mind the lives that would be lost if there was a meltdown, or a spent fuel pool fire, or a dry cask fire, or all three, due to an earthquake, or a tsunami, or a power black-out, or all three.

Never mind all that -- they are afraid they'll lose their jobs.

Sincerely,

Ace Hoffman
www.animatedsoftware.com

The author, 55, has been studying nuclear power for about 40 years.  He is a bladder cancer survivor, educational software developer, technologist, computer animator, survivalist, humanitarian and small businessman.