So how silly are people feeling this morning?

Last night one of the more-amusing sights was watching NYC go dark as Sandy came ashore.

As someone who lives in a hurricane zone I'm no stranger to mass blackouts.  I'm also no stranger to this thing called "a generator", a miraculous mechanical device that is designed to work when the utility power doesn't.

There were multiple reports last night from allegedly-generator equipped locations such as hospitals asking for some rather odd things -- like jerry cans full of fuel along with multiple reports of "backup power failures."  The chuckle factor went off-scale with me when I started hearing of those reports for a whole host of reasons.

There ought to be a mass of firings among IT and facilities management folks this morning in NYC.  The entire point of installing a backup generator of any sort is to make sure that when the utility fails irrespective of the reason you still have electrical power.  Some people think that this means buying a big generator, installing it, and then you're all set.

Uh, nope.

First, you have to consider where the generator is to be located.  You can't put it where any of the foreseeable perils will destroy it (e.g. where it can be flooded out!) or you just wasted your money.  Likewise the fuel tank for it, which is subject to various code requirements and has to be installed and vented in such a fashion that's secure as well.  Note that fuel is lighter than water; as such a fuel tank (especially one partially full) floats, so securing it against flooding is in fact quite a trick (but not impossible.)  Then there's the matter of getting the fuel from the tank to the generator; if your fuel pump floods out you have a further problem.

So now you have a running generator, or so you think.  Now about that power; the switchgear (contactors, breaker panels, etc) between the power source and the load also must be secure against all these perils.  Needless to say having all your switchgear in a sub-basement where it can fill up with water could be a problem.

When it comes to computers, chillers in big buildings are not quite like an air conditioner in a house.  They require water for their heat exchanger, and the unit that ultimately dissipates the heat to the atmosphere is (usually) on the roof.  If there's no water flow to your chillers in the computer room and/or no fan on the roof unit that's running, your wonderfully-climate controlled computer room no longer has air conditioning!  If you've ever been in such a room when all the roaring fans go silent there's this pregnant pause among the people there who know full-well that unless you can get those chillers back online in a hurry the temperature in that closed space will rise to the point that there is no choice other than to shut everything down.

Yes, this means you need to make sure that the circulation pump is safe (along with its power) and that the heat you reject can actually be dumped (which means you need to know that every part of the system from your chiller onward to that point is both secure against the perils and can be powered.)

Oh, and it helps if you test all this too, so when you actually need to use these fancy systems "in anger" you don't wind up with what happened in at least one instance last night where NYFD had reports of "smoke in the generator room" (e.g. all that nice planning was for naught as the generator caught fire when they attempted to use it!)

So how is it again that we have all these fancy-dancy office buildings, not to mention critical infrastructure such as hospitals, that didn't manage to keep themselves lit during the storm?

Yeah, facilities managers are real smart these days (snort!)