Storms in Norway

[dsk]

Now its our turn,
I'm glad I'm not living i the west coast area. Ant I not was the one stopping this roof sheet.


More pictures:
http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/distrikt/more_og_romsdal/1.7930975
http://www.nrk.no/nyheter/distrikt/nrk_sogn_og_fjordane/1.7929939

People has been out of electricity, for more than 1 day, The cell phone system is mostly up and running again. The pots lines is not high priority  

So far no ones reported seriously hurt or dead as a result of the storms.

dsk

[Tom B]

Dag
Hope you stay clear of the weather.

[twocvbloke]

Blimey!! That tree didn't stand a chance... 

I'm guessing they're getting the mobile networks up first cos they're easier to do, just put up a new cell tower and plug in the transmitters, a lot easier to do than sticking new telegraph poles in and stringing up the copper...

But, that's where Premicells are handy, a GSM-to-POTS device, so you can use your telephones over GSM networks, and you can connect them to a PBX too so you don't need a landline...

[TelePlay]

Cell towers rarely topple and if one does, others nearby pick up the traffic. Battery packs for each carrier's base equipment last 4 to 6 hours. All a tower owner has to do is haul a portable generator to each tower that has lost power and every carrier on that tower is back on the air. Carrier switches are in blast proof buildings equipped with huge diesel powered generators and never loose power so that part of the network is always up. Tower to switch connections are buried T-1 or fiber optic cable, or sometimes both. Other than a tower being hit by a large flat hunk of debris which would increase the tower side loading above the structural capacity of the tower, they don't fall. I've seen film of tornado devastated areas and in the background the only thing left standing were the cell towers. While going through the process of getting permits to build towers, the falling tower question always came up. I searched the internet for several years and the only one I ever found was one built on top of a building that was destroyed. Cell networks are very durable as long as they have power and do not become over loaded with calls. Only so many calls can be handled by a tower at one time and if that number is exceeded, as in an emergency situation, the caller's phone won't connect with the network.


As for the tree, I remember seeing a piece of straw stuck through a 8"x8" barn timber that its self was sticking through the wall of a farm house after a tornado leveled the barn. The power of wind is amazing.

[dsk]

Dag
Hope you stay clear of the weather.

We have a little vacation in Lillehammer. No big problems here, but of blinking in the lights during the storm.

Just took this pic wit my cell phone:

dsk

[GG]

"As long as they (cell towers) have power..." is a very big IF.

Haul generators to them?  How many generators are available for that purpose, in a disaster where every generator is already spoken for and the store shelves are cleaned out?   City centers and other high-population-density areas may get their service back quickly, but suburban and rural areas will end up waiting as long as it takes for grid power to be restored.  Which means "wires." 

Cellphone = "local battery telephone."  There's a reason the telcos & PTTs went to "central battery" nearly a century ago. 

--

It takes tornado-force wind to drive a piece of sheet metal into a tree trunk.

The number and severity of violent storms is expected to increase, and IS increasing, as a direct result of climate change. 

It is impossible to "prove" that any particular violent storm is a result of climate change, in the same manner as it's impossible to "prove" that any particular case of cancer is the result of a toxic waste spill into a water supply.  But the proof is in the aggregate numbers, and in the statistical significance of the comparisons to a baseline year. 

In 2011 the United States had eleven or twelve "billion dollar storms."  Major insurance companies have been taking note of the increasing risks for well over a decade, increasing the costs of various coverages that are related to climate impacts. 

And the solution is really really straightforward: phase out coal from the power grid, convert to nuclear, solar, and wind, and then convert the transportation network to electric power from those sources.  We can do this.  There's no excuse for not doing it.  And along the way it will generate profitable investment, well-paying jobs, and positive economic ripples through the communities in which those investors and workers live.

[TelePlay]

"As long as they (cell towers) have power..." is a very big IF.

Haul generators to them?  How many generators are available for that purpose, in a disaster where every generator is already spoken for and the store shelves are cleaned out?  City centers and other high-population-density areas may get their service back quickly, but suburban and rural areas will end up waiting as long as it takes for grid power to be restored.  Which means "wires." 

Cellphone = "local battery telephone."  There's a reason the telcos & PTTs went to "central battery" nearly a century ago.

Yes, I totally agree with that. Most rural towers that are deemed a crucial part of a network by the wireless providers have generators at the tower site all of the time. These are sites that are on one huge power grid and if it goes down may not come up for a half day or more, well past the 6 hour life of each carriers battery pack.

Rural towers that have low cell traffic on large power grids do not justify the cost of a generator and if power is out for more than 6 hours, that's life.

Suburban areas usually have ground space for a tower site (minimum 20 by 20 feet). These sites are in a power grid network that can be manipulated to provide power to sectors that loose power within a few minutes to a few hours by the electric company rerouting power so no generators are needed.

Urban areas, especially large cities, have no ground space for towers and most zoning does not permit towers in high density city areas anyway, such as NYC. And since the number of people with cell phones in high density cities is very high, the need for many more cell sites is great. Wireless providers are forced to place their antenna on the top or sides of tall buildings and rent space within the building near the antenna placement for their electronic equipment including a 600+ pound battery pack that is the size of a refrigerator.

On 9-11, all wireless sites in downtown NYC sufferred from two problems. First, the number of calls being made exceeded site bandwidth capacity and people could not make calls from their cell (actually, now called PCS) phones. Second, the battery packs for each carrier went dead in about 6 hours or less. Sen. Schumer raced to a TV microphone saying he would introduce a bill demanding wireless providers make arrangements to swap out battery packs so the sites stayed up during such emergencies. Schumer didn't have a clue as to what he was talking about. The bill went nowhere but he got his "I am the hero" face time on TV.

Take a 50 story building in NYC with 4 wireless carriers on the roof. That's four 600+ pound cabinets that would have to be driven to the site from some warehouse, hauled up the 50 flights of stairs (no elevators in a power outage), the dead cabinet removed, the live cabinet installed, some downtime while the power was switched and the electronics rebooted, the dead cabinet hauled down 50 flights, hauled back to a warehouse that had power and recharged - which takes longer than 6 hours. Each carrier would have had to have in storage 4 or 5 battery packs for each of their hundreds of sites and a lot of strong people to do the hauling. It was a stupid idea born in ignorance that went nowhere. The lesson, life happens and sometimes cell phones don't work.

The only buildings I can think of that have generators are hospitals, wireless switches and municipal emergency centers. Only hospitals will allow a wireless provider to put equipment on the roof and I don't know if their emergency generators are allowed to power the wireless equipment. I think hospital generator power is only for surgery, recovery, emergency and HVAC.

So, power is important but it is up to the cell tower owner, upon request of the wireless providers on a tower, to make a decision if a tower is to have a permanent on site generator, or if one would be taken out of warehouse stock and driven to a site. Power at sites in or on buildings is provided by the building owner and I knew of no building that would allow an emergency generator to be stored or installed in a building site. And, swapping out battery packs is not a viable option, ever, anywhere.

I worked for a tower ownership company for a few years at the turn of the century and helped build out tower networks in much of the south eastern third of Wisconsin. All leases and zoning permits included a provision for a generator at a tower site. I see that all rural towers with high traffic volume (calls per hour) have generators already at them all of the time. Considering the cost of building a tower and the wireless equipment on them, a generator is pocket change. Towers off the beaten path, so to speak, with low call volume don't have generators but may have one hauled to it if power is to be down for an extended period of time because tower owners and wireless providers on the towers only make money if calls are being placed through the tower. It's really just a cost benefit analysis in every case. And both tower and wireless companies have tech engineers on staff 24/7 to cover every site of their networks to provide the best service possible, not perfect service.

[dsk]

The status is for the moment:
No one hospitalized 2 dead. (one who got ill, and did not come through on the phone, and one in an happening cleaning for trees over the road)
10 000 without POTS, 3600 without broadband, 162 cell phone towers out of service.
All in suburban and rural areas.  National guard is partly mobilized.

dsk 

[dsk]

Not easy to fix this:  http://tinyurl.com/cogdmej

More here:  http://tinyurl.com/dxcqrxa

dsk

[dsk]

Even more:
http://tinyurl.com/8xwugp9

dsk