Re: Never push the Big Red Button (New York City subway failure)

[Warren Kumari <warren () kumari net>]

On Wed, Sep 15, 2021 at 3:20 PM Fred Baker <fredbaker.ietf () gmail com> wrote:

> > On Sep 10, 2021, at 1:33 PM, Warren Kumari <warren () kumari net> wrote:
> >
> > The utility let them know that they were going to be doing some
> maintenance work in the area. No impact expected, but out of an abundance
> of caution, they transfer over to generators. After the utility lets them
> know that the maintenance work is all finished, they want to switch back.
> If the generators are "emergency power", and you need to switch back to
> "utility power", obviously the way to do this must be the big red button,
> clearly marked as "EMERGENCY POWER OFF", no?!
>
> One of the many stories that came out of 9/11 was a switching center in NY
> City that had a diesel generator as a power backup - which of course acted
> as primary when the city power is off. After a few days of operation, it
> needed to be refueled, so a truck was sent in carrying gasoline. The
> generator was refueled and restarted, and - oops - diesel != gasoline. So
> then they needed to bring in a new generator.

Oooof. I've seen someone at a gas station do something similar -- I cannot
remember if it was putting diesel in their gasoline car, or gas in their
diesel pickup, but I *do* remember the sudden yelp and look of dismay when
they suddenly realized what they were doing. It must be really easy to get
wrong in a car (operating on autopilot), but that's a much less bad failure
than a generator...

Anyway, refueling generators reminds me of:
https://www.mail-archive.com/nanog () nanog org/msg111947.html

W


> Yup, it happens, and it happened.



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