Preparing for the Next Blackout

OK, most people have power, even if Ontario's generating capacity is only about two thirds of what we need. Nuclear will come back online soon. But clearly there are some lessons to be learned from this experience, because it will be repeated. It might be technological failure, natural disaster or terrorist attack, but our power grid will go down again. Our unpreparedness was sad, particularly on the heels of the ice storm a couple of years ago. Here are some thoughts:

1) our politicians seemed to be flopping around like fish out of water. No decisive leadership. The Canadian Prime Minister stayed at his cottage while 10 million people in Ontario looked for leadership. I believe we must make our politicians understand that their efforts were not good enough.

2) different messages seemed to float around, and the government agencies that are supposed to coordinate during disaster didn't even seem to be able to keep their phones working, let alone coordinating, let alone communicating to the nation. Let's see some heads role (figuratively).

3) without electricity, all the gas stations, pharmacies, grocery stores and banks were out of commission. Our local grocery store has a generator, but it could only run for 30 minutes. All of the frozen food, dairy, meat, etc. is all being thrown out. Our "just in time" delivery system now needs to cope with unexpected demand. Of course, were this winter the loss of power would be more significant still! My suggestion might seem radical, but given the risk evaluation (high impact if it happens again, high probability of happening again) I think is reasonable. Here are my suggestions:

- all grocery stores, pharmacies, banks and gas stations be required to have generators that will run for 7 days
- all police, fire, hospitals, water pumping and treatment centers have the same generation capacity
- all community centers have the same generating capacity, to serve a emergency refuge during cold and heat waves
- all apartment buildings to have a 24 hour supply of water on the roof
- designated radio stations for disaster information. Public distribution of solar powered radios tuned specifically to these stations. Again, these radio stations will have generators.
- cell phone systems have backup power supply
- all new houses have wiring set up so that a generator can be plugged in to power the furnace, or alternately a gas fireplace that doesn't require electricity to turn on.

Are these radical suggestions given the level of our vulnerability?