[Barbara]

While I consider myself an "expert" of peak oil, ( ) this question came to my mind and I couldn't get an answer.
Will you experts help me?
Last year we had that big blackout in the whole country for 12 hours. From 3 am to 3 pm 60 millions people were completely in the dark (you can find satellite photos... the whole Italy was in black and it's a veery scaring view).
Well... while nothing worked, telephone wired lines were OK (I had to explore the whole house to find an old telephone not wireless!), gas to cook was OK and water kept flowing from the taps like nothing happened.
WHY?
What does it means? That without electricity some things can continue to work?
I don't think there is a sort of emergency generators... it's simply too expensive to keep emergency generators for the WHOLE country and lasting for hours.
Do you have an answer?

(PS I'm back from vacations and ready to bore you to death! HA HA!)

[gnm]

well in the us most long range transmission towers for
phone systems are backed up up with thier own generator (automatic)
and the lines carry there own voltage separate of the power system - land line phones are fairly robust as a result. We lose power frequently where I live (12 hours is not that rare) but the phone continues to work. I think gas and water are similarly backed up at the remote distribution points. it is also a function of pressure. Water systems usually have pressure tanks in them to help prevent the pumps from running continuously. So the water gas and phone would work as long as the diesel holds. I have been in the main repeater station near here and it had a huge generator and what looked like a 3000gallon tank of diesel.

hope that helps -really not such a stupid question...

:D

-G

[Keith_McClary]

gas to cook was OK

The pumps that move the gas are powered by ... gas.
Of course there is an elaborate computerized system controlling all the pumps and valves, hopefully this has it's own backup power. Diesel?

[Whitecrab]

I recall during the big NE blackout one year ago, Toronto had enough water to last them a few days and it could be pumped ok. And their sewage had back-up power. However, some pumps weren't working, so it ended up they had so many litres they could pump, but they couldn't refill their well of clean water for the city.

Just worth thinking about all the things that last for a 1 hour blackout, but maybe not a 1 week one...

[Cool Hand Linc]

In more populated areas. Most water systems are set up so the water is pumped into a tower or tank. I have seen several types. Some have a smaller base and near the top a big rounded storage tank. Some are simply round from top to bottom.

Here in the Tulsa Oklahoma area. We pump water from several lakes in the area to 2 separate treatment facilities. The water is treated as is needed to meet local, state and federal standards. Then it is pumped to the towers that are located at many locations throughout the city and the local cities and towns. These towers serve several functions. One is to provide a temporary holding tank with a column of water. This column is the answer to your part of the question relating to water. The column of water gives what is known as "head pressure". This is what 'pushes the water to my house.

So in this local area. The answer is we have a few days of water in these towers. If the pumps to refill can't run we still can have water for several days. Longer if people do not wash cars and water lawns.

I am not sure if this method is used in your area or not.

Phones? Here the phone company and several other critical companys have generators that can come online in 1/2 a cycle. What this is referring to is our electricity here is 60 hertz or 60 cycles. When the computerized system detects the power failing. It will start the generator system and throw a switch the cuts the link to the local power company and at the same instant. Attaches to the generated power. So in my area, the telephones and cellular phones will normally continue to function even if the gride goes down.

Gas?

Our gas here locally has a system that pumps it at a high enough pressure then decreases the pressure to the customer. That it would take some time before the pumps being shut down would be noticed.

Most residences us gas in the ounces of pressure. The company I currently work for uses 2 pounds of pressure and the last company used a higher pressure for end usage of 5 pounds. The pressure in the lines is locally about 120 pounds in main lines and steps down as the line size gets smaller. In residentual areas it will drop to 20 pounds.

I am not an expert on the gas pressures so we could have somebody out there that can give better numbers on main line pressures. The pressures from my companies are good numbers because I rebuild a regulator from my last job and then we found at one point that furnaces at the end of the line we a problem and increasing from 3 pounds to 5 resolved these problems.

[Barbara]

Since I live in Rome, maybe there's something to add. Our city mayor is always very proud to say that our water system still lies on the ancient Roman water system. With some modernization, of course, but we are still using the same infrastructure to bring water from mountains to the city.
And if we think that ancient Romans bring water to the taps (yes, they had taps!) of a city of ONE million without a single drop of oil, maybe we'll not that screwed!
Any way, I'll do some research and see what I can find.