THE BEAVER MILITIA STILL GOING STRONG?

Manhole explosions blow the lid off city-wide integrity problem

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/World/Americas/2000-06/explosion160600.shtml
American Times, Washington

By Andrew Marshall

16 June 2000

When it exploded, I was at the bar of the Guards restaurant in
Georgetown, half way through the prime rib. It sounded a very heavy door
being slammed several blocks away. Out on M Street, the lights flickered
and went out. It had happened again.

There are foreign postings where such an event would send you running
for cover, or dashing out with your camera. Washington isn't one of
them. There is lots of violence in America, but not in Georgetown, the
Hampstead of the US. Much as I may imagine myself in Saigon c.1968, the
closest I come to raw excitement and adventure is when the air
conditioning packs up.

But no-one turned a hair as we heard the blast. "Manhole cover," said my
friend. "Mmmm," I replied, prodding the steak. In recent months, manhole
covers have been exploding in Washington with grim regularity. In
February, an explosion blew off three.

In March, three more popped nearer the centre of the city within days of
each other.

The Washington Post explained all this at the weekend. "Manhole
Explosions Frequent, Unreported," it said. The euphoniously-named Petula
Dvorak explained that 20 such incidents have been reported this year,
but there were 52 explosions last year.

What we had heard was not, technically, a manhole-cover explosion. It
was a fireball that shot from a grating. Electricity workers had been
repairing a high-voltage cable, which had caught fire and blown off a
manhole cover the previous Sunday, and when the power to the 13,000-volt
cable was switched back on, it short-circuited. An older splice in the
wire failed, releasing a fireball of energy through the tunnel.

Washington's mayor, Anthony Williams, is a go-getting, Blairite kind of
a chap, and when the going gets tough, the tough form a task force.

It seems to have missed the point, focusing over-literally on the
manhole covers. "The number one recommendation is that we need to
increase inspections of manholes," said Peter LaPorte, director of the
Emergency Management Agency. They are looking at manhole covers that
won't blow off – either because they are gratings or because they are
tied down.

What was not addressed quite so specifically is why they keep leaping
into the air in the first place. One would have thought that a series of
incredibly violent explosions under the streets of America's capital
would create a sense of alarm, but apparently not so.

These things weigh 80 pounds. Eventually a manhole cover will go off
with someone important nearby – Senator Jesse Helms, the ageing
right-winger perhaps – and someone will get seriously hurt.

Herbert Harris Jr, of Washington's Consumer Utility Board, made the
quote of the day: "The Georgetown incident is the unfortunate launching
pad for us to look at the integrity of the substructure and systems,
especially as we enter this competitive and deregulated environment."

The city is blaming the age of the infrastructure, some of which goes
back (gasp) a century. London has been around since the Romans, and if
age were the problem then walking through the City would be like
crossing a minefield with detonating street furniture turning Cheapside
into a scene from Apocalypse Now.

The truth is that Washington is falling to bits. The streets are more
carved up than a Thanksgiving Turkey and riddled with potholes; the
infrastructure is collapsing and the phone system consists largely of
wire strung across alleys and nailed to the wall.

In Europe, this sort of thing was organised by big government
departments with stodgy bureaucracies enforcing long, dreary sets of
rules and funded by relatively heavy taxation.

This makes Americans groan. It stifles enterprise, they say, and retards
innovation. And they are right, in some ways. America is a more dynamic
society where things get done quickly and where results matter more than
precedent. Taxes are lower and the private sector gets things done
however it chooses.

It also means that sometimes when you go out for dinner, you wonder
whether you're about to lose a leg.

++++++++++++++++

BACKGROUND

THE BEAVER MILITIA
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/config.pl?read=895

KING BEAVER TRAPPED--EXPERIMENTAL LAB ANIMAL
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/config.pl?read=896

CHERRY TREE BEAVER UPDATE
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/config.pl?read=897

BEAVERS RESETTLED
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/config.pl?read=903

ART BELL AND THE REST OF THE POST
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/config.pl?read=2513

THE REST OF THE POST
http://www.rumormillnews.com/cgi-bin/config.pl?read=2514