Wednesday, February 1, 2012

Franklin County prepares for geomagnetic storms


Do you know what you would do if we were hit by a Geomagnetic Storm that knocked out the entire southeastern U.S. Power grid?

The local emergency management office is in the process of working on that scenario right now and will take part in a Statewide Geomagnetic Storm exercise later this year.

Powerful geomagnetic storms are rare but they do happen.

In 1989 one of the storms disrupted electric power distribution throughout most of Quebec province and caused aurorae which could be seen as far south as Texas.

The local planning scenario will be a geomagnetic storm significant enough to take out the entire Florida and for that matter the entire southeastern U.S. Power grid for an extended period of time as much as 30 days.

The emergency management office has scheduled two webinars for February 13th and 27th to educate people on what a geomagnetic storm is a how it might affect us.

On March 13th there will be a four-hour exercise conducted at the EOC to allow local stakeholder to develop some response options and plans.

The main reason for this exercise is to come up with a plan for a long period of no power and communications.

If you would like to take part in the exercise, you need to contact the Emergency Management office at the Apalachicola airport.

You can reach the office at 653-8977.


http://www.oysterradio.com e-mail manager@oysterradio.com with comments

No comments:

Post a Comment