Power restored in rich areas first

In the current Cincinnati blackout (which continues days after it began), something rather interesting - but entirely predictable - was observed.

Listening to the radio (which offers brief, almost useless blackout updates between the long stretches of right-wing hate speech), we're told that power gets restored in this order: city, neighborhood, block, street, house. A whole city or neighborhood is supposed to come first because it has more customers than a single building.

But in reality, this order isn't followed. Reports from radio callers and my family members, plus my own observations, prove that power is actually being restored starting with the richer areas, working down to the poorer areas. There are exceptions, but by and large, this is the order that's followed. That much is absolutely clear.

I hope to be able to post a couple photos that illustrate this classism in one fell swoop. That affluent areas usually get power restored earlier is beyond dispute (much as it's long been clear that outages affect poor or working-class areas disproportionately).

Around 3 AM yesterday, I went for a little walk to see how far the outage went. Looking southwest through Bellevue, I could see that the power went on at about the point where the new rich condos are. Walking east through Dayton, Kentucky - a working-class town - no sign of electricity was seen throughout the length of the city.

Yet much smaller areas that have much higher income levels saw their power restored almost instantly.

Mad? You bet I am! And I know others are too. And not wrongly so either (unlike the spoiled crybabies on Freak Rethuglic who cry about people trespassing on "their" beaches). Much of this debacle could've been avoided in the first place. Even with 1,000,000 customers out, I don't believe that it has to take a week to restore of all of them. Not for one minute.

Incidentally, there's already been serious talk of a lawsuit against the power company.