As the Blackout of '08 enters its sixth day with still over 100,000 customers in the dark - disproportionately in poor or working-class neighborhoods - I've got a couple photos up showing the economic disparity that I first pointed out days ago. Both these photos are from Sunday night. (They'll count as Roads Scholaring photos when I have enough for a set.)
First there's this:
(http://i36.tinypic.com/35a3b0z.jpg)
The foreground is in working-class Bellevue, Kentucky. The only lights are taillights of a passing car. On the hill behind Bellevue though is the relatively well-off east side of Cincinnati. Look what eastern Cincinnati has that Bellevue doesn't have. That's right. Lights.
Another pic:
(http://i37.tinypic.com/oqg8it.jpg)
This photo illustrates this phenomenon perhaps even more clearly. The only lights in Bellevue are car lights and the camera flash reflecting off traffic signs. On Cincinnati's east side, however, lights are clearly visible.
This part of Bellevue remained in this sorry predicament until Tuesday.
Now that we have photo evidence, are people going to deny that more affluent areas got power restored quicker?
I'm not even the only person who's noticed this inequality.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Photos show blackout disparity
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I don't know why certain areas are getting power before others, but I doubt any form of prejudice is taking effect in it. Where my parents live is usually the last place to get power back in storms, but our power came back on in the first night.
ReplyDeleteAlso, there are still rich (and boy do I mean rich) areas near Independence that are still without power when the lower-middle class area that Brian's parents live in got power back the very next day.
A lot of areas where effected by this storm and electrical companies probably do not have enough crews to get things working as fast as some might like. Plus other areas where effected worse than others. Especially so for Dayton/Bellevue/Newport. It's only natural to expect it to take a few more days.
They're working as hard as they can, I really wish people would realize that and cut them some slack.
6 days is ridiculous given the circumstances..
ReplyDeleteDayton and Price Hill (working class) had to wait much longer than Burlington, etc. (McMansions). I looked at the map and the rich areas still out (as of last night) are usually single houses. Working class places with thousands of houses still have NO power.
The crews they called up that are based in North Carolina didn't even get on the road until late Monday...and it's a twelve hour drive. If they called them up a day earlier, a lot of places would have had power a day earlier.