On a power failure and a failure of power

A 15-hour outage caused by a storm in DC? The shocking truth: it wouldn't happen if the government gave people work

Dean Baker
guardian.co.uk, Monday 26 July 2010 18.00 BST

I was late with my column this morning. It was the first time I'd missed a deadline since I started college. This made me angry, not just because I hated to see a 34-year streak end, but more importantly, because of the reason I was late.

Sunday afternoon, a storm hit Washington. It knocked out the power not only in my house, approximately 3 miles from the White House, but also in large chunks of the city and suburbs. Fifteen hours later, we still don't have power.

Since temperatures were predicted to get into the 90s today, we can expect that people will die. Sick and elderly people who cannot get into an air-conditioned facility will have great difficulty surviving in such heat.