I'm a police officer w/ the Indianapolis PD & would like to hear from all of you who worked during the blackouts.  Doesn't matter if your police, fire, or EMS.  What troubles did you have?  What did you do about food, water, what kind of shifts?  What did you dept. do about gas for cars, engines, ambulances?  Radio communication, etc.  Anything & everything you can tell me would be appreciated.  Things you wish your dept. had done differently or your glad they did do.  Any stories.  If you want to share, I'll be glad to hear it.  I feel it's a matter of time before it happens again and I want to know what to look for and  try to help my department to prepare for it.

What blackouts?

well radio communication was mostly down, but some of the frequencies worked, due to repeaters on station houses with generators, the gas  pumps were operating on manual, shifts were 12 hours....since the radio communication wasn't a hundred percent, 911 jobs were called into the precinct directly, and cops would come into the precinct to get assignments instead of having them given out over the air.  One of the biggest problems we had was that there is an ice making plant in the precinct i was in at the time, and there was a mini riot there with people trying to get blocks of ice.  Other than that...not really a whole lot of looting and not much more gun shots in the air than on a normal hot summer night.

We had a fire in the area that took out a major transfer power line several years ago.   It took 16 hours to re-establish power.   The Police Dept. generators kicked on like they always do on Mondays for test/eval runs, but we realized there was no backup deisel fuel around to be had without power.   Good thing we had enough.  

The city was very eerie the first night.   People drove around a little bit, lots of people on foot too.   Kinda scary to see the whole area dark.   No others problems to report, but if it had lasted another day or two, I think it would have been real bad.   By the way, our area does not have water wells, we have all oil wells.   Water is pumped in.   Tanks are about 2 million gallons and estaimated about 3 days worth if power is out.   In 4 days, it could get real bad.  

Quoted: Are you talking about the blackouts that affected a major portion of the Eastern US a couple of years ago? That was "fun"!

You can say that again. It took me 3 hours (usually a 40 minute drive) to get home, only to find out how bad it was and to have to go back.  Then spent the night doing meal reliefs for officers safeguarding stations on the R line in my own vehicle which was running low on gas because the gas pumps were out.  I spent the night at the Command because there was no way I'd have enough gas to get home and back.  Then I spent a 12 hour day safeguarding a station in a not so LE friendly area.  Radio contact was almost non existant.

They were calm in Brooklyn also.  It was just unsettleing watching groups walking down the streets with Tiki torches.

Quoted: They were calm in Brooklyn also.  It was just unsettleing watching groups walking down the streets with Tiki torches.

I think it was a lynch mob and you missed out on it!

Thanks for the answers folks.  I really appreciate it.  Yes I was refering to the blackouts that occured on the east coast/Canada.  We've had tornadoes hit 2 out of the last 3 years & both times we didn't have any radio comms.  I wanted to get an idea what it would be like w/out power.  Thanks again for sharing & be safe.

damn we had a black out in houston last week.  It was soooo bad the .gov was issuing m16s to the popo and emts/firefighters!  Even gave me one and i'm a volly firefighter.  Turns out the last explosion at the bp plant this week turned abunch of people into rioters.  They were everwhere.  I forgot my bob and that sucked bad!  We made a car fire they rioters started....we had to have minimum of 4 people on the truck.  one to pump, one to hose down the car and two to defend us with the m16s.   after an hour or so we realized that the rioters had started turning into zombies....unfortunatly they got the first linemen and i shot him to put him out of his missery.  after that we haud back to the station and barricaded ourselfs in.  Thats where i am still at now 1 1/2 weeks later...........

Quoted: damn we had a black out in houston last week.  It was soooo bad the .gov was issuing m16s to the popo and emts/firefighters!  Even gave me one and i'm a volly firefighter.  Turns out the last explosion at the bp plant this week turned abunch of people into rioters.  They were everwhere.  I forgot my bob and that sucked bad!  We made a car fire they rioters started....we had to have minimum of 4 people on the truck.  one to pump, one to hose down the car and two to defend us with the m16s.   after an hour or so we realized that the rioters had started turning into zombies....unfortunatly they got the first linemen and i shot him to put him out of his missery.  after that we haud back to the station and barricaded ourselfs in.  Thats where i am still at now 1 1/2 weeks later...........

bored or drunk?

Quoted: Quoted: damn we had a black out in houston last week.  It was soooo bad the .gov was issuing m16s to the popo and emts/firefighters!  Even gave me one and i'm a volly firefighter.  Turns out the last explosion at the bp plant this week turned abunch of people into rioters.  They were everwhere.  I forgot my bob and that sucked bad!  We made a car fire they rioters started....we had to have minimum of 4 people on the truck.  one to pump, one to hose down the car and two to defend us with the m16s.   after an hour or so we realized that the rioters had started turning into zombies....unfortunatly they got the first linemen and i shot him to put him out of his missery.  after that we haud back to the station and barricaded ourselfs in.  Thats where i am still at now 1 1/2 weeks later........... bored or drunk?

bored at work....wish i was drunk