Traffic safety was city's big concern during outage

Traffic and potential accidents at signalized intersections with no power were among the biggest concerns city officials had Wednesday, police Lt. Sandra Brown said.

With schools in session and hospitals diverting emergency cases to other facilities, Brown said the city's biggest concern was traffic.

The few traffic signals that were functioning were powered by backup generators, which were expected to last just six or seven hours, she said.

Approximately eight minor traffic accidents, scattered around the city, were attributed to the outage, Brown said, adding that eight to 10 accidents are typical for a rainy day.

For a time, the city was worried about losing water because there were 2 million gallons to be pumped with emergency generators with just six hours worth of backup generators. However, the generators were refueled, she said.

Nonetheless, the city was asking residents to conserve water.

Palo Alto police sent three officers this morning to help at East Palo Alto's command center. All other police personnel remained on duty in Palo Alto, Brown said.

Non-essential city workers were sent home, many to work in locations where they had power, Brown said. Essential personnel to staff phones, revenue services and emergency services remained on duty, she said.

An "Emergency Operations Center," with representatives from all essential city departments, was established in the basement of City Hall. Police Chief Dennis Burns and City Manager Jim Keene both worked from that spot.

Telephone and Internet service was provided to the operations center by a special truck from Cisco Systems Inc. that was parked outside City Hall.

Brown said the city received "hundreds" of 911 calls shortly after the power went out this morning, and asked that residents in the future reserve 911 calls for actual emergencies.

Without cell phone and Internet access herself, Brown said for a time she was relying on her husband in San Ramon to provide her with news about Palo Alto's outage.

"We as people need to thnk about the telecommunications issues better than we have been at this point, because when we go down we go down.

"I have a rotary phone that I keep in the closet at home so in an outage I can unplug the electric wireless system and put in my punch dial. Always keep an analog phone in your home, just like candles," Brown said.