Tri-Rail Moves for Faster Hurricane Rebound, Slow to recover from Wilma Options

[NickG]

From the Palm Beach Post, 11/15/05:

Thirteen days is too long for Tri-Rail to be out of service after a hurricane, its leaders said Monday, agreeing to develop a plan for a quicker recovery after the next storm hits South Florida.

The full story is here.

[KevinKorell]

With all of the hurricanes that have hit Southern Florida in the past few years, one would think that this issue has already been addressed. Andrew was one of the worst hurricanes ever to hit the Miami area, and that was in 1992. Tri-Rail began in 1989, pre-dating Andrew by over three years. So was anything done after that one?

[AlanB]

While they mention the lack of power as being part of the problem, one does need to understand the magnatude of the power problem. Wilma knocked down more power poles and telephone poles (which also carry power lines), than all three hurricanes that hit the State of Florida during last year's hurricane season.

The state took a huge hit from a hurricane that only lasted about 24 hours from start to finish across the state. Tri-rail basically covers three counties in Florida, Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach. Those three counties had outages of 862,800; 956,500; and 663,500 respectively. Those three counties accounted for 3/4 of the 3.2 million customers in Florida who lost power thanks to Wilma.

Having seperate transmission lines for the tracks would not have made any difference, unless they ran directly from a power plant to the corridor. Even then, it's doubtful that those lines would have stayed up any better than did the lines affecting the almost 2.5 million customers in the Tri-rail service area.

[KevinKorell]

I am reminded too of one storm that hit the Jacksonville area, affecting CSX's home base of operations. This actually affected freight, commuter, and Amtrak service as far away as Virginia, Massachusetts, and Michigan! Some redundancies need to be built. Disaster recovery, if you will, something any smart company has to keep in mind.