Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

When it comes to the New York City Public School system, it can teach us a lesson even though most of us are well past our primary schooling years.

Last week New York Public School 138 in Crown Heights, New York took the brunt of a manhole fire when the electrical fire cut power to the school and 200 other buildings for three hours.

The outage began shortly before noon on Friday, according to the news site, DNAinfo New York, and electrical company Con Edison said the exact cause of the manhole fire was still being investigated but such accidents are often caused by road salt eroding wiring beneath the city’s roadways.

The school handled the outage reasonably well; staff worked to keep the kids cool and occupied during the three hours they were in the school with no power before school dismissal.

“We took them to the cafeteria, which was very cool, because we needed air,” said Public School 138 principal, Marie Chauvetshe. “Some of them we took to the yard, so they could have a chance to play, and took some of them to the gym with the gym teacher so they could do yoga.”

Some kids in the school were scared, but most didn’t mind. The overall response to the outage was typified by Destiny Mitchell, a 9-year-old at the school.

“When the lights are off, you have no work to do!” the fourth grader told DNAinfo New York.

This is exactly what businesses can learn from Public School 138: When power goes down, business stops.

While most of the children in the school were probably happy for the break, businesses are less pleased when the power goes out; power outages cost lots of lost man hours, and that’s if the business is lucky.

An unlucky business also can lose business due to outages, whether from customers unable to make purchases, deadlines missed, business reliability questioned, or other cause.

Every business relies on power much the same way that every person relies on air, and it is essential that businesses have a plan for when that flow of electricity is disrupted.

This starts with having a plan for when long power outages occur, such as shifting to another location or working from home, and having a solution for shorter outages such as backup power from providers such as Minuteman Power.

Minuteman sells uninterruptible power supplies that can keep the power flowing to servers, computers and key equipment in the event of a power failure. This can provide the crucial time to properly shut down equipment, shift to another location, save work and download files to keep on working in case of a longer disruption.

The kids in Crown Heights may have enjoyed the school break when the power went out, but that won’t be the same response for businesses that experience a power outage. So be prepared; manhole fires and other freak accidents can happen, and the consequences can be huge for the business that doesn’t have a backup power strategy in place.