Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

For those who believe in such things, it might seem like the end is nigh in California. Word of the state’s ongoing drought seems to get worse with each passing news cycle, and now comes news of animals falling from the sky and fires scorching the landscape. What’s going on here?

According to a story in the La Jolla Patch, officials believe a widespread brush fire this week was caused by a hawk. The story seems to have developed thusly:

Officials say early on Tuesday, June 9, a hawk was flying back to its nest with a tasty snake locked in its talons. They say some part the bird of prey (or the dangling snake – it might be Karma at work here) came in contact with a high-voltage power line in La Jolla’s Sorrento Valley. You can see where this is going.

The hawk was electrocuted, the wires shorted out and fell to the ground, and a fire in the bone-dry brush broke out. As this all happened around 5:45 in the morning, it took a few minutes for the wires to fall, the fire to spread, someone to notice and fire crews to be notified. By the time they arrived, the flames had spread to nearly four acres and were climbing up a hillside. It took some 80 firefighters plus three helicopter water-drops to bring the blaze under control.

Meanwhile, power was knocked out to more than 400 utility customers in the Torrey Pines, Sorrento Valley and University City neighborhoods. Although service was later restored, the damage had been done.

While not many people might have been working at that early hour, anyone who was working on a computer might have lost all their current data due to the sudden outage. It just serves to drive home the message that an uninterruptible power supply, or UPS might come in handy under such a scenario. A UPS gives you precious time to save data or log off safely before all is lost.

Unlike the unlucky hawk (and snake) you have options. Just don’t wait until it’s too late. Like the hawk.