Power Protection FEATURED ARTICLE

One of the guilty pleasures shared in our house is watching the show, Supernatural. My college-aged son introduced us on a visit home earlier this summer, showing us we had access to almost 200 episodes on Netflix. While the show has its fair share of cheese, we were drawn in nonetheless and soon learned that when the power flickers violently and then goes out, the demons have arrived. This is something I never considered I would need power protection against in everyday life.

While I don’t really expect demons or others “supernatural” entities to interfere with my power source, it’s still a good reminder that power outages happen at unexpected times and have the potential to cause significant damage. While the show generally couples blasted out windows, doors ripped off hinges and other extremes with the power outages, real life may simply find blown motherboards or lost data to be more common.

One habit we tend to have is to assume that the equipment associated with power providers is the least likely to cause a power outage. After all, this type of equipment is generally more involved in power protection and power restoration. In Montana recently, and featured in the Montana Standard, a boom truck was responsible for the power outage, which left Emerson (News - Alert) Elementary School students sitting in the dark.

At roughly 1 p.m., a boom truck accidently snapped a phone, TV and cable fiber optic wire, an activity that shook the utility poles so violently that an automatic breaker shut down all power. The breaker did exactly what it was designed to do, yet the fiber optic cable fell onto a vehicle trying to enter the street. Fortunately, no damage occurred and no lower lines fell, keeping all within range safe.

The outage overall really only affected roughly 30 homes and businesses, while the elementary school was in the dark for about an hour. School officials tend to prefer to avoid such interruptions, installing power protection equipment where appropriate. On the flipside, students in some cases may have been celebrating the interruption to their workday.

This latest report of an unexpected power outage points to the importance of power protection, regardless of your environment. Power can go out in any circumstances and if you want to protect information, people and resources, it’s important to have specific equipment in place. Minuteman has built a strong reputation in providing the devices necessary to ensure you don’t lose equipment or data when incidents occur.

While it’s not likely that Sam and Dean Winchester will appear in your town anytime soon, even the local boom truck could be a hazard. Don’t leave yourself vulnerable.