| Power outages reveal lack of knowledge on critical infrastructure dependencies In his first statement made after the North American power outages, President Bush highlighted the key question raised by the disaster: why an isolated incident could have such far reaching effects on the power grid. Bush promised to instigate an investigation into the causes of the outage, a key part of which would be to “work out why the initial fault had such a massive domino effect on so many power stations”. The fact that such a domino effect occurred is both surprising and disappointing given the vital nature of critical infrastructure protection to Homeland security. The two years since 9/11 has given ample time for critical infrastructure dependencies to be mapped and acted upon. In fact assurances have been given that this has been the case. A rapid and well resourced investigation is now needed into the real state of knowledge on critical infrastructures in North America to ensure that such a domino effect cannot be repeated and, even more importantly, to ensure that the existing vulnerabilities are not exploited by terrorists. Author: David Honour, editor, Continuity Central.
•Date:
15th August 2003 • Region: N.America •Type:
Article •Topic: BC
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