Tag Archives: blackout

Electricity Goes Off… At Beirut’s International Airport

With my flight a few hours away, this news is surely reassuring. At 11:15 am today, electricity went off at Beirut’s International Airport (or the Rafic Hariri International Airport as they call it these days). (Source).

Personnel rushed to get the situation fixed. The problem seemed to have originated straight from the source: EDL.

I wonder, if this had happened at night, how many people would have died? Don’t they even have backup generators that would ignite the moment anything of the sort happens to ensure smooth and continuous electrical coverage?

It seems even our most important facilities as a country are going down the drain. And what a splendid image we’re giving to those visiting. The moment they land… bye electricity… yes, this is the way things are here. Better get used to it by now.

Ahla w sahla fikon bi Lebnen. 

Congratulations Lebanon. The Whole Country Won’t Have Electricity Tonight!

EDL held a meeting this afternoon – exceptionally – to bestow upon us the good news. (Source).

You don’t get electricity. I don’t get electricity. We ALL don’t get electricity.

What’s electricity useful for again?

Why do they want to bring the whole country into blackout? Because EDL HQ have apparently been occupied by workers who don’t really work and who are displeased by the decision to let them off.

Therefore, somehow, making the whole country suffer is the way those whose jobs are safe at EDL decide to retaliate .

I guess those 2 or 3 hours were also considered as too much for people like us.

I never thought I’d say this but I actually want Gebran Bassil to come out winning of this. Enough with the pandering of nonexistent resources. Enough with useless workers breaking the back of whatever we have left in our coffers. Enough with politicians getting their people a job they will never attend to just because they need their votes every few years.

To all you couples out there, candlelight dinners are especially romantic. Perhaps the state of hopelessness will get you to seek a higher degree of comfort… if you know what I mean.

Is All of Lebanon’s Internet Resting on the IMEWE Cable?

Two whole-country blackouts in one week. Both lasted for a few hours during which the entirety of Lebanon was disconnected from the grid, adding to its disconnections in electricity and water – because we are not allowed to have a 24/7 sector that runs smoothly in the country.

It could be that we decided to feel compassion to the people of Virginia in the US, bracing themselves through massive storms. We can’t let them be the only people on the globe who are suffering through internet disconnections?

Let’s hope the Americans can be appreciative.

But sarcasm aside, how come all of Lebanon’s internet rests on the state of one cable: IMEWE, the one we got connected to not long ago?

Don’t we have other cables, such as Cadmus, that also connect Lebanon to the grid? Where are those cables when something happens to IMEWE?

Don’t we have a backup plan in case anything happens to IMEWE? Can’t we revert to the old bandwidth that was enough to sustain connectivity although not speed (dismal as the current one may be) in case something happens to this cable?

And regarding IMEWE, how come a cable that cost millions upon millions of dollars is having this many problems? Two blackouts this week alone with the total number of blackouts increasing the further you go back in your observation. And why are the problems only centered in Lebanon? Alexandria, for instance, another location that gets bandwidth from the cable is not suffering from the blackouts we are having.

They want to let you think Lebanese internet has gotten better. But what good is an extra Mbps in speed when you can’t even use it for hours and hours? What good is the internet that comes from a cable that’s looking to be more fragile than an osteoporotic woman’s bones?

With this many recurrent problems with the IMEWE cable, perhaps the ministry of telecommunications should look into the main problem leading to the blackouts and not patch it up in a few hours so it happens again a few days later.

In all my years as an internet user, all of which have been in Lebanon, there has never been as many internet blackouts as we’ve had since our internet got “better.”