- Wednesday July 22nd 1998
- Bella Mia, Inc.
- Press Release
July 22-98
At approximately 1:27PM Tuesday July
21st, 1998 Bella Mia, Inc., dba Maria's
Internet Access lost power to its Spring
Prairie location. The outage was caused by
a massive storm front which included,
hail, terenchal rains, thunder storms,
lightning, shear winds, gail force, and
hurricane force winds in excess of 104
miles per hour. The devastation left by
the storm left an estimated 100,000 people
without power around most of Southeastern
Wisconsin. The entire town of Burlington
and the surrounding cities and townships
including Browns Lake, Bohners Lake,
Spring Prairie, and Lyons we left without
power. The towns of Waterford and
Rochester were also affected. The town of
Elkhorn was nearly demolished, leaving 911
service, power, and the Walworth County
Sheriffs department helpless. The storm
also left several semi tractor trailers
overturned from I-94 to Hyway 11. The town
of Elkhorn was essentially closed during
the outage. The Governor came in to
Elkhorn to provide State and Federal Aid
and Assistance upon assessing the damage.
Here at Bella Mia, Inc's facilities our
UPS(battery back systems) kicked on
immediately after the 1:27PM outage. Our
battery power was exhausted in less than
30minutes for the most part. This was due
to the fact that we had previously been on
battery back up due to the previous days
storms impacting in Walworth county.
Unfortunately problems with our backup
generator led us to seek out a new one.
Within 20 minutes of our outage we located
a generator and began moving our system
over to it. However due to the nature of
our equipment and the drain that our
batteries had taken in the previous
outage, we were unable to get the
generator to power up. Therefore the
decision was made to move the batteries to
our Lake Geneva residence to restore them
enough so that they would work with the
temporary generator. While charging the
batteries in Lake Geneva, the power was
finally restored at 11:26AM Wednesday July
22nd, 1998. The last of our systems were
back on line at 12:00 noon. Any incoming
mail would have been picked up by our back
up servers in Milwaukee. Our mail servers
here will be pounding away all day
retrieving the overflow of backed up mail
messages. You should expect to see some
latency upon retrieving message for at
least a day. I am glad to say that none of
our systems we damaged and no incoming
mail or data was destroyed.
Here at Bella Mia, Inc., we have 5 UPS
units each capable of handling 4000 watts
of power each under normal conditions for
up to 6 hours at 50% of capacity. Between
the two outages there was not sufficient
time to recharge the units prior to losing
power again on Tuesday afternoon. We have
decided to replace our current system with
either a diesel/natural gas generator
similar to the ones used by the phone
company to keep phone lines up in the
event of disasters.
We appreciate your understanding during
this tragic time and natural disaster. I
would like to thank the brave men and
women at Wisconsin Electric for their
assistance and prompt efforts in restoring
power in such a timely manner, while
working in dangerous and harsh conditions.
Also law enforcement, rescue persons, and
the Red Cross for their help in making
sure the elderly, and powerless were safe
and cool in this hot humid weather.
We really take for granted all of the
wonders modern society has: power, cable,
telephones, etc., what on earth would we
all do without these things?
If you have any questions or comments,
please direct them to
questions@mia.net
Regards,
Mia.Net
Bella Mia, Inc. is a
privately held corporation in the state of
Wisconsin. Since April of 1997 Bella Mia,
Inc. (Maria's Internet Access) has been
providing local dial up Internet access,
web hosting, server colocation, and
consultation services, together with
KingBloom Design, providing only the best
in Graphic Illustration, design, and web
site promotion since 1994. When you've
tried the rest and want the best, you
always choose Maria's Internet
Access
