Ready or Not...

Recent earthquakes have demonstrated generally good per formance, but the 30-40-year service life of some equipment means that much of the in service equipment and installation practices reflect practice prior to the first issuing of IEEE 693 in 1997. However, areas at moderate and high risk of large events in midwest and eastern United States need to imple ment IEEE 693. Qualification practices in the standard for transformer bushing need to be improved, and methods for incorporating conductor dynamics into qualification test procedures remains to be done. Recent long-duration earthquakes raise questions about the adequacy of the RRS, particularly for sites that qualify equipment to the moderate level. Most earthquakes in the western United States that have impacted densely populated areas have been moderate events, and we have no experience with great earthquakes such as a repeat of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake or a large subduction zone earthquake in the northwestern United States. There is a need for better documentation of the performance of distributions systems and for utility personnel to document damage with pictures before cleanup and repairs begin. There is a need to accommodate good seismic and electrical practices in the installation of surge arresters associated with transformer bushings.