With the Big Freeze toll put at 130 or more and the earthquake toll at 55, we should probably be paying more attention to the former, since companies in the mid-west such as NCR Corp in Dayton must be finding life extremely trying as the power company sets rotating power cuts to prevent the entire grid collapsing under the demand – power utilities are typically switching out communities one at a time for 15 minutes in addition to reducing voltage by 5%, all of which plays havoc with electronic equipment – but the aftermath of the San Fernando Valley earthquake continues to generate most of the news, with Hewlett-Packard Co saying it has set up a command post at its Los Angeles sales office to handle customer calls and to provide a home base to customer-support engineers from around Southern California and neighbouring states – who have been drafted in from as far as Denver, Houston, San Diego and Mountain View to increase Southern California staff by up to 20%.
