Even before the massive power outage had struck India at the end of July there existed in the United States strong and increasingly vocal calls to address infrastructure problems. A growing list of problems of aging and deteriorating infrastructure, lack of investment in new projects or repairs, and pressures on the infrastructure associated with an expanding population, have all been the focus of a stream of articles, books, independent commissions, lobbying efforts, and speeches.

Following the events in India, that left over half the population of 1.2 billion without electricity for hours, the calls for the growing problems with the U.S. infrastructure to be dealt with increased in both intensity and number. The continuing impact of record heat in the United States and damage to electricity distribution as the result of violent storms associated with the heat wave has only added to the sense of frustration and angst for the future.

Aaron Jagdfeld, president and chief executive officer of Generac Power Systems in Waukesha, WI, wrote an article for Forbes entitled “India-Style Blackout Could Strike the U.S.,” in which he notes that from the early 1990s, “demand for power has increased by 25%, but the infrastructure needed to transmit power to homes has increased by a mere 7%.” On the website of the magazine Popular Mechanics, Glenn Harlan Reynolds argued in his article, “U.S. Woefully Unprepared for a Blackout Like India’s: Analysis,” that “despite its advanced grid, the U.S. needs major improvements in infrastructure and preparedness to be ready for a major power loss.”

In a piece entitled “Fear the grid,” Juliette Kayem writing in the Boston Globe, said: “India is not the United States, obviously, and such a debilitating power outage throughout this country is impossible to imagine – but more blackouts of the sort that struck the Northeast in 2003 are quite foreseeable. We’re not India, but we’re not doing all we should to update a vastly outmoded grid system.” Finally, the Center for Response and Security Lessons Learned, a Center within the Homeland Security Studies and Analysis Institute, the producer of this Homeland Security Forum, in a Hotwire Report entitled “What the Indian blackout means to the United States,” concluded: “The resilience of the U.S. electric grid should be of continual concern moving forward, as the needs of a response to, and recovery from, a catastrophic incident will be determined in advance, largely, by the ability of the power grid to bounce back.”