WEST OCEAN CITY Amidst
last Saturday's massive blackout, at
least one shining light in the dark-
ness was the Wine Rack on Route
50 in West Ocean City, thanks to a
state initiative launched last sum-
mer.In August, the Maryland Energy
Administration (MEA), in conjunc-
tion with other public and private
sector partners, officially launched
its "Fuel Up Maryland" program at
the Wine Rack in West Ocean City.
The program provided $1.7 million
in grant funding for private sector
gas stations and fuel distributors
along designated emergency evac-
uation routes across the state to
wire their facilities and install back-
up emergency generators in the
event of a major storm or other ex-
tensive power outage.
The concept was borne out of the
nightmare situation that occurred in
New Jersey and New York during
Super Storm Sandy in October
2012. As a result, over 600 gas sta-
tions within a half a mile of designat-
ed emergency evacuation routes
from West Ocean City to western
Maryland were eligible to apply for
individual grants of up to $15,000 to
pre-wire their facilities for the instal-
lation of permanent or temporary
generators.
The Wine Rack in West Ocean
City and its parent company, Ocean
Petroleum, was the first to apply for
and receive the state grant and
spent the latter part of the summer
installing the emergency generators
at its facilities on Route 50 and in
north Ocean City.
When the power went out just
before dark last Saturday, the emer-
gency generator at the West Ocean
City Wine Rack tripped on immedi-
ately. While the outage in West
Ocean City lasted just about two
hours, the outages in neighboring
areas went on considerably longer.
For those few dark hours, however,
the Wine Rack was the only game
in town for many needing gas and
other supplies.
"It worked just as it was designed
to do," said Ocean Petroleum Chief
Operating Officer Steve Ladd this
week. "It was the first time other
than some testing that it was uti-
lized, and it came on automatically
as planned. It worked out just fine."
Ladd said the Wine Rack just re-
cently completed the installation of
an automatic switch that triggers
when an outage occurs. Before that
was completed, a store staffer would
have to hit a switch to manually
change over to generator power.
"We just got the automatic switch
in place a couple of weeks ago," he
said. "It was seamless. We wouldn't
necessarily know we had even
switched over to generator power."
New Generator
Kept Wine Rack
Open In Outage
January 17, 2014
Page 23
The Dispatch/Maryland Coast Dispatch
By SHAWN J. SOPER
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