Exclusive: Google Ventures beefs up fund size to $300 million a year

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google will increase the cash it allocates to its venture-capital arm to up to $300 million a year from $200 million, catapulting Google Ventures into the top echelon of corporate venture-capital funds.

Access to that sizeable checkbook means Google Ventures will be able to invest in more later-stage financing rounds, which tend to be in the tens of millions of dollars or more per investor.

It puts the firm on the same footing as more established corporate venture funds such as Intel's Intel Capital, which typically invests $300-$500 million a year.

"It puts a lot more wood behind the arrow if we need it," said Bill Maris, managing partner of Google Ventures.

Part of the rationale behind the increase is that Google Ventures is a relatively young firm, founded in 2009. Some of the companies it backed two or three years ago are now at later stages, potentially requiring larger cash infusions to grow further.

Google Ventures has taken an eclectic approach, investing in a broad spectrum of companies ranging from medicine to clean power to coupon companies.

Every year, it typically funds 40-50 "seed-stage" deals where it invests $250,000 or less in a company, and perhaps around 15 deals where it invests up to $10 million, Maris said. It aims to complete one or two deals annually in the $20-$50 million range, Maris said.

LACKING SUPERSTARS

Some of its investments include Nest, a smart-thermostat company; Foundation Medicine, which applies genomic analysis to cancer care; Relay Rides, a carsharing service; and smart-grid company Silver Spring Networks. Last year, its portfolio company HomeAway raised $216 million in an initial public offering.

Still, Google Ventures lacks superstar companies such as microblogging service Twitter or online bulletin-board company Pinterest. The firm's recent hiring of high-profile entrepreneur Kevin Rose as a partner could help attract higher-profile deals.

Soon it could have even more cash to play around with. "Larry has repeatedly asked me: 'What do you think you could do with a billion a year?'" said Maris, referring to Google chief executive Larry Page.

(Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)

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“Dancing” co-host Brooke Burke has thyroid cancer

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – “Dancing with the Stars” co-host Brooke Burke said on Thursday that she has been diagnosed with thyroid cancer and will need surgery.

The television presenter and model said in a three-minute video posted on the website Modernmom.com that she will need her thyroid removed.

“I need to have thyroid surgery and a thyroidectomy, which means I’m going to have a nice, big scar right here on neck,” Burke said, drawing a finger across her throat.

Burke, a former winner of ABC’s celebrity ballroom dancing competition, said she had a biopsy in July, but it had taken her months to go public with the results.

“I’m ready to deal with it, and I’m going to be fine,” she said.

There was no word on when the surgery would take place, but Burke’s publicist said her work schedule for “Dancing with the Stars” would not be affected.

Burke, 47, said in July that her doctor suggested she undergo a thyroid ultrasound after he felt a lump in her neck during a routine physical.

The thyroid is a gland in the neck that produces hormones that regulate vital body functions, such as heart rate and blood pressure.

Burke’s co-host Tom Bergeron said on Thursday during an appearance on the CBS chat show “The Talk” that he had known about her condition for several months. “We are all there with her,” he said.

“I’ve known about this for a few months … I have had experience with this in my family. You never want to hear the word cancer. But thyroid cancer is one of the most treatable cancers. It has an incredibly high success rate,” he said.

(Reporting By Eric Kelsey; Editing by Jill Serjeant)

Celebrity News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Ask an Expert: Wondering About Alzheimer’s? Ask Here

This week’s Ask the Expert features Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy, who will answer questions related to Alzheimer’s disease and memory loss. He is a professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center and an author of “The Alzheimer’s Action Plan.” Dr. Doraiswamy has also served as an adviser to government agencies, advocacy groups and businesses.

About five million Americans today live with Alzheimer’s disease, and a new diagnosis is made about every 70 seconds. Cases are expected to triple over the coming decades as baby boomers age.

Misperceptions and misdiagnoses are common about Alzheimer’s, which ranks second to only cancer among diseases that adults fear the most. Many people do not understand that there are dozens of causes for memory loss besides Alzheimer’s, including many that can be fully reversed if caught early.

Among the questions Dr. Doraiswamy is prepared to answer:

What are the best tests to determine if it is or isn’t Alzheimer’s?

How do you determine your own risk?

What are the family-care options? Medications for memory? Medications for behavior problems? Preventive strategies?

What has been learned from the latest clinical trials?

How can you improve your memory?

Please leave your questions in the comments section. Answers will be posted on Wednesday.

You can follow Booming via RSS here or visit nytimes.com/booming.

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Debt Ceiling Complicates a Tax Shift

WASHINGTON — Come January, should Congress fail to act, the United States will face more than immense tax increases and spending cuts. It will also run out of room to finance its large running deficits.

The Treasury Department expects the country to hit its debt ceiling, a legal limit on the amount the government is allowed to borrow, close to the end of the year. That would give Congress only a matter of weeks to raise the ceiling, now about $16.4 trillion, before sending financial markets into a panic.

Congressional leaders have made clear that the debt ceiling will be part of the intense negotiations over the so-called fiscal cliff, with many members unwilling to raise the ceiling without a broader deal. That has raised financial analysts’ worries of a financial market panic over the ceiling in addition to the slow bleed of the tax increases and spending cuts.

Congressional action is required to raise the debt limit. The Treasury can jostle payments for a few months. But expenses will eventually overwhelm revenue, putting the administration in the position of choosing which bills to pay. It might stop paying soldiers, for instance, or sending Social Security payments.

In 2011, Congressional Republicans would not raise the debt ceiling without a broader agreement to cut the country’s deficit and set it on a better fiscal path. The impasse over finding spending cuts and tax increases to do that led to the creation of the spending cuts on Jan. 1, the same time the Bush-era tax cuts were set to expire.

The threat that the country might not pay all its bills caused a slump in financial markets and led in August 2011 to the first downgrade of the nation’s credit rating. It left broader economic scars, too. Many economists contend it hurt economic growth and jobs.

A July report by the Government Accountability Office found that the delay in raising the debt limit increased the country’s borrowing costs by about $1.3 billion in the 2011 fiscal year. “However, this does not account for the multiyear effects on increased costs for Treasury securities that will remain outstanding after fiscal year 2011,” the report noted, adding that the debt-limit fight diverted Treasury’s time and resources from other priorities.

This year, Congress will have time to negotiate a broader debt deal before needing to raise the ceiling, even if negotiations spill into January. But the ceiling will be a card in the complex political game that the White House, Senate Democrats and Congressional Republicans are playing.

Much as Democrats see President Obama’s veto threat over an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts for the highest earners as leverage over Republicans, some Republicans see the need to raise the debt ceiling as leverage over the White House, Republican aides said.

Even if the stakes do not get that high, both parties view lifting the debt ceiling as part of the fiscal-cliff negotiations, and they do not expect Congress to raise it outside of a broader deal.

“Resolving the issues surrounding the fiscal cliff, especially the replacement of the sequester, and the next debt limit increase (likely necessary in February) will require that the president get serious about real entitlement reform,” Representative Eric Cantor of Virginia, the House majority leader, said in a letter to conservatives this week, as printed on The Hill Web site.

That has Democrats warning Republicans not to risk the country’s credit rating and broader financial stability again.

“They tried it before: ‘We’re going to shut down the government. We’re not going to raise the debt limit,’ ” Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, told reporters this week. “They want to go through that again? Fine, but we’re not going to be held subject to something that was done as a matter of fact in all previous administrations.”

Economists have warned that the political posturing over the debt ceiling has enormously dangerous economic consequences — even more so than last year, given the threat of huge tax increases and spending cuts hitting households at the same time.

On Wall Street, analysts have tended to use terms like “apocalypse” and “global catastrophe” to describe what might happen should Congress not lift the ceiling.

This week, Fitch, the credit rating agency, threatened a downgrade to the nation’s credit rating if Congress cannot find a timely resolution.

“Failure to reach even a temporary arrangement to prevent the full range of tax increases and spending cuts implied by the fiscal cliff and a repeat of the August 2011 debt ceiling episode would mean that the general election had not resolved the political gridlock in Washington and likely result in a sovereign rating downgrade by Fitch,” analysts at the agency said in a statement on Wednesday.

HSBC analysts this week warned clients of “echoes of 2011” in the uncertainty and market volatility the ceiling might cause.

And economists at the International Monetary Fund cautioned that the unstable situation in the United States might have international ripple effects.

“For now, a lack of political agreement keeps uncertainty about the fiscal road map unresolved,” the fund said in a global risk assessment. “Although bond yields remain low, when contentious political decisions — such as raising the debt ceiling — have come due in the past, uncertainty about the outcome led to unfavorable market reactions.”

But other analysts said they would be surprised if the debate over the ceiling became the debacle it did last year. Many Congressional aides said neither side had any interest in causing market panic for political gain.

“Markets are now starting to become the disciplinarians,” said Diane Swonk, chief economist at Mesirow Financial in Chicago. “C.E.O.’s are finally stepping up to the plate and saying, ‘Excuse me, we can’t do this.’ And that puts political donations and jobs on the line.”

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After Sandy, rescuers are tired but are ready for another storm

BRICK TOWNSHIP, N.J. — John Frankowski's bayside home was badly flooded during Superstorm Sandy, and he lost two cars in his garage. But as a nor'easter dumped a cruel coating of snow here Wednesday, he finished his eight-hour shift as a volunteer firefighter, then got ready for his night job as facilities inspector for the local school district.

"I'm just so drained," said Frankowski, 45, who goes by the nickname Seaside Johnnie. "But there are people worse off than I am. I've been doing this nine years. It's in my blood. Plus it helps take my mind off my own situation."

His situation is not unusual in the sodden, shivering Jersey Shore towns hit hardest by Sandy last week. First responders — firefighters, police, ambulance drivers and other emergency personnel — were among the tens of thousands of people whose homes were wrecked and lives upended.

Here in Brick Township, which includes barrier island communities that were scoured by Sandy, at least 10 volunteer firefighters and six police officers saw their homes flooded or worse. Electricity is still out, gas lines have been turned off, and piles of debris line the roads. Officials issued a mandatory evacuation order for waterfront areas before the nor'easter hit, so the shoreline was deserted.

The homeless first responders still show up for work every day. One volunteer firefighter made the commute easy by moving his wife and young son into a borrowed recreational vehicle and parking it next to the Pioneer Hose Fire Company station. Others stay at the station, where they sleep on cots and eat meals prepared by the ladies auxiliary, a local support group.

Most firefighters in central and southern New Jersey are unpaid volunteers who haven't seen a paycheck in the 10 days since Sandy wiped out the businesses and shops that provide their day jobs.

The men at Pioneer Company, which has three fire engines, call themselves "the Fighting 22," because it's Station 22. As snow fell in thick flakes, it felt as if they were at war with the elements.

"It's a volunteer company getting a city-size call volume with the same guys running the trucks 24 hours," said Anthony Cozzino, 39, a father of two whose home was damaged in the storm.

Just then, a fire alarm clanged. A truck quickly loaded up and headed into the bone-chilling cold.

Michael Berger, 54, vice president of the company, says his firefighters have risen to the challenge. "As we say here at Pioneer Company, we got this," Berger said.

That's the motto they hung in the gear room, near a waterlogged American flag they salvaged in the storm. This being Jersey, the sign says, "We got dis."

They lived by that dictum those first few harrowing days after Sandy hit, when they rescued people using bucket trucks and rowboats. They fought electrical fires as floodwaters rose around them. They raced out again and again as pleas for help poured into the station.

"We were getting call after call with no intermission," Cozzino said.

They mobilized as best they could. Pioneer Company Chief Wally Eaton, whose neighborhood was flooded, initially ran some operations from his frontyard. Fire Marshal Kevin Batzel led divers to rescue trapped residents when a house caught fire and a car exploded at the height of the storm.

"I had guys who tied themselves to the [fire] engine with ropes to advance the hose to the fire in 2 1/2 feet of water," Eaton said.

When it was over, they were stunned to find boats dropped in the middle of the street, with telephone poles toppled on top. One man was found dead in his home in 2 feet of water.

Waterways that crisscross the township had flooded homes and roads, and the tidal surge cut through dunes and created a new channel to the ocean for Barnegat Bay.

Over the last few days, reinforcements arrived: firefighters from Lakewood, Ridgeway, Whiting, Jackson and other nearby towns, as well as the New Jersey National Guard and state police from Florida, Pennsylvania and Michigan. People sent food from South Carolina, pizzas from Connecticut.

The chief ordered his firefighters to take a break. Most refused.

"We love our town," Berger said. "We're going to try to get through this storm, put a Band-Aid on things and try to heal."

As the day wore on, the nor'easter hammered the coast farther north, knocking out power to some areas where it had been restored.

More than 1,000 flights in and out of airports in New York, Boston, Philadelphia and Newark, N.J., were canceled because of the storm, according to the website NYCAviation.com.

molly.hennessy-fiske@latimes.com

Shashank Bengali in New York contributed to this report.

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Apple slides to five-month low, uncertainty grows

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Death of the cassette tape much exaggerated

LONDON (Reuters) – The widening gap between the amount of data the world produces and our capacity to store it is giving a new lease of life to the humble cassette tape.

Although consumers have abandoned the audio cassette in favor of the ubiquitous iPod, organizations with large amounts of data, from patient records to capacity-hungry video archives, have continued to use tape as a cheap and secure storage medium.

Researchers at IBM are trying to keep this 60-year old technology relevant for at least the next decade and they are getting help from rising energy costs, which are forcing companies to look for cheaper alternatives to stacks of power-hungry hard drives.

Evangelos Eleftheriou and his colleagues at IBM Research in Zurich, Switzerland, have developed a cassette just 10 cm by 10cm by 2cm that can hold about 35 terabytes of data, the equivalent of a library with 400 kilometers of bookshelves.

“It is really the greenest storage technology,” Eleftheriou told Reuters. “Tape at rest, consumes literally zero power.”

Unlike hard drive storage devices, which have to be on continuously, tape systems only consume power when data is being read or recorded, giving them a carbon footprint a fraction that of their disc-based counterparts.

Latency is the biggest disadvantage. Tapes have to be retrieved, usually by a robotic selector, and then loaded into a reading device.

But for much of the world’s archived data, access time is not critical. From legal archives and company records kept to comply with legislation like the Sarbanes Oxley Act in the United States, to data on traffic flow and weather patterns, keeping secure copies is more important than instant access.

“If you have big data then you have really big backups,” said Eleftheriou.

This is borne out by an estimate from consultancy Coughlin Associates that about 400 exabytes, equal to 20 million times the content of U.S. Library of Congress, is currently stored on tape.

The new IBM cassette, originally developed with Fuji Film, packs about 29.5 billion bits on a square inch of tape using a coating made from the chemical compound barium ferrite, which maximizes so-called linear density – the amount of data that can be squeezed onto a length of the tape.

The other limitation is the number of tracks that can be laid down and the researchers have developed novel nanopositioning technologies that can position the read and write heads with an accuracy of 10 to 15 billionths of a meter.

SERIOUSLY BIG DATA

Eleftheriou and his team believe they can increase the storage capacity to 100 billion bits per square inch and they hope this will make tape storage a contender for one of the world’s biggest data collection projects – the huge radio telescope known as the Square Kilometer Array (SKA).

In just over 10 years the SKA will start scanning the skies from two remote sites in South Africa and Australia, and it will generate 10 times the data traffic of the global internet.

“There’s going to be a lot of data pouring out of what is essentially a giant computer with a few bits of metal (the dishes and the antennae) on the ends,” said Andy Faulkner, an astrophysicist at Cambridge University and one of the project engineers on the SKA.

Faulkner said there has been quite a shift towards using hard drives in astronomy in recent years because their capacity has grown so far and fast, but the SKA will be a different kettle of fish, not least because of the vast amount of data it will generate and the restrictions on power usage from its remote location.

“In truth, nobody knows just yet what we will be using given the 10-year time frame but tape storage is very interesting because you don’t necessarily need real time access to everything.”

(Editing by Jon Hemming)

Music News Headlines – Yahoo! News

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Ask an Expert: Wondering About Alzheimer’s? Ask Here

This week’s Ask the Expert features Dr. P. Murali Doraiswamy, who will answer questions related to Alzheimer’s disease and memory loss. He is a professor of psychiatry at Duke University Medical Center and an author of “The Alzheimer’s Action Plan.” Dr. Doraiswamy has also served as an adviser to government agencies, advocacy groups and businesses.

About five million Americans today live with Alzheimer’s disease, and a new diagnosis is made about every 70 seconds. Cases are expected to triple over the coming decades as baby boomers age.

Misperceptions and misdiagnoses are common about Alzheimer’s, which ranks second to only cancer among diseases that adults fear the most. Many people do not understand that there are dozens of causes for memory loss besides Alzheimer’s, including many that can be fully reversed if caught early.

Among the questions Dr. Doraiswamy is prepared to answer:

What are the best tests to determine if it is or isn’t Alzheimer’s?

How do you determine your own risk?

What are the family-care options? Medications for memory? Medications for behavior problems? Preventive strategies?

What has been learned from the latest clinical trials?

How can you improve your memory?

Please leave your questions in the comments section.

You can follow Booming via RSS here or visit nytimes.com/booming.

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DealBook: On Wall Street, Time to Mend Fences With Obama

Del Frisco’s, an expensive steakhouse with floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the Boston harbor, was a festive scene on Tuesday evening. The hedge fund billionaires Steven A. Cohen, Paul Singer and Daniel Loeb were among the titans of finance there dining among the gray velvet banquettes before heading several blocks away to what they hoped would be a victory party for their presidential candidate, Mitt Romney.

The next morning was a cold, sobering one for these executives.

Few industries have made such a one-sided bet as Wall Street did in opposing President Obama and supporting his Republican rival. The top five sources of contributions to Mr. Romney, a former top private equity executive, were big banks like Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. Wealthy financiers — led by hedge fund investors — were the biggest group of givers to the main “super PAC” backing Mr. Romney, providing almost $33 million, and gave generously to outside groups in races around the country.

On Wednesday, Mr. Loeb, who had supported Mr. Obama in 2008, was sanguine. “You win some, you lose some,” he said in an interview. “We can all disagree. I have friends and we have spirited discussions. Sure, I am not getting invited to the White House anytime soon, but as citizens of the country we are all friendly.”

Wall Street, however, now has to come to terms with an administration it has vilified. What Washington does next will be critically important for the industry, as regulatory agencies work to put their final stamp on financial regulations and as tax increases and spending cuts are set to take effect in the new year unless a deal to avert them is reached. To not have a friend in the White House at this time is one thing, but to have an enemy is quite another.

“Wall Street is now going to have to figure out how to make this relationship work,” said Glenn Schorr, an analyst who follows the big banks for the investment bank Nomura. “It’s not impossible, but it’s not the starting point they had hoped for.”

Traditionally, the financial industry has tended to support Republican candidates, but, being pragmatic about power, has also donated to Democrats. That script got a rewrite in 2008, when many on Wall Street supported Mr. Obama as an intelligent leader for a country reeling from the financial crisis. Goldman employees were the leading source of campaign donations for Mr. Obama, who reaped far more contributions — roughly $16 million — from Wall Street than did his opponent, John McCain.

The love affair between Wall Street and Mr. Obama soured soon after he took office and championed an overhaul in financial regulations that became the Dodd-Frank Act.

Some financial executives complained that in meetings with the president, they found him disinterested and disengaged, while others on Wall Street never forgave Mr. Obama for calling them “fat cats.”

The disillusionment with the president spawned reams of critical commentary from Wall Street executives.

“So long as our leaders tell us that we must trust them to regulate and redistribute our way back to prosperity, we will not break out of this economic quagmire,” Mr. Loeb wrote in one letter to his investors.

The rhetoric at times became extreme, like the time Steven A. Schwarzman, co-founder of the private equity firm Blackstone Group, compared a tax proposal to “when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939.” (Mr. Schwarzman later apologized for the remark.)

Mr. Loeb was not alone in switching allegiances in the recent presidential race. Hedge fund executives like Leon Cooperman who had supported Mr. Obama in 2008 were big backers of Mr. Romney in 2012. And Wall Street chieftains like Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase and Lloyd C. Blankfein of Goldman Sachs, who have publicly been Democrats in the past, kept a low profile during this election. But their firms’ employees gave money to Mr. Romney in waves.

Starting over with the Obama White House will not be easy. One senior Wall Street lawyer who spoke on condition of anonymity said Wall Street “made a bad mistake” in pushing so hard for Mr. Romney. “They are going to pay a price,” he said. “It will soften over time, but there will be a price.”

Mr. Obama is not without supporters on Wall Street. Prominent executives like Hamilton James of Blackstone, and Robert Wolf, a former top banker at UBS, were in Chicago on Tuesday night, celebrating with the president.

“What we learned is the people on Wall Street have one vote just like everyone else,” Mr. Wolf said. Still, while the support Wall Street gave Mr. Romney is undeniable, Mr. Wolf said, “Mr. Obama wants a healthy private sector, and that includes Wall Street.

“If you look at fiscal reform, infrastructure, immigration and education, they are all bipartisan issues and are more aligned than some people make it seem.”

Reshma Saujani, a former hedge fund lawyer who was among Mr. Obama’s top bundlers this year and is planning to run for city office next year, agreed.

“Most people in the financial services sector are social liberals who support gay marriage and believe in a woman’s right to choose, so I think many of them will swing back to Democrats in the future,” he said.

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East Coast awaits another wet and windy storm

David Bernard, chief meteorologist for Miami's CBS-4, has a forecast for the upcoming storm that's heading for the Northeast.

By Joseph Serna

November 6, 2012, 5:37 p.m.

Bruised but not beaten, New Jersey and New York are bracing for Round 2 with Mother Nature.

In any other year, the nor’easter forecast to hit the Atlantic coast Wednesday and Thursday would be considered routine, National Weather Service officials said.

But for a region still wobbled from Hurricane Sandy’s impact last week, even a moderate storm can bring serious consequences.

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“No doubt, if Sandy had not made landfall, if Sandy had not happened, this would be a nor’easter but it would be a non-event compared to what we’re left with now,” said Bruce Terry, lead forecaster for the National Weather Service. “It’s a totally different situation because of Sandy. It will not be good either.”

 New Jersey has ordered the evacuation of about 500 residents from Brick Township in Ocean County, N.J., and the Army Corps of Engineers is scrambling to rebuild sand dunes along the state’s coastline washed away by the hurricane.

Fortunately, many of the measures the New Jersey Office of Emergency Management would set up for a nor’easter are already in place because of Sandy, said department spokeswoman Mary Goepfert.

Forecasters predict the storm will send high winds and snow to western New Jersey and into Pennsylvania, and a 3- to 4-foot storm surge on New Jersey and New York coastline along with 2 to 3 inches of rain. Winds are expected to be between 30 and 40 mph, with gusts up to 55 mph along the coast, Terry said.

The thousands who remain without power in New York, already suffering from near-freezing temperatures, may get snow too. The American Red Cross is sending 80,000 additional blankets and extra food and supplies to areas in the path of the storm.

On Tuesday, about 14% of New Jersey, or about 537,000 customers, remained without power, and 4% of households in New York, or about 349,000 customers, had no power.  It all combines to exacerbate the misery for those yet to have their power restored, and hinder efforts by utility companies to rebuild their infrastructure.

“We’d love to have blue sky days for restoration, but the nature of Mother Nature is not cooperating, so we’ll have to deal with this over the next couple of days,” said John Miksad, Con Edison’s senior vice president of electric operations. The company powers all of Manhattan and Staten Island.

About 107,000 Con Ed customers still don’t have power and 20,000 won’t have it through the weekend because of damage to electrical equipment, Miksad said.

“If it’s driving rain and winds, with the kind of gusts we’re talking about, that will certainly tend to slow down the troops,” Miksad said.

New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg announced Tuesday that police will tour the city’s most vulnerable areas and make announcements over loudspeakers. The mayor urged the elderly or with infants to go to shelters or anywhere they can stay warm. Temperatures could drop into the 20s, he said.

The city’s parks, playgrounds and beaches will be closed as of noon Wednesday, and property owners and construction crews are being ordered to secure their sites ahead of the nor’easter.

The city has more than 200 shelters open, giving residents no excuse to have to withstand the elements in the freezing dark of a home without power, Bloomberg said.

Most states are on watch-and-see mode, given that the storm is expected to stay over water with only its periphery brushing along New Jersey and New York. Connecticut, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and Maine are all keeping an eye on the storm, but remain focused on helping New York and New Jersey.

“With regards to this storm, it’s kind of the bad weather we’re used to,” said Robert McAleer, director of Maine’s emergency management agency. “So we have no special preparations at this point … it depends on how it hits us and how hard.”

National Grid U.S., serving R.I., Mass., N.Y. and N.H. among other states, said the other major issue besides restoring power is restoring gas. Crews have to go house to house inspecting gas lines to see if they’re damaged before they can re-ignite pilots and restore gas service. If the damage is to the homeowner’s equipment, the homeowner will have to foot the bill for replacement.

joseph.serna@latimes.com

@josephserna

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