BREAKING NEWS: Power out from New York to Detroit

[Jeremy]

It must be really bad. Especially the heat. Its one reason to be glad that I'm in aberdeen, where the average temp. is about 15 degrees celcius, although this summer was very hot with about 30 one day. Now the Americans and Canadians are blaming each other.

[Theresa]

^That's so stupid. A plant gets knocked out, stuff happens.

[Theresa]

[Capt.Rene D'Hondt]

It had nothing to do with the heat.

[PrankishSmart]

Why is the power outage affecting such a large area? It there like 1 power station for half of your country

When we get outages here, they normally only affect induvidual suburbs, rather than everything. There is several smaller power stations, rather than 1 big one.

[Capt.Rene D'Hondt]

Most have been a main power generated and wen it went offline....it affected every system connected with it?

[IntrepidIsMe]

Yep, most power plants are subsystems connected to the main system, and they can only produce the same amount of power they are receving from a seperate source. So when its all connected, if the main plant goes down (it started in the Niagra Falls area from what I heard), the rest go down too.

[Capt.Rene D'Hondt]

yep i know that

[Theresa]

There is also such a thing as cascade failure. I'm sure they will have it all figured out soon. Some indications right now are saying it may have started in Ohio, not NY like was originally thought.

[Jeff Miller]

Northwest largely unaffected by outage
06:37 AM PDT on Friday, August 15, 2003

By ABE ESTIMADA, kgw.com Staff


Power in Oregon and Washington wasn’t affected by the massive blackout that crippled the northeastern part of the United States, but the breadth of the outage shows how vulnerable the nation’s energy grid is to potential attack, said a local terrorism expert.


New York state officials assured an anxious public that terrorists did not cause the blackout. Rather, lightning may have overloaded an upstate New York grid with connections to Canada and the Midwest, triggering a widespread loss of power for millions of people

The vulnerability of the nation's power grid to extensive disruption was put on full display, said KGW terrorism expert and retired Portland State University professor Gary Perlstein. The lesson here is that terrorists don't need to kill to wreak havoc, he said.

“We’re not the Israelis,” Perlstein said. “We’re not the Serbians. We’re not the Bosnians who are used to this. For us – just look at what happens in a traffic jam. The bridge closes and people panic.”

It’s not just power systems that are potential targets of opportunity, Perlstein said. It’s also water systems, particularly here in Portland.

“Who the hell needs weapons of mass destruction?” Perlstein said. “Get some household items and things you can buy in a grocery store legally, cause enough explosions, and nobody will know what happened to us.”

What’s most troubling for Perlstein is that the vulnerability of power systems has been oft-discussed since Sept. 11.

“Nobody has really done anything to protect (the power systems),” he said. “It’s in the preliminary stages.”

In response to the East Coast blackout, Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski ordered the Oregon State Office of Emergency Management and the Pacific Northwest's major utilities to develop "contingency plans" in case of an energy disruption.

Power systems in Portland and Oregon were untouched by the blackout, said a statement from Portland General Electric.

"The power failure on the East Coast has no impact on PGE's electric generation and distribution systems because the western region maintains a completely separate power grid," said a PGE statement. "However, we are monitoring the situation very closely."

"The West Coast has a system where security coordinators in various regions constantly monitor the power grid and can coordinate the flow of power," PGE said. "With this system in place, we believe a regional power outage would be unlikely in the West."

The power grid in Washington also wasn't affected by events on the East Coast, said Washington Governor Gary Locke.

"There have been no reports of any power disruptions in Washington state," he said. "Our power grid is not connected to those currently being affected."

Northwest travel spared

Arrivals and departures to New York and the Midwest were on time at Portland International Airport, said Port of Portland spokesman Steve Johnson. Non-stop flights to Detroit, Michigan and Newark, New Jersey were not affected.

"The airlines have not posted to our arrival-departure schedule any cancellations or changes at this point in time, but it will be a good idea for travelers going to the affected areas to check on the schedule with the airline,” Johnson said.

Johnson also encouraged travelers to call 877-PDXINFO to check the status of incoming or outbound flights.

Amtrak service to and from Portland hasn’t been affected, said Union Station officials.

Flights to Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, Newark, Kennedy and La Guardia were delayed from Sea-Tac Airport near Seattle were delayed, however.

[Theresa]

I think that Perlstein guys a bit full of *beep*. I notice how he neglected to mention all of the citizens who went and directed traffic, and all of the people who let others in their cars, that had a/c while waiting until they could move.
People like that make me sick.

[Jeff Miller]

don't shoot me Im just a poster some people are just jerks

[Capt.Rene D'Hondt]

yea i agree with with Maquis i dont know what this guy is talking about..thje black out isnt the end of the world whr i am power was bck up in less then 12 hours............within a week everything will prolly be bck to normal.

[Link, the Hero of Time]

Aug. 15 — Lights and air conditioners flipped on across the northern United States and southern Canada as the largest blackout in North American history receded Friday. Most people were expected to have their power back by the end of the day, but the creaky power grid that blacked out 50 million people encountered new problems as it struggled back to life. Three deaths were linked to the blackout.


POWER BEGAN to be restored about dawn, nearly 12 hours after it went out from New York to Michigan and Ohio in the Midwest and to southern Ontario province in Canada.
“Right now, we think the vast majority of customers without electricity will be restored by end of day,” said Michehl Gent, president of the North American Electric Reliability Council.
All told, as many as 50 million people were estimated to have been without power at one point Thursday evening. More than half of New York state’s 19 million customers were affected, as were about 10 million people in Canada.
On Friday, airline passengers faced canceled flights and long delays Friday. Many workers who found no subway or commuter train services during the morning rush hour walked to work, only to discover their offices still shuttered.
Power was partly restored Friday morning in New York City, but there was no timetable for full restoration of electricity.
The city’s subways started getting power back in a few locations, but Consolidated Edison did not know when the system would be fully back online. Once electricity is fully restored, it will take the nation’s biggest mass transit agency six to eight more hours to check the system to ensure that all switches and relays are working properly.
“At this point, there will be no evening rush hour,” said Melissa Baldel, a spokeswoman for New York City Transit.
New York power operators asked for permission to impose rolling blackouts to prevent customers from overloading the system and crashing it again.

Detroit remained almost entirely without power, and residents were instructed to boil drinking water. Long lines formed at gasoline stations as tanks ran dry in five southeast Michigan counties. Gov. Jennifer Granholm declared a state of emergency and signed an executive order to expedite nearly a million gallons of gasoline to those areas.
Cleveland weathered the city’s worst water crisis as the blackout disabled pumping stations that serve more than 1 million residents in the city and 20 suburbs. The stations began operating Friday morning, but the National Guard tanked in 7,600 gallons of drinking water to help.
Three deaths were attributed to the power failure. New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said one person died after a heart attack during one of the city’s 60 serious fires, most of which were caused by candles. There were no further details.
In Ontario, Canada’s largest province, a pedestrian was hit by a car while traffic signals were out, and another person died in a fire. A state of emergency remained in effect Friday after police in the capital, Ottawa, reported 23 cases of looting.

WHO TURNED OUT THE LIGHTS?
Officials on both sides of the border were struggling to understand what caused the power system to fail and, more important, why the disruption spread so rapidly and so far.
Gent said the initial cause remained a mystery, although clues were pointing to a problem on the Lake Erie loop, a transmission circuit that extends from New York to Detroit and into Canada.
But he said it was unclear why safeguards built into the system failed to isolate the problem.

“If we’ve designed the system for this not to happen, how did this happen?” he asked during a conference call with reporters Friday. “I can’t answer that, and I’m embarrassed that I can’t.”
Officials of the Homeland Security Department said there were no indications that terrorists were responsible. The CERT Coordination Center, an Internet security clearinghouse, said it also did not appear to be related to the W32/Blaster worm or other computer intrusions.
“There’s no evidence of a blow-up, or there’s no evidence of anybody breaking into something to turn knobs and handles and that sort of stuff,” Gent said. “As far as cyber-intrusion goes, we have logs on all our critical facilities, and it’s virtually impossible to get into a system without leaving some tracks.”
“We’re fairly confident in ruling out terrorism at this time,” he said, “but as I said, we won’t leave any rock unturned in the pursuit of the cause of this, and we’ll further examine that.”

POLITICIANS COME OUT SWINGING
Investigators concentrated on transmission lines and transformers in search of what might have caused the surge in power that triggered safety mechanisms and shut off the flow of power from New England to Michigan.

Federal and state agencies, as well as congressional committees, are expected to investigate the blackout to determine why measures to isolate grids and keep disruptions from spreading failed.
“We’re the world’s greatest superpower, but we have a Third World electricity grid,” said New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson, who was energy secretary during the Clinton administration.
In all, tens of millions of people were without power as the effects rippled across the enormous Eastern Interconnected System power grid.
Early confusion about the cause underscored the bedeviling complexity woven into the North American electricity network in recent decades, the boom in cross-border power trading and the interdependence of the many parts and partners multiplied by energy deregulation born 10 years ago.
Trouble on grid can spread quickly

Some Democrats blamed the Bush administration for not having more closely watched the deregulation.
“I believe the federal government has a responsibility to see this doesn’t happen,” Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., told MSNBC.
President Bush, who spoke to reporters at a downtown San Diego hotel during a two-day California trip, promised a review of “why the cascade was so significant, why it was able to ripple so significantly throughout our system up East.”
“I have been working with federal officials to make sure the response to the situation was quick and thorough, and I believe it has been,” the president said. “We’re offering all the help they need to help people cope with this blackout.”
Bush described the power failure as “a wake-up call.”
“The grid needs to be modernized. The delivery systems need to be modernized,” he said. “We’ve got an antiquated system.”

WIDESPREAD IMPACT
The evening rush hour was just beginning in the East when the power went out at 4:14 p.m. NBC News and MSNBC.com correspondents described scenes of pandemonium as thousands of New Yorkers streamed into streets where traffic signals were not operating.
The blackout stretched over huge areas of the Northeast, the Midwest and Canada:
The Nuclear Regulatory Commission said nine nuclear power plants in New York state, New Jersey, Michigan and Ohio were shut down because of “grid instabilities.” All of the plants were in safe condition and could rely on emergency diesel generators if needed, it said.
About 350,000 people stranded in New York City’s subway system were evacuated within several hours of the blackout Thursday. All Broadway shows and the New York Mets’ game against the San Francisco Giants were canceled.
All prisons in New York state lost power and were operating on backup generators until electricity was restored.
Using backup generators and other contingency plans, newspapers and television networks struggled to tell the story of the blackout while dealing with the same hardships as their consumers.
Other affected cities included Buffalo, Albany and Syracuse, N.Y.; Hartford, Conn.; Lansing and many other smaller cities in Michigan; Akron and Toledo, Ohio; some counties in northwest Pennsylvania; and Ottawa.

Washington and the federal government were not affected. Neither was much of New England — including most of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and southern Vermont — as well as Chicago, Philadelphia and other areas of Canada, including Quebec City.
New York Gov. George Pataki and New Jersey Gov. Jim McGreevey declared states of emergency Thursday, allowing them to send National Guard troops to help control crowds.
There were only scattered reports of problems in New York City. Trading on stock markets was able to resume after some minor effects of the blackout were felt.
“It looks like it’s business as usual,” said New York Stock Exchange Chairman Richard Grasso. However, volume on the NYSE and the Nasdaq stock market was extremely light, and share prices were little changed.
In Bedford-Stuyvesant, a person was arrested in the looting of a cellular telephone store, and five people were arrested in the looting of an appliance rental store. A Brooklyn shoe store was also looted, and police said they arrested about 20 people.
The city stayed calm as police and firefighters dealt with double the normal volume of calls and 60 serious fires, most of them the result of people using candles to stave off the darkness. There were more than 800 elevator rescues, said Bloomberg, who praised the city’s response.
“Things on balance, almost 100 percent, did work,” he said.
In Cleveland, where a curfew was imposed beginning at 9:30 p.m. for all those 18 and under, there were several arrests for looting.
Police in Ottawa said a few packs of youths roamed the streets overnight, smashing store windows and stealing merchandise. Police said at least one person was arrested.



MSNBC.com’s Mike Brunker, Alex Johnson, Michael Moran, Michael Ross and Alan Boyle; NBC correspondents in New York and Washington; The Associated Press and Reuters contributed to this report.

[John Connor]

Yep i know that cause i was in it and i was really bored and it was totally dark at my house and i fell down my stairs.

[Praetor]

I was at Canada's Wonderland when it happened, we just got off a rollercoaster, and tried to buy ice cream when the till wouldn't work, so we left the park for lunch, and came back to see everyone leaving. Some people were stuck on the rides, but they got them off, it wasn't a big deal, just everyone was pissed that the park was powerless, watter slides wouldn't work, pop machines, atm's EVERYTHING wouldn't work, it was kind of freaky actually.

[Melodramatic]

[Jeff Miller]

Aug 16, 1:16 AM EDT

Millions Face Aftermath of Big Blackout

By LARRY McSHANE
Associated Press Writer

Bouncing back from the largest blackout in U.S. history, cities from the Midwest to Manhattan restored power Friday to millions of people - only to confront a second series of woes created in the aftermath of the enormous outage.

Electricity flowed in Cleveland on day two of the blackout, but water moved at a trickle. Times Square was once again the luminous center of Manhattan, but only 10 of the system's 24 main subway lines were running early Saturday. The lights clicked on in almost 2 million homes in Michigan, but gas remained in scarce supply around Detroit.

Some customers in the Cleveland area, upstate New York and New York City received the unkindest cut of all: Their power was restored and then turned off due to rolling blackouts needed to conserve electricity.

Officials in Michigan warned that the whir of air conditioners and the glow of televisions might not return until the end of the weekend as the cause of the massive outage remained a mystery. Canada and the United States formed a joint task force Friday to investigate what caused the blackout and how to prevent it from happening again.

The blackout washed across a huge slice of North America, knocking out service in parts of eight states and Canada in just nine seconds.

President Bush, during a tour of a California national park, said part of the problem was "an antiquated system" to distribute electricity nationally.

"It's a wake-up call," Bush said. "The grid needs to be modernized, the delivery systems need to be modernized."

In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he received a call from Bush offering congratulations on the city's handling of the crisis. Crime in the city was actually down overnight compared to an average evening, he said.

"I think all New Yorkers have done their part," Bloomberg said. "If we compare this time to what happened in 1977, when there was chaos and crime, this time we saw compassion."

But compassion doesn't make all the trains run. Most of the system's main subway lines were still stalled early Saturday, while the two major commuter rail lines limped through Friday with sporadic service.

Late Friday, Consolidated Edison announced that all power had been restored to New York City. By then, though, some New Yorkers had already endured an outage longer than the 25-hour blackout of 1977.

While New Yorkers and virtually all the 1.4 million Ohioans who lost power were back on line, 600,000 of the estimated 2.4 million customers in Michigan were still without power.

The failure of electric pumps led to a run on gasoline, with Detroit residents lining up to fill 'er up. Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm signed an executive order to expedite nearly 1 million gallons of gasoline from western Michigan to the Detroit area.

Cleveland struggled mightily to provide residents with water for simple tasks like brushing teeth, but taps barely flowed. By Friday afternoon, though, power was restored and there was hope that the water would soon follow.

The restoration of power was merely a tease for an unlucky swath of New York state and city, where the electricity crackled and then quickly ceased. Upstate utilities - shortly after restoring power - were ordered to initiate rolling blackouts as a conservation measure, with as many as 50,000 customers affected.

"This is the crisis of a career for me," said Julius Ciaccia, Cleveland water commissioner, a 27-year employee. Cleveland officials, fearful of sewage flowing into Lake Erie because of the outage, closed the city's beaches.

In Connecticut, residents heard an emergency plea from the governor to cut back on power use after a state transmission line that feeds the southwest part of the state failed early Friday.

The call for conservation echoed across each state affected by the blackout. "Every light bulb matters today," said Long Island Power Authority Chairman Richard Kessel. "If you don't turn them off, they will go off."

Despite plunging several of the nation's largest cities into darkness, the outage resulted in few reports of vandalism or increased violence. But there were at least two U.S. fatalities. A 40-year-old New York man suffered a heart attack during an overnight fire, and a 42-year-old woman in Connecticut died in a blaze sparked by a candle. Her husband and 10-year-old son were badly burned.

In Canada's capital of Ottawa, police reported 23 cases of looting, along with two deaths possibly linked to the blackout - a pedestrian hit by a car and a fire victim. There were also reports of minor looting in Brooklyn and Detroit.

Officials in Michigan also blamed the power failure for a small explosion at a refinery about 10 miles south of Detroit. No injuries were reported, but hundreds of residents within a mile of the refinery were evacuated.

As for the cause of the outage, which happened almost instantaneously around the Northeast at 4:11 p.m. EDT Thursday, officials remained in the dark.

Investigators focused on a massive electrical grid that encircles Lake Erie, moving power from New York to the Detroit area, Canada and back to New York state. There had been problems with the transmission loop in the past, officials said.

The exact source and cause of the blackout led to bickering over the blame. Initial reports cited a lightning strike near Niagara Falls, followed by fingerpointing at Ohio, where officials pointed back at Canada and upstate New York. On Friday, one expert speculated the problem began in Michigan.

New York Gov. George Pataki also demanded an investigation into what he called failures to improve the regional power system and prevent blackouts like those of 1965 and 1977.

"We have to know why this happened, how it happened," he said.

Cleveland workers were advised to stay home until noon on a day when temperatures climbed into the mid-80s. A few ignored the advice, strolling through near-empty streets.

"I have no water and no lights so I might as well come to work," said attorney Lori Zocolo, arriving at her downtown office at 5:30 a.m. in a T-shirt and shorts. Her biggest complaint: No water meant she couldn't brush her teeth.

Power was switched on Friday at the four pumps that provide water to Cleveland and its suburbs. Still, bottled water became a precious commodity in Ohio, and two dozen National Guard tankers began distributing emergency drinking water.

In Detroit, low water pressure had officials warning residents to boil water before drinking or cooking with it.

Flights resumed Friday morning at Cleveland Hopkins International Airport as the airline business slowly returned. But despite the airlines' efforts, hundreds of flights were canceled nationwide.

At the New York area airports - Kennedy International, LaGuardia and Newark Liberty - planes were arriving and departing, but with unspecified delays. About 3,000 people were stranded overnight at Kennedy.

"They're trying to catch up," FAA spokeswoman Laura Brown said of the airlines.



Twilight falls on Manhattan as viewed from Edgewater, N.J., as electrical power is gradually restored to NY. (AP Photo)



People wait in line to withdraw money from an ATM in New York, Friday, Aug. 15, 2003, after power was restored. After almost 29 hours in the dark, the lights were back on in all of New York City late Friday, ending a massive blackout that crippled the nation's largest mass transit system and left thousands of people scrambling to get home. (AP Photo/Mike Appleton)

Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[Link, the Hero of Time]

It was bad...

5 times the Fire department near my house had to go out, and i know i heard like 10 ambulances drive past.

I went out walking with some of my friends and it was DARK!!! we had to carry flashlights just to see our way around, and even my great nightvision didn't help any

[John Connor]

[Melodramatic]

Good.

[Jeff Miller]

Power Restored; Blackouts Still Possible

By LARRY McSHANE
Associated Press Writer

Air conditioners were humming Saturday and lights blazed again across most of the Northeast following the worst blackout in U.S. history, though getting electricity back didn't help those in Cleveland enjoy clean tap water, and some regions were still experiencing rolling blackouts.

After a 32-hour shutdown, the nation's largest subway system began rolling again in New York at midnight. And in Michigan, where auto plants were paralyzed and officials had warned power could be out through the weekend, Gov. Jennifer Granholm said electricity had been restored to just about everyone - but she still urged residents to conserve.

"We're not out of the woods yet," Granholm said Saturday. "If people don't conserve, we will have rolling blackouts."

Across the region, lingering affects of Thursday's dramatic power outage stretched into Saturday as millions struggled with both the mundane - resetting VCR clocks - to the life-threatening - boiling tap water to ensure potability.

In Cleveland, about 50 members of the National Guard helped distribute 7,600 gallons of drinking water. Residents there and in Detroit, where water pressure was low, were told to boil water before drinking or cooking with it.

Officials still hadn't pinpointed the source of the massive outage that appeared to have started in the Midwest and spread through eight states and Canada. Canada and the United States formed a joint task force Friday to investigate and determine how to prevent it from happening again.

Ohio's chief utility regulator said Saturday that problems leading to the blackout may have started in that state.

"It doesn't mean it's the fault of somebody in Ohio," said Alan Schriber, chairman of the state's Public Utilities Commission. "It seems like some of these events may have been triggered in Ohio."

Schriber based his comments on investigators' focus on a series of power line interruptions that occurred in the Cleveland area during the hour before the blackout. Earlier, Schriber had discounted reports that said Ohio may have been the starting point.

Nora Mead Brownell, a commissioner with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said Saturday that it was clear the power grid needs work.

"Regardless of what the root cause was, it was clearly exacerbated by a system that is unable to support today's economy," she told NBC's "Today" show.

New Yorkers and virtually all the 1.4 million Ohioans who lost power were back on line Saturday, as well as an estimated 2.3 million customers in Michigan.

But still, some customers in the Cleveland area, upstate New York and New York City were dealing with the unkindest cut of all: Their power, restored, was turned off again due to rolling blackouts needed to conserve electricity.

The call for conservation echoed across each state affected by the blackout.

"If you don't turn them off, they will go off," said Long Island Power Authority Chairman Richard Kessel.

Chris Bowen, 47, of Syracuse, N.Y., said he and his family would try to heed the plea. "We'll probably leave the air conditioner off tonight when we go to sleep. We played cards by candlelight last night and it was fun. Maybe we'll do that again."

President Bush, during a tour of a California national park, said part of the problem was "an antiquated system" to distribute electricity nationally. "It's a wake-up call," he said.

In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he received a call from Bush offering congratulations on the city's handling of the crisis. Crime in the city was actually down compared to an average evening, and the looting that had marked the city's notorious 1977 blackout didn't appear.

The New York City Council finance office estimated the blackout cost the city up to $750 million in lost revenue - up to $40 million in lost tax revenue and up to $10 million in overtime pay for the first 24 hours.

Despite plunging several of the nation's largest cities into darkness, the outage resulted in few reports of vandalism or increased violence.

There were at least three U.S. fatalities. In New York fires, a 6-year-old was killed and a 40-year-old man suffered a heart attack. A 42-year-old woman in Connecticut died in a blaze sparked by a candle. Her husband and 10-year-old son were badly burned.

In Canada's capital of Ottawa, police reported 23 cases of looting, along with two deaths possibly linked to the blackout - a pedestrian hit by a car and a fire victim.

More than 50 assembly and other plants in Canada, Ohio and Michigan operated by General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and DaimlerChrysler AG's Chrysler Group were affected, leaving tens of thousands of workers idle.

As for the cause of the outage, which happened almost instantaneously across the Northeast at 4:11 p.m. EDT Thursday, officials remained in the dark.

Investigators focused on a massive electrical grid that encircles Lake Erie, moving power from New York to the Detroit area, Canada and back to New York state. There had been problems with the transmission loop in the past, officials said.

A young Connecticut couple, meanwhile, was enjoying an addition to their family. They made their way through chaotic streets Thursday to Greenwich Hospital to have their first baby.

The hospital managed the delivery with the help of generators.

"Everyone keeps saying you'll remember where you were on the outage of 2003," said Dan O'Neill, whose wife, Kara, gave birth to a healthy baby boy early Friday morning. "It was a blackout and he has one of the blackest heads of hair I've ever seen."



Parma policeman Don Golembiewski hands a water container to Anne Gadosik. (AP Photo)

Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[Jeff Miller]

Official: Blackout May Have Begun in Ohio

By H. JOSEF HEBERT
Associated Press Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Problems leading to the worst blackout in U.S. history may have started in Ohio, the state's chief utility regulator said Saturday.

Alan Schriber, chairman of the state's Public Utilities Commission, based his comments on investigators' focus on a series of interruptions on five power lines in the Cleveland area during the hour before the blackout. Earlier, Schriber had discounted reports that said Ohio may have been the starting point.

"It doesn't mean it's the fault of somebody in Ohio," Schriber said. "It seems like some of these events may have been triggered in Ohio."

Nora Mead Brownell, a commissioner with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said Saturday that it was clear the power grid needs work.

"Regardless of what the root cause was, it was clearly exacerbated by a system that is unable to support today's economy," she told NBC's "Today" show.

There is still no clear sense of what caused the breakdown that left millions of people without power from southern New England to Michigan, but a preliminary investigation focused on an electrical transmission loop that encircles Lake Erie.

Two minutes after the last of the Cleveland-area line problems there were "power swings noted in Canada and the eastern U.S.," said a document made public late Friday by the North America Electric Reliability Council.

But the document cautioned, "It's not clear if these events caused the (wider blackout) or were a consequence of other events."

The White House, meanwhile, announced that the United States and Canada agreed to form a joint task force to identify the cause of the blackout and correct whatever shortcomings caused it. The investigation will be headed by Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham and Canadian Natural Resources Minister Herb Dhaliwal.

"We will find out what caused the blackout and we'll deal with it," President Bush told reporters Friday during a trip to California, a state that suffered its own power crisis two years ago.

Congressional hearings also are planned in September. Federal energy regulators - as well as the industry-sponsored North American Electric Reliability Council, or NERC - were also looking into the reasons behind the power grid breakdown.

Power grid monitors expressed shock Friday at how rapidly the disruption of power spread across such a wide region when the grid system was supposed to include safety devices to contain any sudden catastrophic interruption in the smooth flow of power.

"We never anticipated we could have a cascading outage" of this magnitude and speed, said Michehl Gent, chief of NERC, the organization charged with assessing the dependability of the nation's electric grids.

If the problem began in Ohio or Michigan, as speculated, it should never have reached Manhattan, complained New York Gov. George Pataki, adding that the grid was supposed to be designed to isolate such problems. "That just did not happen," he said.

But it may be days, even weeks, before solid answers emerge, said Gent.

Gent at a news conference acknowledged that the answer appeared to be somewhere on what is called the "Lake Erie Loop" - a massive but troublesome transmission system that encircles Lake Erie from New York to Detroit, into Canada and back to New York.

About the time power was disrupted, technicians noticed a stunning development on the northern leg of the loop: some 300 megawatts of electricity moving east abruptly reversed course and within seconds 500 megawatts of power suddenly were moving west.

Electricity flows on its easiest path, so it is believed the change in direction was caused by a sudden reduction in power somewhere on the line at the western end of the loop, investigators suggested.

"This was a big swing back and forth," said Gent, adding that throughout the grid system, power levels began to fluctuate. That caused generators and other systems to trip across the region to protect equipment.

More than 100 power plants, including 22 nuclear reactors in the United States and in Canada, shut down, most of them automatically to protect themselves against power surges, officials said.

But what triggered the shift of electricity flow, and where?

As of late Friday, no one was confident enough to say.

Reports of lightning hitting a facility in the Niagara Falls area have been ruled out, as have reports that a fire at a New York City electric facility may have triggered the power disaster.

The weather also has been given a reprieve because it was not hot enough either in the Ohio Valley or in the Northeast to cause such a demand on electricity that the system should have overloaded, said Gent.

And terrorism has been ruled out by everyone from grid managers to Bush.

But Gent said he wouldn't rule out that negligence by someone, somewhere might have been a cause. Investigators will have to determine whether some industry transmission standards might have been ignored, or perhaps simply conclude that the industry-crafted standards are inadequate.



The city of Cleveland sits in the dark Thursday, Aug. 14, 2003, except for emergency lights in the Federal Courthouse, left, and the SBC building, far right, after a massive power outage struck the eastern United States and parts of Canada. (AP Photo/Mark Duncan)


Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved.

[Jeremy]

It must have been the first time stars have been seen over new york for a very long time. There was storys in the newspapers here in Britain that people were smoking weed and making out all over the place.

[Theresa]

^I would expect alot of babies to be born in nine months. Happens all the time when there's a power outage. After 9/11, there was a baby boom, too.