ASSOCIATED PRESS
Thousands of commuters waited for a chance to board a ferry from Manhattan to the New Jersey side of the Hudson River after yesterday's massive power failure. The outage, which affected everything from mobile phones to traffic lights, occurred across much of the northeastern United States and Canada. Nuclear plants in four states were forced to shut down. Flights at six airports -- Kennedy, LaGuardia, Newark, Cleveland, Toronto and Ottawa -- were grounded. Elevators shut down in many high-rises, forcing thousands to hike down seemingly endless flights of stairs.
Electricity slowly returns after the
nation's worst blackout affects 50 million
people over much of the NortheastHawaii has handle on threat of outage
he largest power blackout in U.S. history rolled across a vast swath of the northern United States as well as southern Canada yesterday, driving millions of people outdoors into stifling rush hour streets -- then darkness.
New Yorkers escaped silenced subways. Nuclear power plants in four states were forced to shut down because of the outage.
"We all are wondering what caused this," said New York Gov. George Pataki. President Bush ruled out terrorism. The blackouts set off finger-pointing on both sides of the border.
The New York Independent System Operator, which runs the state's wholesale electricity market and monitors power usage, said in a statement after midnight that it detected a fault west of the Ontario power system at 4:11 p.m. EDT.
At one stage, Canadian authorities said it appeared lightning had struck a power plant on the U.S. side in the Niagara Falls region, setting off outages that spread over 9,300 square miles, but U.S. officials quickly disputed that.
The severity of the problem was apparent in Michigan, where Gov. Jennifer Granholm said an estimated 2.1 million customers could see power return by the end of the weekend.
The blackouts started shortly after 4 p.m. EDT, engulfing most of New York state and nearby parts of New England, and spreading west to Ohio and Michigan. In Toronto, Canada's largest city, workers fled their buildings when the power went off. There also were widespread outages in Ottawa, the capital.
Power began to come back as evening wore on, but officials said full restoration would take much longer. Officials in Detroit urged people to stay home during the night; nearby communities declared curfews to keep problems to a minimum.
By last night, New York authorities had electricity back on in parts of the Bronx, Westchester County and Long Island. About half of the 1 million homes and businesses that lost power in New Jersey had it back.
Outages ranged over an area with roughly 50 million people.
New Yorkers scrambled down endless stairways in skyscrapers where elevators stopped working, and some subway commuters were stuck for several hours underground. In the city that took the brunt of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, people filed into the streets with little fuss and looked for ways to get home.
"I'm trying to keep calm," said Aaron David, 27, who works at the United Nations. "But I was here for 9/11. This doesn't happen every day."
Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland and other major cities, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour. Cleveland officials said that without the power needed to pump water to 1.5 million people, water reserves were running low.
New York state lost 80 percent of its power, said Matthew Melewski, speaking for the New York Independent System Operator, which manages the state power grid. Both New York and New Jersey declared states of emergency.
As darkness fell, city dwellers turned to candles and flashlights as scattered parts of the electrical grid came back on. People gobbled ice cream from street vendors before it melted, chugged beer before it got warm, and gathered around battery-operated radios for updates.
Su Rya, 69, in batik shirt and shorts, guarded a store on 125th Street in Harlem. But when asked about talk that looting might break out, he said: "That's barbershop talk. It's a different generation now."
Marveled another man, "You can actually see the stars in New York City."
In San Diego, Bush said, "Slowly but surely we're coping with this massive, national problem," and added that he would order a review of "why the cascade was so significant."
Bush said he suspected that the nation's electrical grid would need to be modernized.
The FBI and Homeland Security Department both said the outages appeared to be a natural occurrence and not the result of terrorism.
The blackouts easily surpassed those in the West on Aug. 10, 1996, in terms of people affected. Then, heat, sagging power lines and unusually high demand for electricity caused an outage for 4 million customers in nine states.
The blackout set off security precautions developed after the World Trade Center attack, with heavily armed teams of counterterror officers deploying at New York City landmarks and other sensitive locations.
Officials swiftly realized the outage was not an act of terror and then used teams to make sure no one took advantage of the blackout to strike at a terror target, officials said.
Flights at six airports -- Kennedy, LaGuardia, Newark, Cleveland, Toronto and Ottawa -- were grounded, according to the U.S. Transportation Department.
In Times Square, Giovanna Leonardo, 26, was waiting in a line of 200 people for a bus to Staten Island. "I'm scared," she said. "It's that unknown, 'what's going on' feeling. Everyone's panicking. The city's shutting down."
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Hawaii has handle
on threat of outageHECO maintains reserves in
case of a major power failure
Yesterday's massive blackout on the mainland had little impact on Hawaii, but officials here say the state is prepared to handle a major power failure.
Because of Hawaii's isolation, Hawaiian Electric Co. keeps reserves of 30 percent in the event of a major generating problem, said Chuck Freedman, HECO spokesman and vice president of corporate relations.
"Because we're an island, we can't depend on anybody," Freedman said. Each island is on its own power grid.
"The irony is that most of the time, you look at the mainland with envy," he said.
But not yesterday.
Mainland utilities draw from one another in times of need. That interdependency, however, created a domino effect, which appeared to start in the Northeast and cascaded through the East Coast and as far west as Michigan, Freedman said.
The last islandwide blackout on Oahu occurred on April 9, 1991, when the island lost power for more than seven hours.
That outage prompted HECO to install a second main transmission corridor.
The outage was a combination of transmission line failures starting with an out-of-service line under maintenance, a line touching a tree and the remaining transmission line being unable to carry all the power.
The state Department of Transportation has contingency plans in the event of a power failure, said spokesman Scott Ishikawa.
Hawaii airports are equipped with backup generators, which would power security checkpoints and allow planes to take off and land, Ishikawa said.
Even if airline computers went down, passengers could be checked in manually.
Yesterday's power failure caused airports in several cities, including New York, Denver, Cleveland, Ottawa, Ontario and Toronto, to be shut down.
Although several airports were closed, the blackout occurred about 4 p.m. EST, after flights destined for Hawaii had departed, Ishikawa said.
Ishikawa said backup generators would also allow the state's harbors and highways base yards to function. Its harbors control office would be able to direct ship traffic, and base yards could continue to pump fuel for maintenance trucks to deal with emergencies. Portable generators are located in base yards across the islands.
Unlike New York City, where many depend on subways, many Hawaii residents depend on their cars, Ishikawa said. So, in the event of such an emergency here, he said the Transportation Department asks people "to stay where they are as long as it's a safe place to allow emergency vehicles to get through."
As for the telephone system, it can run independently without reliance on electricity, although problems might stem from a business's internal switchboard, said a Verizon Hawaii spokeswoman.
Honolulu police Chief Lee Donohue called a news conference at 12:45 p.m. yesterday to say he does not expect anything to happen here as a result of the New York outage. However, if anything did happen, including a massive power failure of our own, the Police Department has contingency plans in place and is prepared to prevent traffic gridlock and maintain communication within the department and with the public, Donohue said.
Star-Bulletin reporter Nelson Daranciang contributed to this report.
