Whopping blackout paralyzes Northeast
By Barton Gellman and Dana Milbank
Washington Post
Associated Press
NEW YORK — An enormous power failure yesterday afternoon blacked out population centers from New York City to Cleveland, Detroit and Toronto, crippling transportation networks and trapping tens of thousands of people in subways, elevators and trains.
NEW YORK Motorists try to make their way through New York City during the blackout that hit U.S. and Canadian cities. The power failures yesterday stranded people in subways, closed nuclear power plants and cut electricity to millions.
Authorities quickly dismissed the possibility that terrorists were to blame for the outage, but the effect of the mechanical failures that began along the Canadian border was dramatic all the same. The failure cut the electricity supply to millions of people in a 600-mile stretch between New York and Detroit, shutting down entire cities across the Northeast without warning and stranding workers and travelers in the summer heat.
The blackout will be recorded as one of the most extensive in U.S. and Canadian history. It shut down at least 10 major airports and nine nuclear power plants in at least seven states and Canada's Ontario province and forced hospitals, prisons and emergency service providers to switch to generator power.
The lights began to flicker on in some parts of New York City early today, including parts of midtown Manhattan, western Brooklyn, most of Staten Island and northern Westchester County.
"We're starting to cook," Con Ed spokesman Chris Olert said.
Associated Press
In a patient but chaotic evening commute yesterday, motorists found themselves snared in gridlock and pedestrians took to highways and bridges. ATMs stopped working, and cell phones became unreliable under the overload. Some jurisdictions declared curfews and sought help from the National Guard. Broadway went dark and the New York Mets-San Francisco Giants baseball game was canceled.
DETROIT Kim Halterman stands near a sign at a 7-Eleven in Royal Oak, Mich.
There were conflicting explanations about the cause but no doubt about the impact. Ford Motor Co. alone lost production at 21 factories. Amtrak service was canceled from Newark to Boston.
"You realize just how dependent we are on electricity," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said, showing up in his shirtsleeves for a news conference and urging people to drink water.
As midnight approached, most airports and some rail lines had resumed service. New York Republican Gov. George Pataki said in an
11 p.m. news conference that "we have not as of yet seen serious injuries or deaths" related to the blackout. Still, authorities warned that they may not be able to bring everything back to normal in time for today's rush hour as some areas braced for a longer recovery.
Associated Press
For New Yorkers, the power failure set off an eerie but ultimately benign echo of the chaos that followed the September 2001 terrorist attacks. Before it became apparent that the cause was a malfunction rather than foul play, New York City deployed its Atlas anti-terrorism teams and activated its "alternative command sites," while other jurisdictions activated contingency plans to improve security.
CLEVELAND The Gonzalez family passes time playing cards in the ticketing area at Cleveland Hopkins Airport after a power failure grounded flights.
The Pentagon launched two F-16 fighter jets to patrol skies between New York and Washington and put other military aircraft on alert at eastern U.S. bases, defense officials said. But federal and local officials moved quickly to quell terrorism concerns.
"The one thing I think I can say for certain is that this was not a terrorist act," President Bush said yesterday from California, where he was on a fund-raising trip.
Bush's remarks, and those offered earlier by various federal, state and local officials, calmed nerves but did little to ease the confusion on one of the hottest days of the summer, in which temperatures in the New York area were in the 90s. With traffic signals extinguished, cars and buses gridlocked immediately as rush hour began.
Associated Press
Waves of pedestrians clogged bridges out of Manhattan and took possession of the main roadbeds, as well as elevated walkways. New Jersey Transit and the Long Island Rail Road canceled all service. Boos sang out from the sea of pedestrians when Bloomberg arrived at the Brooklyn Bridge with a security detail, followed by media crews, that threw another obstacle across the path. At one point the Port Authority police said all buses had stopped.
TORONTO Passengers exit a subway car that ground to a halt as Ontario power failed.
New York's subway system ground to a halt within moments, with some trains making it to the nearest station and others stalled within a warren of underground tunnels. "Wherever trains were when power went out, that's where they came to a stop," said Deirdre Parker, the transit authority's spokeswoman.
The troubles in New York were mirrored across the Northeast and parts of the industrial Midwest. Blackouts were reported in Michigan, Ohio, New York, New Jersey, Connecticut, Pennsylvania and Vermont.
The MGM Grand Casino in Detroit, which operates 24 hours a day in an atmosphere of perpetual illumination and climate control, shut down for the first time since its opening in July 1999. The blackout caused early closures of factories in the car-making area around Detroit and shut down the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.
In Cleveland, the loss of traffic lights caused chaos downtown at the start of the rush hour. Toronto's streetcars were grounded, as power failures spread across the vast province to Ottawa, the Canadian capital. An official reported that about 400 people in Toronto were stuck in elevators and that rescue crews were trying to free them. Shopkeepers in some parts of the city were operating by candlelight. There were reports that 170 miners in four mines in Sudbury were trapped without power to get them out, although they were reported to be in good condition.
Associated Press
But many Canadians took the outage with good humor. "I heard someone say it was like 9/11 without the terror," said Lynn Bevan, a human-rights lawyer in Toronto.
With subways out of operation, Manhattan buses got packed. But even with a set of public transit wheels, traffic gridlock kept commuters from going anywhere fast during yesterday's widespread blackout.
Authorities could not pinpoint a cause by day's end, and the confusing first hours of the blackout brought reports, later amended, blaming a fire at a 14th Street power plant in Manhattan, a computer worm and lightning.
Whatever the specific cause, it was clear that a failure near Niagara Falls swiftly brought down neighboring power systems. The affected part, the Niagara Mohawk portion of the grid, serves much of the Northeastern United States and parts of Canada. The system is part of a vast network — from Florida to Washington state and into Canada — that experts describe as the most complex machine ever built.
For an event so massive, there were few initial reports of casualties or looting. Normal activity halted in Cleveland, Detroit, Toronto, Ottawa and most of New York state as smaller outages hit New Jersey, Connecticut and Massachusetts. But Bloomberg, speaking almost an hour and a half after the power went out at 4:11 p.m., said the blackout was an "inconvenience" rather than a crisis.
"Let us just pray nobody dies from the heat or an accident that was caused by this," Bloomberg said. "We'll look back on this as another test of New York."
Extra New York police and fire fighters were ordered to work and they were restoring power to a hospital in Brooklyn that did not have generator power. Shelters were set up for stranded commuters. Traffic was blocked from entering Manhattan to allow people to evacuate, while many subway riders became covered in dark muck as they climbed from tunnels.
But the New York mayor predicted a rapid return to order. "I would expect everything to be back to business (today)," he said, hopeful that New Yorkers would soon engage in a game of "where were you when the lights went out?"
Though utilities last night were still tallying the number of people affected, the area involved covered a population of about 50 million people. The 1996 blackout on the West Coast affected 4 million and the 1977 New York City blackout affected 9 million. In 1965, some
30 million people in the Northeast and Canada were hit by a similar blackout.
Nightfall brought an otherworldly darkness to New York's five boroughs and Long Island, with soft pinpoints of candlelight the only sign of habitation in apartment towers and a sea of red tailights defining roadways that were otherwise lost in the murk.
Pataki declared a state of emergency and placed the National Guard on standby. But the guard did not enter New York City, and authorities here said they saw much the same initial solidarity that appeared spontaneously in the aftermath of the terrorist attacks of 2001. Citizens shared rides, directed traffic and offered water and shade to those stuck in the heat.
Milbank reported from Washington.
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Blackout stretches from Ohio to Canada
• NEW YORK: Much of New York state was without power, including New York City. Across Manhattan, people poured out of skyscrapers and started trudging home on foot. Traffic lights were out; subways and buses stopped. New York's three major airports were without power.
• NEW JERSEY: More than 1 million customers in northern New Jersey were without power for several hours. Gov. James E. McGreevey declared an emergency, mobilizing 700 National Guard troops and 300 extra state troopers. Train service was suspended for about four hours, as were flights in and out of Newark Liberty International Airport.
• OHIO: Power went out across a wide stretch of northern Ohio, from Toledo through Cleveland to the state's eastern edge. Airline flights were canceled and traffic lights went blank during rush-hour traffic. FirstEnergy Corp. estimated 880,000 customers were without power last night. As night fell, 1.5 million people in Cleveland faced a water crisis because there was no electricity to pump water from Lake Erie.
• MICHIGAN: Power was out from Detroit to Lansing. Detroit Metropolitan Airport remained open, but Northwest Airlines, its largest carrier, stopped all departing flights. The outage closed the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel, which links the United States and Canada and is used by 27,000 vehicles daily.
• CONNECTICUT: Power flickered throughout Connecticut. Some areas of the state lost electric service completely. Northeast Utilities said nearly 58,000 customers were without power. Fairfield County and Connecticut shoreline towns appeared to be the hardest hit.
• PENNSYLVANIA: The northwestern corner of the state was without power. Power went out in much of Erie, Forest and Venango counties, according to emergency management officials.
• VERMONT: A handful of northern Vermont towns were hit briefly. Richard Thompson, administrator in Swanton, said the outage was brief and "no different than a winter storm or when a squirrel gets into a transmitter."
• CANADA: Blackouts were reported in Toronto, in Ottawa in the province's eastern region, Windsor in the west, and North Bay in northern Ontario. The blackout had not spread as far as Thunder Bay in northwestern Ontario, suggesting power in the north was sporadic.
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