Major power outage hits New York, & other large cities...

[XTR]

CNN News Report

NEW YORK (CNN) -- A major power outage simultaneously struck dozens of cities in the United States and Canada late Thursday afternoon.

Cities affected include New York; Cleveland, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Toronto and Ottawa, Canada. The power outage occurred shortly after 4 p.m.

Gov. George Pataki declared a state of emergency in New York City and the state and deployed additional state police.

State officials said the outage is likely a natural occurrence and not related to terrorism. They said the Niagara-Mohawk power grid, which provides power for New York and stretches into Canada, was overloaded.

"It's probably a natural occurrence which [struck] the power system up there," Mayor Michael Bloomberg told CNN. "The good news is, Con Ed's facilities have shut down automatically, which they're programmed to do." Consolidated Edison is the New York area power company.

Black smoke coming from a power station on East 14th Street "was a natural thing," Bloomberg said. "No damage was done to the Con Ed facilities," he said.

A statement from the Department of Homeland Security said, "The department is working with state and local officials an the energy sector to determine the cause of the outage and what response may need to be taken."

Bryan Lee, a spokesman for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said based on preliminary information it appears that a "cascading blackout" was caused by an outage at a Manhattan power plant, which has destabilized the power grid as far north as Canada and as far west as Detroit and Cleveland.

FERC and the Department of Energy were monitoring the situation and evaluating the problem, Lee said.

Frank McCarton, deputy commissioner for the Office of Emergency Management, said the blackout may have originated in Canada. "We understand that, from Con Ed, that we had a power surge and a dip and a failure that originated in Ontario," McCarton said.

Much of Midtown Manhattan and Wall Street was shut down. All area airports and the Long Island Railroad were also affected.

The Federal Aviation Administration grounded planes at all three New York area airports and in Cleveland because the blackout affected security screening facilities. The FAA reported planes also were grounded at the Toronto airport. The airports were operating on backup power, officials said.

Bloomberg said it was unknown how long the outage may last.

The New York City Police Department said a number of people were trapped in elevators. Thousands of people could be seen leaving buildings and walking into the streets. New York subways were reported stopped and people were trapped in the cars.

"We are going to have a situation where people are going to have to walk a long distance. They need to be careful," Bloomberg said. "Our advice is to go home, open up your windows, drink a lot of liquids."

In Washington, a White House official said information about the situation was being relayed to President Bush, who was in California.

http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/08/14...age/index.html





Sky News Report

Power cuts have hit a number of cities in North America and Canada, causing huge chaos.

The loss of power means that there are no subway trains or buses running in New York City, with reports suggesting that thousands of people are stranded in subway tunnels.


New Yorkers stream out of subway



New Yorkers poured out of subway tunnels onto the streets, and with traffic lights failing and pedestrians walking next to cars, a gridlock quickly formed.

Meanwhile, parts of Detroit and Cleveland have been paralysed by loss of power, with similar problems being felt in Toronto and Ottawa and other parts of the American north-east.

Airports have closed and mobile phones have stopped working, while prisons in New York have also lost their power and have been forced to use back-up supplies.



Crowds at ferry terminal



Reports have said there is a fire at the Con Edison power plant in Manhattan, with other reports saying that the Niagara Mohawk power grid went down.

US power regulators have said that the loss of power in New York is having a cascading effect on the national grid, causing the problems in other areas.

The Mayor of New York City Michael Bloomberg said there was "no evidence" that terrorism had caused the power problems.

The FBI said that their initial investigations also agreed that the incident was not terrorist-related.

Mr Bloomberg said that he expected power to start returning to the city fairly soon, though he stressed it would take some time for full power to be restored.

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0...100431,00.html

[Theo]

Overuse of Air Conditioning perhaps?

[THCi]

Sounds most likely to me, especially as the US is probably the biggest user of the technology, and even has it in most homes.

[XTR]

[DaBeeeenster]

Hey, they only produce a quarter of the worlds pollution...I feel really sorry for them

[Knoxville]

Whats that.......no power to the gun factories ...........

[spikegifted]

Could it be the Blaster worm?! Lots of power stations and grids uses Windows PCs with custom management software sitting on top to manager the processes and grid management. And the patch to get rid of the Blaster worm doesn't install if the rigs don't have at least SP2 for Win2k installed... I know that a lot of corporates are still testing SP2 and SP3 for bugs, nevermind SP4...

[Skii]

Well I feel sorry for them

People trapped in subway cars for 5 hours in searing heat, hospitals without power and homes not just without electicity but without water as well.

Can't be nice.

[Big RICHARD]

A major power grid was overloaded. Because this one went down the extra load was tranferred to other grids until they went down too (the domino effect)

[Punky]

Originally posted by Knoxville
Whats that.......no power to the gun factories ...........

nicely put Knox... don't they have back-up generators or anything to use? poor Yanks, without air-con. now they know how us poor english people feel in summer

[Jcb33]

THey say that Britain is starting to run out of power and we will start getting huge power outages sometime in December what will we do were running out of power

[oddytomtom]

employ lots of mice to run on wheels hahahaha

[Wiffle_BMXer]

did u see the picyures of it... omfg... people were walking down the freeways tharts a frikin long walk home.....

[oddytomtom]

it is indeed, and new york i bet is a hot place, especially in the subways, killer

[Stoo]

Originally posted by Jcb33
THey say that Britain is starting to run out of power and we will start getting huge power outages sometime in December what will we do were running out of power

Umm piffle lol

The power companies are actually selling our excess over the channel lol

In 20 years time it's another matter though:

"Currently our generation mix for electricity is approximately 32% coal, 23% nuclear, 38% gas, 4% oil, with 3% others and renewables.

Emission constraints mean that the UK's coal-powered generating plants will close shortly after 2016 and only one nuclear power station will remain operational beyond 2020."

The brunt of it will fall on gas, which is already twindling in a big way..

Basically the government needs to get off it's rear and get proper plans in place to get renewable and sustainable clean energy up to the level where it can pick up the shortfall.

Oh, was that a pig flying by my window?

[petrefax]

dunno about running out of power but due to the recent hot weather there was a report on the radio yesterday that wales is running out of booze :EEK: