Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Massive Blackout Hits Northeast Cities

From: [email-masked]
Date: Thu, 14 Aug 2003 17:35:35 -0400

Massive Blackout Hits Northeast Cities
7 minutes ago

NEW YORK - A huge power blackout hit U.S. and Canadian cities Thursday, driving
workers in New York and Toronto into the streets, shutting subways in blistering
heat and closing four nuclear power plants in Ohio and New York state.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said there was no evidence of terrorism as a
cause.  "Probably a natural occurrence which disrupted the power system up there,"
he said, referring to a power grid based in the Niagara Falls area.
The FBI (news - web sites) was checking into the extraordinary outages but had no
immediate information about the cause, said spokesman Bill Carter in Washington.
Blackouts stretched from New York City as far west as Detroit, at least.

"We have no idea how extensive it is," said an official with the Office for
Emergency Management in New York City.

In New York, the blackout affected subways, elevators and airports, including John
F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports. Thousands of people streamed into the streets
of lower Manhattan in 90-degree heat.

In Toronto, Canada's largest city, workers also fled their buildings after the
blackout hit shortly after 4 p.m. EDT. There also were widespread outages in
Ottawa, the capital.
Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland and other major cities,
creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour.

There were reports of outages in northern New Jersey and in several Vermont towns.
In Connecticut, Metro-North Railroad service was knocked out. Lights flickered at
state government buildings in Hartford.

Every prison in New York state reported a loss of power and switched to backup
generators, said James Flateau, a spokesman for the state Department of
Corrections.
In Albany, N.Y., several people were trapped in elevators in Empire State Plaza,
but most had been freed by 5 p.m. People in New York City lined up 10 deep or more
at pay phones, with cell phone service disrupted in some areas.

Mike Saltzman, a spokesman for New York Power Authority, a state-owned utility in
White Plains, N.Y., said its two largest hydroelectric plants, including Niagara
Falls and St. Lawrence-FDR, were operating. He said he did not know the status of
18 other smaller plants.

The blackouts rivaled those in the West on Aug. 11, 1996, when heat, sagging power
lines and unusually high demand for electricity caused an outage that affected 4
million customers in nine states, one of the most severe outages in U.S. history.
A blackout in New York City in 1977 left some 9 million people without electricity
for up to 25 hours.

"There is no evidence of any terrorism at this point," said Michael Sheehan,
deputy commissioner for terrorism of New York City's Police Department.  "We've
talked to Washington and there are rumors, but none of them pans out."

Top New York police officers gathered at the department's operations center
downtown where the focus was on the ramifications of the blackout rather than its
cause.
"We're more concerned about getting the traffic lights running and making sure the
city is OK than what caused it," a police spokesman said at the center.

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