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The Northeast Blackout of 2003 was a massive Power Outage that occurred throughout parts of the Northeastern and Midwestern United States , and Ontario , Canada on Thursday, August 14 , 2003 . Although not affecting as many people as the later 2003 Italy Blackout , it was the largest blackout in North America n history. It affected an estimated 10 million people in the Province of Ontario (about one-third of the population of Canada ), and 40 million people in eight U.S. State s (about one-seventh of the population of the U.S.). Outage-related financial losses were estimated at $6 billion USD ($6.8 billion CDN). IMMEDIATE IMPACT According to system logs, a massive power fluctuation affected the transmission grid at 4:10:48 p.m. , Akron , Toledo , New York City , Baltimore , Buffalo , Albany , Detroit , and parts of New Jersey . This was followed by other areas initially unaffected, including all five Borough s of New York City and parts of Long Island , Westchester County , Rockland County , Putnam County , New Jersey , Vermont , Connecticut , and most of Southern and Northeastern Ontario , including Toronto , Hamilton , Ottawa , Kingston , Sudbury , Kitchener , London , and Windsor . It was estimated that the blackout covered an area of roughly 9,300 square miles (24,000 square kilometers). Eventually a large, somewhat triangular area bounded by Lansing, Michigan , Sault Ste. Marie , the shore of James Bay , Ottawa , New York, and Toledo was left without power. According to the official analysis of the blackout prepared by the US and Canadian governments, more than 508 generating units at 265 power plants shut down during the outage. 22 of these were nuclear power plants. Within the large area affected, only a little over 200,000 people in the Niagara Peninsula of Ontario , the portion of New York State north and west of Albany, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan continued to have power while the entire surrounding area dropped off the power grid. This was due to the action of transmission circuit protective devices at Sir Adam Beck Generating Station in Niagara Falls , at a switching station in Cornwall , and in central New York State, that arrested the collapse of this portion of the grid. Some essential services remained in operation in most of these areas, although backup generation in some cities was not up to the task. The phone systems remained operational in most areas; however, the increased demand by people phoning home left many circuits overloaded. Water systems in several cities lost pressure forcing Boil Water Advisories to be put into effect. Cellular Telephones experienced significant service disruptions as cellular transmission towers were overloaded with the sudden increase in volume of calls. Major cellular providers continued to operate on standby generator power. Television and radio stations mostly remained on the air with the help of Backup Generator s which remained online throughout the blackout. It was a seasonally hot day (over 31 °C or 88 °F, and even higher in some places) across much of the affected regions. The heat played multiple, minor roles in the initial events that triggered the wider regional power outage. The high temperature caused power lines to sag and energy demand to increase as people across the region turned to fans and air conditioning to beat the heat. When the outage knocked out air conditioning, buildings became hot and tempers frayed. However, there was not the huge surge in crime which had been feared by many, including law enforcement agencies. In areas where power remained off after nightfall, the Milky Way and orbiting artificial Satellite s became visible to the naked eye in metropolitan areas where they cannot ordinarily be seen due to the effects of Light Pollution . Most Interstate Passenger Rail Transport in the affected areas was shut down, and the power outage's impact on international air transport and financial markets was widespread. Meanwhile, the reliability and vulnerability of all electrical power grids was called into question. MEDIA COVERAGE AND OFFICIAL REPORTS In the United States and Canada, the regional blackout dominated news broadcasts and news headlines beginning . National news stations, such as CBC and CNN , continued to cover the story by inviting politicians and electrical experts to discuss the situation and ways to prevent blackouts. Internationally, coverage of the story focused on the development of the situation in New York City . More than two days later, the cause of the blackout was officially still under investigation, but the possibility of a Terrorist Attack had been uniformly dismissed only 20 minutes into the blackout. Statements made in the aftermath During the first two hours of the event, various officials offered speculative explanations as to its root cause:
CAUSES Background Electrical Power cannot easily be stored over extended periods of time, and is generally consumed less than a second after being produced. The demand load on any power grid must be matched by the supply to it and its ability to transmit that power. Any great overload of a power line, or underload / overload of a generator, can cause hard-to-repair and costly damage, so the power grid is disconnected if a serious imbalance is detected. Power lines normally grow longer and sag between their towers when they get hotter as they carry more power, reaching a designed lowest height above the ground at a specified power level. To prevent the sagging lines from coming too close to trees and causing a short circuit, the trees are pruned, often on a five-year cycle. If the lines touch the trees, they are disconnected by systems which detect the sudden change in power flow from the short circuit. These power changes from a line going out of service can sometimes cause Cascading Failure s in the areas around them as other parts of the system see the fluctuations. These are normally controlled by delays built into the shutdown processes and by robust power networks with many alternative paths for power to take, which has the effect of reducing the size of the ripples. The borders of the blacked out areas on 14 August were where the blackout areas encountered systems with more spare capacity. The operators of the power system control center are responsible for ensuring that they balance the supply of power, the loads (customers demanding that power), and the transmission line capacity, so that their system is in a state where no single fault can cause it to fail. After a failure affecting their system, operators are required within thirty minutes to obtain more power from generators or other regions or to shed load (meaning cut power to some areas), until they can be sure that the worst remaining possible failure anywhere in the system won't cause an unplanned system collapse. In an emergency they are expected immediately to shed load as required to bring things into balance. To assist the operators there are computer systems, with backups, which issue alarms when there are faults on the transmission or generation system. They also have Power Flow Modeling Tools which let them analyze what is currently happening on their network, predict whether any parts of it may be overloaded, and predict what the worst possible failure left is, so that they can change the Power Generation load or transmission to prevent a failure should this situation occur. If the computer systems and their backups fail, the operators are required to monitor the grid manually, instead of relying on computer alerts. If they cannot interpret the current state of the power grid in such an event, they are to invoke a contingent operational pattern. If there is a failure, they are also required to notify adjacent areas which may be affected, so those can predict the possible effects on their own systems. Backing up the local operators are regional coordinating centers which bring together information from adjacent areas and perform further checks on the system, looking for possible failures and alerting operators in different systems to them. Investigation efforts A joint federal task force was formed by the governments of Canada and the U.S. to oversee the investigation and report directly to Ottawa and Washington. The task force was led by then-Canadian Natural Resource Minister Herb Dhaliwal and U.S. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham . In addition to determining the initial cause of the cascading failure, the investigation of the incident also included an examination of why safeguards designed to prevent a repetition of the Northeast Blackout Of 1965 failed. Issues of failure to maintain the electrical infrastructure, failure of upgrading to so-called "smart cables", failure of shunting and rerouting mechanisms, AC vs. DC intersystem ties, and substitution of Electricity Market forces for central planning were expected to arise. The North American Electric Reliability Corporation , a joint Canada-U.S. council, is responsible for dealing with these issues. Despite the absence of any indication of Terrorism or Sabotage , and days before terrorist claims were made, the United States Department Of Homeland Security immediately started a separate investigation of its own. On November 19 , 2003 , Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said his department would not seek to punish FirstEnergy Corp for its role in the blackout because current U.S. law does not require electric reliability standards. Abraham stated "The absence of enforceable reliability standards creates a situation in which there are limits in terms of federal level punishment."http://www.forbes.com/markets/newswire/2003/11/19/rtr1153863.html Findings In February 2004 , the U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force released their final report, placing the main cause of the blackout on FirstEnergy Corporation's failure to trim trees in part of its Ohio service area. The report said that a generating plant in Eastlake, Ohio , a suburb of Cleveland, went off-line amid high electrical demand, and strained high-voltage power lines later went out of service when they came in contact with "overgrown trees". The cascading effect that resulted ultimately forced the shutdown of more than 100 power plants.http://www.nrcan-rncan.gc.ca/media/docs/reports_e.htm Computer Failure The Task Force also found that FirstEnergy did not take remedial action or warn other control centers until it was too late because of a failed within 30 minutes. Then all applications (including the stalled alarm system) were automatically transferred to the backup server, which also failed due to the same reason as the primary one. After this time (14:54), all energy management applications on these two servers stopped working.ftp://www.nerc.com/pub/sys/all_updl/docs/blackout/NERC_Final_Blackout_Report_07_13_04.pdf Another effect of the failing servers was that the screen refresh rate of the operators' computer consoles slowed down from 1-3 seconds to 59 seconds per screen. Sequence of events Blackout sequence of events, 14 August 2003 ,http://www.tipmagazine.com/tip/INPHFA/vol-9/iss-5/p8.htmlhttps://reports.energy.gov/B-F-Web-Part2.pdf times in EDT
EFFECTS Affected infrastructure Power generation For those involved in providing critical services however, it was a different story. With the power fluctuations on the grid, power plants automatically went into "safe mode" to prevent damage in the case of an overload. This put much of the nuclear power normally available offline until those plants could be slowly taken out of "safe mode." In the meantime, the coal and oil fired plants were brought online, bringing some electrical power availability to the area by the morning of the 15th. Homes and businesses both in the affected area and in nearby areas were requested to limit power usage until the grid was back to full power. Water supply Some areas lost water pressure because pumps didn't have power. This loss of pressure caused potential contamination of the water supply. Four million customers of the Detroit water system in eight counties were under a boil water advisory until 18 August . One county, Macomb , ordered all 2,300 restaurants closed until they were decontaminated after the advisory was lifted. Twenty people living on the St. Clair River claim to have been sickened after bathing in the river during the blackout. The accidental release of 140 kg (310 lb) of Vinyl Chloride from a Sarnia, Ontario chemical plant was not revealed until five days later. Cleveland also lost water pressure and instituted a boil water advisory. Cleveland and New York had sewage spills into waterways, requiring beach closures. Kingston lost power to sewage pumps, causing raw waste to be dumped into the Cataraqui River at the base of the Rideau Canal . Transportation Amtrak 's Northeast Corridor railroad service was stopped north of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania , and all trains running into and out of New York City were shut down, initially including the Long Island Rail Road and the Metro-North Railroad ; both were able to establish a bare-bones "all-diesel" service by the next morning. Canada's VIA Rail , which services Toronto and Montreal, suffered service delays, but most routes were still running, and normal service was resumed on most VIA routes by the next morning. Passenger screenings at affected airports ceased. Regional airports were shut down for this reason. In New York, flights were cancelled even after power had been restored to the airports because of difficulties accessing "electronic-ticket" information. Air Canada flights remained grounded on the morning of the 15th due to reliable power not having been restored to its Mississauga, Ontario , control center. It expected to resume operations by midday. This problem affected all Air Canada service and cancelled the most heavily traveled flights to Halifax and Vancouver . Many gas stations were unable to pump fuel due to lack of electricity. In North Bay, Ontario , for instance, a long line of Transport Truck s was held up, unable to go further west to Manitoba without refueling. In some cities, traffic problems were compounded by motorists who simply drove until their cars ran out of gas on the highway. Gas stations operating in pockets of Burlington, Ontario , that had power were reported to be charging prices up to 99.9 cents/liter (3.43 US dollars per gallon) when the going rate prior to the blackout was lower than 70 cents/liter. Customers still lined up for hours to pay prices most people considered unjustified by the blackout. Although part of the price hike was arguably due to Price Gouging , station operators could also claim that they had a limited supply of gasoline and did not know when their tanks would be refilled, prompting the drastic price increases. Many oil refineries on the East Coast of the United States shut down as a result of the blackout, and were slow to resume gasoline production. As a result, gasoline prices were expected to rise approximately 10 cents/gallon (3 c/L) in the United States. In Canada, gasoline Rationing was also considered by the authorities. Communication Cellular communication devices were disrupted. This was mainly due to the loss of backup power at the cellular sites where generators ran out of fuel or cell phone batteries ran out of charge. Wired Telephone Line s continued to work, although some systems were overwhelmed by the volume of traffic, and millions of home users had only cordless telephones depending on house current. Many people who in prior blackouts would have relied on Transistor Radio s for news no longer had one, having long since replaced them with portable CD players and other such devices. Most New York and many Ontario radio stations were momentarily knocked off the air but were able to return with backup power. Cable television systems were disabled, and areas that had power restored (and had power to their television sets) could not receive information until power had also been restored to the cable provider. Those who relied on the Internet were similarly disconnected from their news source for the duration of the blackout, with the exception of Dialup access from Laptop Computers , which was widely reported to work until the battery would run out of charge. Amateur Radio operators came in to pass emergency communications during the blackout. {Link without Title} Industry Large numbers of factories were closed in the affected area and others outside the area were forced to close or slow work because of supply problems and the need to conserve energy while the grid was being stabilized. At one point a 7-hour wait developed for trucks crossing the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor due to the lack of electronic border check systems. Freeway congestion in affected areas affected the "just-in-time" supply system. Some industry including the auto industry did not return to full production until 22 August . Looting Incidents of Looting were reported in Ottawa, Ontario (notably in the suburb of Orleans where it appeared to be systematic) and Brooklyn, New York. Overall, there was only a small fraction of the looting and general civic disturbance seen in the New York City Blackout Of 1977 . By region New York, USA during the blackout]] Almost the entire state of New York lost power. Exceptions include a few places on Long Island that relied on localized power plants; the southernmost areas of the Southern Tier of Upstate New York that relied on power from Pennsylvania ; the city of Plattsburgh ; Starrett City, Brooklyn which has auxiliary power; most of the city of Buffalo; and pockets of Amherst , in the Buffalo area, running off University power. There were also some small pockets of power in the suburbs of Rochester , as a few smaller power companies operating in those areas were able to keep running. Power was also available at the Kodak park facility and its surrounding neighborhood in the city. Power was lost at the Oak Hill Country Club , in nearby Pittsford, New York , where the PGA Championship was being played -- which caused minor interruptions to the tournament. In New York, all prisons were blacked out and switched to generator power. The two Indian Point Nuclear Reactors on the Hudson River near Peekskill , the two reactors at Nine Mile Point nuclear plant, the single reactor at Ginna nuclear plant near Rochester and the FitzPatrick reactor near Oswego all shut down. With three other nuclear plants shutdown in Ohio, Michigan, and New Jersey, a total of nine reactors were affected. The governor of New York State, George Pataki , declared a State Of Emergency . Manhattan , including Wall Street and the United Nations , was completely shut down, as were all area airports, and all New York area rail transportation including the Subway , the PATH lines between Manhattan and New Jersey, Metro North Railroad and the Long Island Rail Road . Hundreds of people were trapped in elevators; by late evening the New York City Fire Department had reportedly confirmed that all stalled elevators in approximately 800 Manhattan high-rise office and apartment buildings had been cleared. More than 600 subway and commuter rail cars were trapped between stations; the NY State Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Port Authority Of New York And New Jersey —which operates the PATH lines—reported that all passengers were evacuated without serious injury. However, PATH was first to resume subway service on Sixth Avenue (albeit on 15-minute headways) by 6PM that evening. Without traffic lights, a Gridlock was reported as persons in Lower and Midtown Manhattan fled their offices on foot; for hours into the evening the streets, highways, bridges and tunnels were jammed with traffic and pedestrians leaving Manhattan, though many civilians opted to help direct traffic. The bus journey from Manhattan to Washington which normally takes four hours took more than eight hours with reports that it took four hours just to get out of Manhattan. Mayor Michael Bloomberg advised residents to open their windows, drink plenty of liquids to avoid Heat Stroke in the heat, and not to forget their pets. Temperatures were 92 °F (33 °C) with high humidity, as New York had just experienced a record-breaking rain spell that had started at the end of July. With cell phone operation mostly stalled by circuit overloads, New Yorkers were lining up 10 deep or more at pay phones as ordinary telephone service remained largely unaffected. While some commuters were able to find alternate sleeping arrangements, many were left stranded in New York and slept in parks and on the steps of public buildings. While practically all businesses and retail establishments closed down, many bars and pubs reported a brisk business as many New Yorkers took the opportunity to spend the evening "enjoying" the blackout. Since most perishable items were going to spoil anyway, many restaurants and citizens simply prepared what they could and served it to anyone who wanted it, leading to vast block parties in many New York neighborhoods. 40,000 police and the entire fire department were called in to maintain order. At least two fatalities were linked to the use of flames to provide light, and many nonfatal fires also resulted from the use of Candle s. The City's Office Of Emergency Management activated the City's Emergency Operations Center, from which more than 70 agencies coordinated response efforts which included delivery of portable light towers to unlit intersections, generators and diesel fuel to hospitals, and a portable steam generator necessary to power air conditioning units at the American Stock Exchange. Verizon 's emergency generators failed several times, leaving the Emergency Services Number 9-1-1 out of service for several periods of about a quarter hour each. The City's 311 information hotline received over 175,000 calls from concerned residents during the weekend. Amateur Radio Operator s attached to New York City ARES provided a backup communications link to emergency shelters and hospitals. Amateur radio Repeater s were supplied with emergency power via Generator s and batteries and remained functional. Many major U.S. Networks (i.e CBS , NBC , ABC , and FOX ), and some cable TV Networks like HBO , MTV , and Nickelodeon were mostly unable to broadcast because of the lack of electricity in the New York area, however a back-up station in Dallas, Texas and flagship transmitters there made it possible for prime-time television to be broadcast. ( ABC however chose not to do that and decided to cover the news from Washington DC during the blackout). For delayed effects at Niagara Falls , see below under Ontario . New Jersey, USA Affected areas included most of Hudson , Essex , Union , Passaic and Bergen Counties, including the major cities of Paterson , and Newark although some sections of Newark and East Orange still had power. Power was returned first to the urban areas because of concerns of safety and unrest. Counties as far south as Monmouth were affected, but power was restored within an hour. The day following the blackout, August 15 , the New Jersey Turnpike stopped collecting tolls until 9:00 a.m. Baltimore, USA The outage affected many households and businesses in the Baltimore City and all of the surrounding counties including Baltimore County . Flights were canceled and rerouted at the airports in the Baltimore-Washington area. Flights were canceled at Baltimore-Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport ( BWI ), Washington Dulles International Airport , and Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport . Connecticut, USA Parts of New London, Hartford, New Haven, Litchfield and Fairfield Counties, from Greenwich to Danbury and Bridgeport, were affected, although most of the state had power all evening, aside from a few momentary interruptions that caused computers to reboot. Metro North trains stopped, and remained on the tracks for hours, until they could be towed to the nearest station. Generally, most of the state east of Interstate 91 , and some places west of I-91, had power during the duration of the blackout, with some of New Haven 's eastern suburbs being seen as the easternmost extreme of the effects of the blackout. A local controversy ensued in the days after the blackout, when the Federal government ordered the HVDC Cross Sound Cable between New Haven and Long Island turned on. This cable had been installed, but had not been activated due to environmental and fisheries concerns. The Attorney General of Connecticut, Richard Blumenthal , and the Governor Of New York , George Pataki , traded insults over the cable. Most Connecticut politicians expressed their outrage that the cable was being turned on, since it did not help anyone in Connecticut, as the cable would transport power from Connecticut to Long Island. Massachusetts, USA A small area of extreme western Massachusetts was affected. In Worcester the event was of sufficient magnitude to reboot some computers, while in Springfield the effect of the event was enough to cause the automatic startup of commercial and industrial backup generation facilities. Michigan, USA About 2.3 million households and businesses, which included almost all of Metro Detroit as well as Lansing , Ann Arbor , and surrounding communities in southeast Michigan were affected. TV stations were temporarily knocked off the air and water supplies were disrupted in Detroit due to the failure of electric pumps. Because of the loss of water pressure all water was required to be boiled before use until August 18 . Several schools which had planned to begin the school year 18 August were closed until clean water was available. A Marathon Oil refinery in Melvindale near Detroit suffered a small explosion from gas buildup, necessitating an evacuation within one mile (1.6 km) around the plant and the closure of Interstate 75. Officials feared the release of toxic gases. Heavy rains on Friday coupled with the lack of sewage pumps closed other expressways and prompted urban flood warnings. Untreated sewage flowed into local rivers in Lansing and Metropolitan Detroit as contingency solutions at some sewage treatment plants failed. In the midst of a summer Heat Wave , Michigander s were deprived of Air Conditioning . Several people, mostly elderly individuals, had to be treated for symptoms of Heat Stroke . Ohio, USA Over 540,000 homes and businesses were without power. In Cleveland, water service stopped because the city is supplied by electric pumps and backup electricity was available only on a very limited basis. Portions of the cities of Akron , Mansfield , Marion and Ashland were without power. Cleveland declared a Curfew on all persons under the age of 18. At Cedar Point Amusement Park in Sandusky , park employees had to help guests walk down the steps of the -tall Magnum XL-200 rollercoaster, which had stopped on the lift hill due to the blackout. Ontario, Canada |
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