Major power outage hits New York, other large cities
 

Major power outage hits New York, other large cities
Thursday, August 14, 2003 Posted: 5:23 PM EDT (2123 GMT)

http://i.cnn.net/cnn/2003/US/08/14/p...y.out.wcbs.jpg

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; Boston, Massachusetts; Cleveland, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Toronto and Ottawa, Canada. The power outage occurred shortly after 4 p.m.

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

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 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.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg confirmed the outage was not related to terrorism or an accident.

"The good news is, Con Ed's facilities have shut down automatically, which they're programmed to do," he said. "No damage was done to the Con-Ed facility."

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

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."

Yah I see that on tv. The major cities look like a mess. And no air either in that heat. Sucks to live in the North right now.

As someone on another message board already posted:

"Official sunset in NYC 7:56 PM EDT. Looting begins at sunset. Lines already forming at Tiffany's, Cartier and Best Buy... "

Unless some have gotten an early start...

Anyone wanna place bets on how long the blackout's gonna last?

My bet: at least 24 hours.

Isn't that area in the middle of some sort of heat wave right now? :confused:

And I didn't EVEN think about the possible looting that may happen? :confused:

Please pray for the safetly of those people in NYC, especially those that may be stuck in the subway........ :(

So thankful
 

How thankfull am I that I'm in Florida right now and not in NYC?

Two weeks ago at 4pm I was in the Bronx. I cannot imagine trying to get home to Queens on my own with no subway. Eeek!

Good luck to Cream, xo_kathy and others in their journey home tonight!

HEE! That's hilarious, ariesrising. :D

I heard on the news that there's a bunch of people stuck in elevators and they're still trying to get them out (2 1/2 hours later). I probably would be hyperventilating by now if I was one of those people.

i'm one of the only people i know right now that has power out here...i'm definately not complaining as i sit here on GC in the nice air conditioner :)

Wouldn't doubt that. We had a small outage where we live earlier this week (about 6000 homes), and it took 11 hours to fix.

Talked to my Dad in Columbus, and the problem didn't spread that far South.

Heard on NPR that lots of folks were stuck on rides at Cedar Point. With all of those Coasters, could be a real job getting them all down.

Par for the course...
 

And just like Ottawa, a statement came from the Prime Minister's office that says that the problem originated South of the Border, not in Ontario. :p

I am in Providence and we have not been affected as of yet. Let's hope it doesn't hit here. It is really hot with no air conditioning (we only have it in the bedroom 'cause the worst is SLEEPING hot). Plus, mu husband is making pork tenderloin for dinner as we speak, which takes electricity!!!!

P.S. A great hint: if you are going out of town and want to make sure that your fridge has stayed on and the power hasn't been off long enough to spoil the food, make sure you have ice cubes in the ice drawer (not the tray) and look at them when you get home from your vacation. If they have melted and you have a little frozen pond in there, you know that the fridge was off for some time. If they are still cube-like, all is well!

it is from canada all the way down to florida!!:eek: :eek:

http://www.handykult.de/plaudersmilies.de/lach.gif

Beyond the major outage areas, it's very possible there are sporadic outages in certain areas, especially if they're being serviced with power purchased from that grid.

At least Texas ain't affected; it's on its own power grid.

That's if they didn't fry themselves in the process! (evil grin)

I'm thankful that I'm not in the Eastern Grid....I just heard the story of a seniors husband/wife that went down 35 flights of stairs in the dark and a small "pocket" flashlight.

When they said 3 airports shutdown temporarily & incoming flights delayed ect...I just hope that there isn't a lot of people looting and worse getting injured.:eek:

Regarding the Blackout: Has anyone heard from any GC'rs that have been affected?

I miss my cream!

LOL. Hope she's ok and not doing what I usually do in a power outage....DRINK. lol


THats gotta sux tho. My friend Beth flew out of Newark this afternoon at 1pm. Just got out in time. SHe lives in Staten Island.

Peeps been saying for years that the power grid needs an upgrade in that area. Its gonna keep happening until they drop some coin. Hey, howabout instead of sending Marines to Liberia to 'peacekeep' which wont happen, (see Somalia). Lets drop that coin HERE AT HOME.

Sorry.

Just hope everyoene is ok.

Most importanly, the part of NJ where the GC servers are stored isnt affected.

Great idea. Most food is ok for 12-24 hours in the fridge as long as you dotn open the door. Think about it. Its a big cooler...and well insulated. So if you leave the fridge alone, you'll be ok for a while.

Ain't that the truth? With all those rush threads what would we do with no GC???:eek:

I guess the garden state is good for something?!?! LOL KIDDING I love my NJ.

I was home alone for the day... was on the phone back and forth with my parents and sister when the power went out. My dad and sister are stuck in Manhattan, probably won't be coming home at all... my mom was stuck on the train but luckily she came home a little while ago. I feel bad for the people who were stuck on roller coasters upside down at Coney Island or Great Adventure....

And nine months from now...millions of babies will be born because of today. Hooray for procreation during a blackout.

Sandy!!

One track mind, I'm with ya on that!

Power has been restored in parts of NYC... possible complete restoration by midnight EDT.

Actually, she's probably right. It happened after the last big NE blackout.

Oh, and there is such a thing as a whiteout -- but it happens in the winter.

Wow, that majorly sucked. I was out-of-town yesterday for a funeral and I found about the power outage on my way home. We didn't have power until 4am this morning and it was on and off. As of right now, I still don't have water. :( Hopefully everything will be back to normal when I get home from work today.

It's funny how something in the Niagara Falls area can affect the rest of the state. We got our power back last night.
There were cars on the side of the road (out of gas) because electricity operates the pumps, no traffic lights, a few people were stuck in elevators, and radio & television stations went off the air periodically. There was a pizza parlor that was giving out free food last night because of lack of refrigeration (didn't have to cook).
Luckily, where I work we have back up generators so we were okay. However because of the blackout I was one of the staffers who were sent out on assignment to wakes during the blackout. There were quite a few of them that had wakes regardless or not having lights or air conditioning. mad cover funeral homes in the area suffer.

now this morning they are trying to figure out why.
i think it's funny that the news is calling the power grid like one would find in a third world country.
a third world country?? amazing.
we did ours in texas last year. no fun.

this was actually kind of fun. i never get to see my neighborhood completely dark and quiet. except some jerk had a generator running so that kinda ruined the effect.

driving in pitch black is not fun though.

a lot of people still have no power. hopefully they'll get it on soon. ours came on at 11pm

ooooohhhhhhh my turn...

can i just say :( ?

what a long night of hell!! i guess i can say FORTUNATELY (?) cuyahoga falls, ohio has their own power supply system that was not affected at any given time....full power! i wanted a blackout :(

i work at applebee's and went into work at 5pm yesterday. From the moment i walked in until about 11:30 (we close at midnight) we were on AT LEAST an half hour wait if not longer. i was so slammed...my one manager didnt get to go home and had been there since 10:00 am and my other manager couldnt even leave the front door cause we were SOOOO busy.

we had another nearby store bringing there food over cause they lost their power and didnt want the food to go bad. at one point, we didnt have cups and we didnt have silverwear at another time and i have 4 tables out of my 5 that had food with nothing to eat it with.

we ran out of SOOOO much food! and i swear every phone call was someone calling to see if we had power... there was at least one table that i was aware of that drove over an hour just to eat cause nothing was open anywhere

my best friend had to go back into work cause he works at a hotel, which is also in cuyahoga falls and they filled up COMPLETELY in like a half hour or so cause people needed electricty and couldnt stay at home without it! :rolleyes: poor wittle people that cant live without tv...imagine life before electricty...

the worst part was that my tips were so shitty - all of ours were cause people were being shitty to us :( i almost lost my temper a couple times...i was not enjoying this anymore than anyone eating there...

soo...yeah...so much for blackout 2003 :rolleyes: we had "power 2003"

I was at work when we lost power... fortunately I live one town over and my commute is mostly back streets.

I could find only one clear station on the entire AM band. Meantime, the FM stations were all up and running and playing Christina Aguilera like nothing had happened. :rolleyes:

Interesting driving tidbit: When power is out, intersections normally controlled by a traffic light should be treated as if there were stop signs. Oddly enough, nobody in my area seems to know this, with the exception of a certain AEPhi who followed the rules and nearly got creamed for her troubles.....

We also lost our phone lines and had to rely on our cell phones. Cell coverage in my area is spotty at the best of times, so there I was wandering around the front yard seeking the elusive cell phone signal. :( And Mr. aephi alum had decided that it was more important that HIS cell be fully charged, so he had pulled mine off the charger, so my cell's battery was flat. :mad: Wound up charging my cell off my computer's UPS.

Tuna fish sandwiches for dinner. Ugh. :( Fortunately we have a manual can opener!!!

Power was restored at around 2:30am. First thing we turned on: the air conditioner!

It is just amazing how dependent we are on electrical power. I couldn't do my job (software engineer/database administrator) because the computers were down. Driving home was an adventure because there were no traffic signals (and no cops directing traffic). No TV, no internet, no power for the electric stove (hence the tuna), no water (we have a well: no electricity = no pump = no water), nada.

Anyway, hope everyone else is ok. :)

Did anyone else had the urge to go to New York and reenact your favorite scenes from "The Warriors"?

"Can the warrior come out and play?"

give it up arya :)

Our power just came on.... I don't think I have ever jumped out of bed so quickly in my life. It was such a misereable 20 hours!!!

i can imagine me using the vaccuum with the music turned up loud when the power goes out. . .getting scared and falling asleep while crying(my nearest relative would be in Texas). . .and suddenly, the next day jumping out of bed and screaming because everything turned back on when the power came on.


blackout would not be cool

i bet a lot of broke college students were like 'i know i paid the light bill. . .'

My power went out for 12 hours yesterday. It wasn't too bad actually. Only I was bored as hell. Also, I wasn't staying in my own home so I couldn't find a flash light, and I only had 5 or 6 candels, that weren't all that great.

It's really a pain in the a$$ when all there is to do is read a book...and do you know how difficult it is to do by candellight??

Somebody Need A Cookie

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what kind? :)

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