Massive Power Outage

[Suicide Junkie]

Hey! I'm finally back!
How did you guys all fare?

[Atrocities]

Got to love New York!

[parabolize]

what caused it?

[Baron Munchausen]

The word on CNN and Foxnews (yes, I follow both because even the one that has trademarked 'Fair & Balanced' -- isn't... ) is that a power station in the Niagara Falls area was hit by lightning. This naturally caused a few circuit-breakers to trip, and then the inevitable cascade occurred where the increased demand from the suddenly dark power grid caused an adjacent power system to also trip its breakers, and then even more demand from the larger dark grid caused another adjacent grid to trip its breakers, and... you know how it goes.

This propogated all the way to the coast blacking out at least 80 percent of New York State and NYC itself, and all the way to the end of Lake Erie and blacked out Detroit (taking Cleveland and Toledo out also), and crossed the Niagara River and blacked out large areas of Ontario, including Toronto. Large chunks of adjacent New England states are down, such as Connecticut. Several nuclear power plants were sent into emergency shutdown, and it is going to take a while to restart those. This is apparently the largest power failure ever to occur in North America.

Michigan Public Radio is reporting that the local power people claim it will take ALL WEEKEND to completely restore power in Detroit and surrounds. Wow... Apparently they have to start with lower loads (rural stuff) and build up. So why is NYC on track to be back up in 'hours' not days? Hmm...

[ August 15, 2003, 04:04: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Katchoo]

Power in my corner of Ottawa came back Online around 10pm EST.

Television service is still down right now and probably won't be up till morning.

I'd like to think I made the best of the situation. I went out and tossed a football around with some of the neighboors until it got too dark, and then took a walk around the surrounding blocks to see what was happening (or not happening).

Dang.. Apparently the people living across from our townhouse left food on the stove when the power went off and left the house. When the power came back on, so did the stove. The Fire Department is outside now. Damn, whatever was burning sure smells horrible The fire is out now though. That'll be a nice surprise for those people when they get home

[Arkcon]

hmmmmmmmmmm

HMMMMMMMMMM

MMMMMMM

Ah. Powered up again. Hmm, feels good.

Oh, I just had to post, we have power again. I'm not gonna abuse this, so I just logged on it see what caused it. Google News and Reuters are still down. But I knew our groop would have a "fair and balanced" answer. Thanks, Baron