A state-by-state look at the blackout's impact

By Associated Press, 8/14/2003

Connecticut

Power flickered across Connecticut and some areas of the state lost electric service completely as New York City was plunged into a blackout Thursday afternoon.

According to the Web site for Northeast Utilities some 182,000 customers were without power at 6 p.m. Fairfield County and Connecticut shoreline towns appeared to be the hardest-hit.

The blackout apparently was due to natural causes and there was no sign of terrorism, officials in New York and Washington said.

Witnesses said power was out in parts of Waterbury and Stamford. In the latter city people were lining up at pay telephones and looking for alternate transportation.

Power flickered at office state government buildings in Hartford and at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks.

Officials said no New York-bound planes had been rerouted to Bradley, but said such detours remained a possibility Thursday afternoon. There were no reports of delays for arriving or departing flights.

Fire and ambulance sirens could be heard in downtown Stamford. One woman led a group of people across a street where traffic signals were out.

"Let's all go in a group ... they'll get a bigger dent if they hit us all!" yelled Katy Nelson, a woman from Texas who was visiting businesses in the area and trying to get to New York.

Officials from ISO-New England, which runs the regional power grid, said they were aware of the problems but had no immediate details.

The blackout closed nuclear power plants in Ohio and New York state. Peter Hyde, a spokesman for the Millstone nuclear power plant in Watertown, said the facility was on line but had not been asked to generate additional power.

Gov. John G. Rowland, who was out of the state, was monitoring the situation by phone, and state emergency management officials were meeting at the Capitol, authorities said.

The state Office of Emergency Management was working with power companies to manage the situation, spokesman John Wiltse said.

"We certainly have no indication at this point that this is anything but an electrical grid issue," Wiltse said.

Metro-North Railroad service was out, with some trains stopped between stations.

"We're assessing the situation before we do anything," Metro-North spokeswoman Marjorie Anders said.

Power outages hit cities from New York to Cleveland and Detroit. Thousands of people streamed out into the streets of lower Manhattan in 90-degree heat.

Heavily populated Fairfield County, home of the state's New York City suburbs, was a concern for electric supply even before the blackouts. The aging distribution system in the region can be overloaded in periods of peak demand, but proposals to replace or expand the system have been opposed by residents and environmentalists.

Similar concerns have held up activation of a power cable crossing the Long Island Sound between Connecticut and Long Island. Rita Bowlby, spokeswoman for the Cross-Sound Cable Co., said the cable beneath Long Island South is ready is "ready to be part of any kind of solution."

The company has not been asked to contribute power to the regional grid, she said. The cable has a capacity to transmit up to 330 megawatts.

ISO-New England would make the decision to ask Cross-Sound Cable to contribute power to the grid, Bowlby said.

Power flickered at the Indian-run Mohegan Sun casino in Montville but the sprawling gambling palace has backup generators, a spokesman said.

Kim Hicks, of Baltic, Conn., was at the Six Flags over New England amusement park in Agawam, Mass.

"We were on the Cyclone roller coaster when the power went out," she said. "Luckily it was where it was flat, thank God, not up on top. We sat there about 20 minutes and they finally came to walk us off."

The park regained power a short time later.

A massive blackout that left New York City and several other American and Canadian cities without power Thursday afternoon also touched off sporadic outages in Massachusetts, state officials and power suppliers said.

The Boston area appeared to have escaped the blackout altogether, a spokesman for power provider NStar said, while the western part of the state saw scattered blackouts.

Gov. Mitt Romney said the state was largely spared because the regional power grid operates independently from New York.

"We're asking our citizens to continue using power as they normally would," Romney said.

Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency spokesman Peter Judge said there were reports of problems in Pittsfield, but no details yet on how much of the city may have been affected. The agency did not immediately activate its emergency center but was monitoring the situation, Judge said.

There were reports of sporadic, brief outages in other parts of the Berkshires around 4:15 p.m. Attempts to reach a spokeswoman for Western Mass Electric Co. were unsuccessful.

In Springfield, Western New England College and the Eastfield Mall were evacuated when both lost power. Power was quickly restored at the mall, officials said.

A message left at Massachusetts Electric, which covers central and western portions of the state, was not immediately returned. The company's Web site said 241 customers, mostly in Springfield, were without power.

Outages also occurred in Connecticut, where 58,000 customers were without power at 5 p.m., and in several towns in northeastern Vermont. No power outages were reported in Maine, New Hampshire or Rhode Island.

An employee for ISO New England, which manages the regional power grid, said the company had no additional information about the outages in New England and was still assessing the situation.

New Hampshire's largest electric utility said Thursday the state did not appear to be affected by the Northeast blackout.

A Public Service Company spokesman said the state and most of New England are in a power pool that is separate from the network that covers New York state, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

"The power system of this country was segmented after the great Northeast blackout of the late 1960s," Murray said.

Northwestern parts of Vermont and parts of Connecticut and Massachusetts near the New York border experienced spotty blackouts.

Gov. Craig Benson said that "the drain on our power grid is normal and it's business as usual in New Hampshire."

He added that the state's utilities "may be asked to send some power to the affected areas and that may put a little burden on us but everything should be all right."

The power failure affected some incoming flights into Manchester Airport.

New Jersey

NEWARK, N.J. -- Gov. James E. McGreevey declared a state of emergency Thursday after much of northern New Jersey slammed to a sudden halt as a multi-state power blackout left residents and workers in the dark, stuck in elevators or massive traffic jams.

The National Guard was deployed for the blackout that also hit U.S. cities from New York to Cleveland and Detroit and north into Canada.

It was not immediately clear how extensive the outages were in New Jersey. No problems were reported in the eight southern counties covered by Conectiv, according to spokesman Bill Yingling.

Newark police said no reports of lawlessness were received by 5 p.m., but traffic was hopelessly snarled. City fire director Edward Dunham said six people have been rescued from elevators.

Train service was canceled and the Port Authority bus terminal in New York was closed and the building evacuated, according to Ken Miller, a spokesman for New Jersey Transit. The Newark subway also was halted.

NJ Transit trains were being allowed to travel to the end of their scheduled lines before being shut down, spokesman Ken Hitchner said.

"There is some power, enough to get the trains to where they need to be, and then we're stopping service until we can assess the situation," he said.

Amtrak, which began experiencing power problems at 4:10 p.m., has suspended all service between New York Penn Station and New Haven, Conn., and Newark, N.J., spokesman Cliff Black said.

Some trains are carrying northbound passengers from Washington as far as Newark, but are turning around there. Train service leaving Boston for New York and Washington has been suspended.

Black said no Amtrak trains were stranded when the power went out.

Flights in and out of six U.S. airports, including Newark Liberty International Airport, were grounded, according to the transportation department.

McGreevey was returning from vacation in Cape May to meet with officials, spokesman Micah Rasmussen said. "Other than the fact that it's widespread, we don't know at this point," Rasmussen said.

University Hospital in Newark issued an urgent appeal for flashlights, battery operated radios and electrical extension cords. The hospital immediately switched to emergency backup power and patient care was not compromised, spokesman Rogers Ramsey said.

New York

A massive power outage struck the eastern United States and parts of Canada on Thursday afternoon, knocking out cell phone and subway service and sending office workers streaming into the streets in 90-degree heat.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said there was no evidence of terrorism.

Power was slowly returning to New York state by 6 p.m., about two hours after the outage, Bloomberg told reporters at City Hall. Still, he said it would be "hours, not minutes" before power was fully restored to New York City.

"Nobody can really be more specific than that," he said.

In a scene reminiscent of the first hours after the Sept. 11 terror attacks, office workers streamed into the New York City streets and walked north after their buildings went dark. The famed neon lights of Times Square also went out.

In New York City, downtown streets were jammed with office workers walking north, trying to get home in a scene reminiscent of the first hours of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Pedestrians also streamed across the Brooklyn Bridge.

In Times Square, Giovanna Leonardo, 26, was waiting in a line of 200 people for a bus to Staten Island. All the famed neon lights in Times Square were off, leaving sunlight as the only source of light.

"I'm scared. It's that unknown `what's going on' feeling. Everyone's panicking. The city's shutting down."

Subway stations were plunged into darkness, with passengers waiting on platforms. It was not immediately clear what had happened to passengers who were on trains and between stations when the outage struck.

The Port Authority said all passengers had been safely evacuated from 10 trains that were stuck under the Hudson River or underground when the power went out.

Bloomberg said power was out in a region bounded by Canada to the north, New Jersey to the south, Connecticut to the east and Ohio to the west. He said the outage appeared to have originated in the power grid near Niagara Falls.

"Apparently, for reasons that we don't yet know, it cascaded down through New York state," the mayor said. "The likely expectation is a few hours at a very minimum, and maybe well into the evening, before power comes back on."

New York City airports stopped all takeoffs but allowed incoming flights to land. No flights destined for New York from other cities were allowed to take off, said Federal Aviation Administration spokeswoman Arlene Salac said.

Downstate Hospital in Brooklyn lost power, but Bloomberg said all other hospitals were operating on emergency generators.

Black smoke poured into the air from a power substation near 14th Street in New York, but Bloomberg said that was normal -- a function of the automatic shutdown of some of the city power system.

In New York City, downtown streets were jammed with office workers walking north, trying to get home in a scene reminiscent of the first hours of the Sept. 11 terror attacks. Pedestrians also streamed across the Brooklyn Bridge.

Bloomberg urged people to drink plenty of water, open windows and take their time walking on a day when temperatures in Manhattan soared into the mid-90s.

Many stores closed because they were without lights and electricity for cash registers.

Because traffic lights were also out, passersby were directing traffic in midtown Manhattan, where streets were clogged with traffic. Generally, people on the streets were calm.

Long Island Rail Road and Metro-North commuter trains lost power, leaving thousands of rush hour commuters stuck on trains.

"We're trying to asses the extent of this and locate all our stuck trains," said Marjorie Anders, spokeswoman for Metro-North.

City Hall was operating on a backup generator and has power although most electricity, including air conditioners had been shut off.

Outtages were reported as far away as Cleveland and parts of Canada, CNN reported.

There were also long lines for pay phones as cell phone service was disrupted.

He said the city was making sure hospitals, police officials and jails were "getting what they need to function."

Vermont

A handful of northern Vermont towns lost power briefly Thursday as part of a power outage that hit U.S. and Canadian cities.

A portion of the Northeast Kingdom near Sheldon lost power for about an hour, said Steve Costello, a spokesman for Central Vermont Public Service, which covers about three-fourths of the state.

Some customers in Franklin County including in Highgate and Swanton also went without electricity briefly, Costello said.

"Vermont Yankee and our own generators along with Hydro Quebec are what's keeping the lights on right now," he said Thursday evening. "We don't really have any ties to anyone else at the moment."

Green Mountain Power customers did not appear to be affected, said spokeswoman Dorothy Schnure. The company covers most of Chittenden County, and parts of Addison and Washington counties.

"Our customers are fine; our voltage seems to be stable," she said.

Schnure said the transmission line coming into Vermont from New York was out late Thursday afternoon, but that the company was relying on power from other areas.

"The system is set up with redundancies so if you lose one line coming in, you have other lines that take up the slack," Schnure said.

Some CVPS employees who had gone home for the day were back monitoring the situation Thursday evening, Costello said.

"This is certainly something that we need to be very careful how we handle it and we need to stay right on top of it, but I can assure you that every person involved is doing just that," he said.