Blackout
 

Wow, sure glad the generator kicked on! Thought I should share.....


Major power failure across Northeast

Toronto, Detroit also affected after fire at NY power plant

BREAKING NEWS
MSNBC AND NBC NEWS

Aug. 14 — A fire at a major New York power plant caused cascading blackouts throughout the Northeast, the Midwest and eastern Canada late Thursday afternoon, knocking out electricity to millions of people in New York, Toronto, Detroit, Cleveland and elsewhere.
FEDERAL POWER REGULATORS did not identify the power plant, but CNN reported that a fire had been reported at a transformer at the Consolidated Edison plant in New York City. Most of the affected cities are linked on the same regional power grid.
Officials of the Homeland Security Department said there were no indications that the blackout was the work of terrorists.
The evening rush hour was just beginning in the East, and NBC correspondents described scenes of pandemonium as thousands of New Yorkers streamed into streets where traffic signals were not operating.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said it was crippled. Buses, trains and subways were not running. WNBC-TV reported that fire crews were heading down into the subways to check on thousands of stranded passengers.
Jim Tsumi of Riverdale, N.Y., was sitting on the shoulder of Highway 495 leading to the Lincoln Tunnel.
“I got no hope getting home tonight,” he said, pointing across the river at Manhattan, where the West Side Highway and a two-mile traffic jam were clearly visible. “It’s like 9/11 again. I hope this is nothing big.”
The blackout stretched from Hartford, Conn., and Syracuse, N.Y., west to Detroit and Cleveland and north to northwest Ontario. The entire city of Toronto was affected, MSNBC television reported.
The Federal Aviation Administration said that its facilities were operating normally on backup power and that planes in the air were in no danger. FAA officials told NBC News that individual airport terminals could be affected, however, and Detroit Metropolitan Airport was temporarily closed.
Much of New England, however, including all of Massachusetts, Rhode Island and New Hampshire, southern Vermont and eastern Connecticut, were unaffected, as were other areas of Canada, including Montreal and Quebec City.

BLAST! my e-mail is based in NYC


Beats the noodles out of our little tornado-caused power problems

My power where I am working in CT keeps flickering here (4 times so far)... Not affecting CT huh?? Yeah right!!!

Well, hopefully everyone and everything will be ok!!

edit: I'm watching a streaming newscast of NYC right now, it looks like a mad house. Lots of pedestrians!!

I can't imagine the feeling. Especially the people who were in the city almost two years ago. Getting out of work, and seeing a mass exodous. People in the subways must be frantic.

It's crazy that so many cities are being affected.. as far as Detroit... luckily Indianapolis is okay :)

Oconomowoc is OK! /me wipes sweat off forehead

At the time of this blackout, I was on the phone with two engineers in Detroit and they were both saying "whoa... the power just went out". They were about 30 miles apart.

Andy B.

oh my gosh..
 

wow, i've been watching the news for about an hour nowit's crazy how it affected so many areas... i'm over in the LA area on the west coast, so it hasn't affected us, but i have a lot of friends in those areas in the east... i hope they're doing ok with no power...

Has anyone ever seen the power schematics of New York? I have, and let me tell u it looks like spaghetti and meatballs. The biggest problem is that it will take a long time to get the power back up. Because if anyone remembers their A/C electricity, you have to have equal frequencies and power coming in and going out. And even then, i think when the power is restored, alot of fuses will blow, and city fuses are the size of humans. So, now it is time to watch and wait. Good thing i get my power straight from Limerick Nuclear Power Plant.

I've been watching the news(abc) and they keep puting up two maps showing the area. In one map, im in the blackout area, and in another, im hundreds of miles away from the outage. Hmm... glad to still have power.

They haven't noted an exact reason yet (they say they don't know), but what does everyone think that it is most likly?

I heard one of the main stations got overloaded and shut down to save the fuses

Blackout!
 

Well, you know, this is coming from someone who is right in the middle of it.

I'm sweaty, I'm bored, I can barely stay online, and, it's totally not safe to be out on the roads.

And could someone please explain how I'm able to get online? I'm not sure how that system works.

Does anyone know when this is going to end?

No fires, just overloaded and shut down. Gotta love the automatic "If I go down they're coming with me" attitude.

Anyway it's back...hope it stays back.

CNBC is now reporting that a lightning strike in Canada was the initial cause.

We have power, but most of LI does not. We're right near the airport and it's open -- I think we're on the same grid.

Looks like power is STARTING to come back on in parts of NYC. Just in time for nightfall.

Just as a side track not that it matters- FIRST headquarters lost power 3 weeks ago beacuse of a blown transformer. We had a bunch of 8-10 year olds trying to build robots in the dark!

Good thing we just gave a segway demo and they where happy!

NYC has no power. The buildings with lights on are running on their own generators.

Thats not what I heard on MSNBC than from Bloomburgh on Larry King.

I think they are going back and starting to test what will happen if they bring the grid back up.... piece by piece

haha that sucks for you guys... but in eastern Mass we run on a seperate generator :D

What makes me really mad about this is: Scrubs was interrupted by the president's commentary on the blackout.. I do pity all of those new yawkers who were stuck in the hot subway all day long though-

This is the first my electricity has become stable. I hope it will stay on all night now, becuase without the AC it will be misereable. Signing off soon... try to keep occupied/cool everyone!

Mine's all blinky....I can't help but envision a monkey at the power station flicking a switch everytime the lights go out for a sec and come back.


Yeah....all day stuck with no computer makes matty go batty.

Whew ... I'm glad my vacation to the eastern states was last week and not now!

*envisions being stuck in her room of the 39th floor of the Mariott Marquis and shudders*

Glad to hear the power is coming back, though! :)

I predict a baby boom in 9 months :yikes:

:D :D :D Where is the ROTFLMAO icon?


Lets make a list of everyone who was without power.. I had power here in sunny Minnesota.

Wow, finally just got power back here in West Islip, NY (Long Island).

Let me tell you... it is unbelievable all the things that we do in our everyday life that depends on electricity. You never really realize it until it is all totally gone. I can't even begin to explain the feelings that I was having -- I dont think that I have ever been more bored in my life, ever. There is absolutely NOTHING to do. I mean, no lights, no TV, no computer, can't open the fridge, can't cook, stores are all closed, can't get gas, street lights out (causing total chaos in the streets at intersections). Cell phones weren't working, sometimes even normal phones didnt work.

I was actually sitting in the dentist's chair when it all happened. I was only in the chair for about 5 minutes, the hygenist had just briefly looked around in my mouth and was taking my first x-ray. She left the room to press the button, and as the machine's "buzz" was interrupted halfway and everything turned off. I thought maybe it was just a blown fuse at the office. Next thing I know I hear the office talking about that the whole block is out -- even the traffic lights. They try to call the power company, but the phones are dead; sirens are ringing in the background. Everyone there tried their cell phones but they just wouldnt connect to any number. Someone tries their car radio -- many stations arent even running, one was reporting that power was out all the way to Manhattan.

They excused me from the office, I went outside to find people lining the sidewalks, all outside the buildings they were in, talking (well trying to connect anyway) and giving strange looks at their cell phones. The streetlights are out, cars horns are blaring, people are just randomly walking across the street in front of cars. "Power is out in Michigan!" you can hear. I try to leave the parking lot, but without traffic lights it was extremely difficult... the entire ride home was filled with packed roads, chaos, etc. A 30 minute ride took me over 2 hours, thank god I had enough gas. On the radio: Malfunction at a Niagra Falls plant... me: "then why dont we have power down here at LI, we have our own power plants, why dont we just disconnect from the grid and power ourselves for now" -- the thoughts on everyone's minds, on a hot 85 degree afternoon, people are restless and sweaty. Oh yea-- fill up some bottles with water and dont use the water after that.. who knows how long the pumps that create water pressure will remain on backup power. And dont leave candles unattended b/c you wont have phones to call 911 -- which may not even be running -- and the fire dept will have no water pressure to put out a fire.

Yea so that was my day... complete and utter chaos. I've never experienced anything quite like this before (although 9/11 was another very emotional catastrophe, it is a very different type of situation to go through -- both are flat our horrible). I still cannot understand how something like this could go so terribly wrong in this day in age... it just doesnt make sense. Oh well, now it's over (hopefully forever).

I found it rather humerous,only because I was stuck at home, and spent all night trying to get a generator going. We did get it going before power came back though, which beat my estimates :p.

We actually had power going from one generator in my driveway across the street and down a couple of houses, as well as into my house. Only to power three frigdes, but it was worth it.

Oh, and by the way. If you ever have a clogged fuel line, don't put a rubber hose with a larger ID in the line, cause after a few hours of crazy vibrations, it'll come off and spray gasoline everywhere. My hands still smell like gas...

The one thing that really pisses me off. We missed the meteor shower by like, a day! Why couldn't the power go out a few days ago and be clear skies... :p

Oh well, now I'm off to brave the LIE to get to the last day of my internship. Hoepfully most of the lights are on, as Long Island is on it's own power grid for the day.

Actually no fire just smoke because of the plant shutting down. Anyway I was on a date with my girlfriend when the power went out. It was fun especially since the power was off for the lights and there was not many cops to be seen.:( I just love how history repeats itself.

First the robbery/homicide on the Xerox campus and then this. I'm just glad they both didn't happen at the same time.

Yeah, it sucks when you drive 25 miles to get somewhere, learn that the place is closed, but wait for an hour to turn around, and then drive 25 miles back home.

On the plus side, I figured out that a Honda Accord has slightly better acceleration than a Volvo (I can't remember the type now :\). My friend's car was faster in the end though... :(.

And it was a 55 MPH road, so we weren't breaking any laws (on Long Island, you're supposed to go, minimum, 10 MPH over the speed limit, seriously :p).

My power went out at around 5 pm. Some friends and I went and had a picnic. Then I came home and went running. At 8:30 I sat in the dark with flashlights with my family and we listening to a Canadian radio station. At around 9:30 our power came back.

I was logged on mobile AIM via my cell phone the whole time :)

I think people overreacted to the whole situation :P

Hm. I just installed a new cd-burner. Finished writing a 700mb cd in 2 min 50 sec... on my second CD, with 3 seconds left, BZZZT (power goes off). I thought it was my computer (which crashes a lot now), but then I realized that my power surge light was out... this occurred at roughly 4:10pm (what, Kristen?? How'd you have 50 more min of electricity??!)

I went to my violin lesson at 4:30pm... Obviously, there were no lights and it was incredibly hard to read all the 16th and 32nd notes in the Etude i was studying. My dad arrived at 5pm to pick me up and noted that he took almost the entire 30 min to just loop around the block back to me because traffic was sooo bad (this is about 2mph he was driving at).

At home, we turned on the radio and kept NPR on all the time. We turned on the gas grill and started making food - pissed me off that all stores had to close because of this. My mom came home and finally realized that electricity was out around 6pm because she works at Cornell and they have their own generators...

After dinner, I set up the badminton net and played with my dad for half an hour. Luckily, there wasn't any breeze that I could feel, but even so, the feather shuttlecock still went askew if hit above 10 feet. Lol.

I went to my room later, pocketed my pocket torch (thanks for buying it, Vicki - did you have power in Michigan?) and made sure I had that on to light candles with. I sat around listening to music for a while, and then decided to go read a book by candlelight for a while - I saw Order or the Phoenix lying around and read the last couple hundred pages for the heck of it. Went to bed, and I have no clue when the power went on in the house because I slept for 12 hours. :) Gimme a break, I just finished summer school and our 2-day, 3 hr/day regents yesterday.

last night after CT and the rest of the east coast got their power back about 40 houses in old lyme remained w/o power for and additional few hrs. and yes i am one of those lucky peole i live in one of those 40 houses!!!!! so what did we do? we went to the movies!!!! it was quite amusing when everyone in the car was yelling "they have light!!!!!!" when we drove by the houses who already had their power back

Blackout NYC
 

Hey All,

As a Blackout Survivor of 2003 I must say Us New Yorkers Took The OUttage Really Well. Though Some took It as a memory of 9/11. As one person told the news the difference between today and 9/11 is that at least on 9/11 The Trains Were Still Running.

NYCTA aka MTA Has delt with this issue very professionally and calmly and b/c of this no one was injured or hurt when leaving a Dark Train going into a Dark Subway Tube. For Thos In New York City: Trains NYCTA, LIRR, Metro North Will Eventually Be Back Up The MTA Wants to insure the rails are in good repair as well as signals and switches. As soon as the City (5 Boroughs) reaches 100% in power restoration the MTA will begin onducting its 6 - 8 testing of all Subway Equipment!

I suggest everyone stocking up on Batteries and Lights because I forsee The Blackout Occuring again.

You know what I want to see - photographs from space of the NE/midwest United States around 9pm last night. Must be sooo weird to see these big patches of black where you'd normally expect to see millions of spots of light.

8/15/03 2:04 pm
 

Chestefield/New Baltimore, MI is back up and running...for how long is another story...

They said LI would probably not have steady power throughout the day, but all day has been perfectly fine. The fact that it's a really nice day out, 84, and not too humid, probably helped, a lot. My lights haven't even flickered a tiny bit once.

I think that our problem is LI doesn't produce enough power for itself for the really hot summer days. But, if no one uses A/C, we can provide enough power on our own grid, which is what I heard they did (we're quite literally an island, in the power sense, now :p). Doesn't matter to much for me, as I don't have A/C anyways, and my house only has 100 Amp service, so we can't even use that much to begin with.

Re: Blackout NYC
 

Don't you think you're being a bit dramatic?

I was talking to an employer at a job fair here at Kettering University in Flint, MI when the power went out. It came back on in less than a minute. (I'm fairly certain they had backup generators). The campus hasn't lost power since, but from what I have heard on my amateur radio, power in most of the rest of the town is still out.

We are currently under a boil water advisory. Because of the water, the school made an announcement that they are providing bottled water, but they only had enough for 1 bottle per person. I don't know how long they expect that bottle to last us. I guess it is a good thing i have several cases of Mountain Dew and Code Red.:D

Up here in the Great White North we are still suffering. There are some parts of Toronto working but a lot still down. Outlying areas (my home) still no power. Not able to reach people in Huntsville Ontario(further north). I will be getting lots of OT once power starts coming up. Glad I am at work with AC to spare.:D

Bah. Stupid power.

My apartment (Rochester Hills, MI) is still out, im at my parents house (Sterling Heights, MI) where power was restored about 2 hours ago.

At least this time I may be able to keep up with my non-functioning sump pump. :(

Well not really. It really was a serious problem that could have been a lot worst.

It could have been far, far worse. But, there really wasn't anything to survive. We sat around, we listened to the radio, some folks in NYC had to walk a bit to get home, or maybe they're stuck there now, but they're certainly not in terrible danger.

To call yourself a survivor suggests that your life was in danger. Did you feel like your life was in danger? I didn't.

I was on the computer when the black out occured. I thought it was local power outage. I live in Toronto. There is no power in my house until this morning 4am. It was nice to see stars in the city though.

woo..

I finally got our power back after like 26 hours (and I'd guess that Brandon got his back now too.. ).

I don't realise how addicited i am to the tv / computer until the sun sets at 9pm and I walk to the computer say "guess not.. " walk to the tv say "guess not.. " and then wonder what in the world to do :)

anywho.. we still haven't turned our ac back on so it's still hot..

oh well..

Getting stuck anywhere without any working stop lights is in itself fairly dangerous and I would say a lot of people were not in a good place to have the power go out when they were driving. My friend got stuck in New Jersey and had to drive to New York. The last time this type of power outage happened the cops did not have much control over the looting and other crimes going on. Of course it did happen a while back though.

Pfffttt... you forget that 100 years ago, this is not a problem, but the norm :P

Yes but far fewer cars made that problem slightly less dangerous. And you make that sound like it is old..... It really isn't.

Well, RI wasn't effected by this at all (we got the outages the night before from a rather large thunderstorm). We have 2 backup generators anyway (1 for the neighborhood, 1 in our house). Not that it matters. We lose power about once every other year here (power lines are underground), and when it does happen, it's almost never longer than a half-hour.

::flies away before someone decides to kill me::

*Chases down Eddie and kills him*

Take that, you dang rhode islanders! :p

I got lucky that LIPA (my local power company) has barely enough power to keep my house on. I hope. If it turned off, my computers all got screwed up, and I'm away for the weekend, but oh well.

Oh yeah, lots of traffic. NJ Turnpike sucked.

This is cool....

And after... :)

Well, I finally got my power back around 2AM this morning... only 34 hours after it went out. /me shakes fist at Jack for getting his back earlier...

And now I guess I have some catch-up to play... I missed 2 whole days of FIRST Jeopardy.

Adam Y. is correct.

There was a lot of people I saw on CNN in the street. Sure, people were kind, but what if there was some drunk driving down, and he killed anyone in the street? I don't think that'd be safe. (Yes, this could happen....)

And, also.....being a survivor doesn't have to be something like a astroid hitting your house and still living (an example, don't bash me on this), nor if your life is actually in danger. Being a survivor means getting through something really hard.
Nothing here about living through danger.

<<EDIT>>: I was in the UP of Michigan, so I had power, but my house didn't [thank god I un-plugged everything before I left on my vacation] :<</EDIT>>

i live outside of toronto and i got hit by the blackout...and only approximately 15 hours after the blackout did we get our power back...i was one of the lucky ones who had phones in the house which do not require electricity so i could still reach people...i was home alone and on the computer when the blackout happened so my first thought was that it was just my house...only after a phone call from a relative did i know that it was all of ontario (and later on i found out parts of usa). also since i was at home...i had no way to listen to the radio so i didnt know about anything that was happening.

overall, i actually didnt mind the blackout...my cousins and a couple of other relatives came over and we went swimming (while it was still light out) and then had dinner (which was mashed potatoes, barbecued chicken, stir fried vegetables, rice, and two other dishes i dont remember... all cooked on teh barbecue and gas burner) and then played board games by candlelight. i thought it was a great night and by the end, i forgot that there was no power.

i was wondering if anyone knew the reason why there was a blackout?? all i know is that canada was blaming it on the us and vice versa.

Don't most phones not require electricitly to run or do most of the people in your area use cordless?

Everyone is blaming Cleveland... I guess it goes back to all those old jokes....

I honestly believe the government did this (I'm not an anarchist, I just think they tested us).

I can give about a 75% guarantee that it wasn't a test by the governement. I can't say why I have the knoweledge.. but I can guarantee it.:cool:

yeah...a lot of the people in my area have cordless phones so they couldnt talk to anyone and we were told to only use cell phones for emergencies

my luck!!
 

THe only time that their would be a BLACKOUT in my entire lifetime........I'm not at home.........I live in the New York state and I wasnt there, it would have been cool to be their, but, guess it was better that I wasn't there. - Leethaa