 This image shows states and provinces that experiencedpower outages. Not all areas within these political boundaries were affected. | |
 | |
| Date | August 14–16, 2003 (2003-08-14 –2003-08-16) |
|---|---|
| Duration | 2 hours–4 days, depending on location |
| Location | Michigan,Ohio,Pennsylvania,New Jersey,New York,Connecticut,Massachusetts,Ontario |
| Type | Blackout |
| Cause | Failure of alarm system inFirstEnergy control room leading to cascading loss of transmission and generation capability. |
| Outcome | 55 million people affected |
| Deaths | Almost 100 |
TheNortheast blackout of 2003 was a widespreadpower outage throughout parts of theNortheastern andMidwestern United States, and most parts of the Canadian province ofOntario on Thursday, August 14, 2003, beginning just after 4:10 p.m.EDT.[1]
Most places restored power by midnight (within 7 hours), some as early as 6 p.m. on August 14 (within 2 hours),[2] while theNew York City Subway resumed limited services around 8 p.m.[2] Full power was restored toNew York City and parts ofToronto on August 16.[3] At the time, it was the world's secondmost widespread blackout in history, after the1999 Southern Brazil blackout.[4][5] The outage, which was much more widespread than theNortheast blackout of 1965, affected an estimated 55 million people, including 10 million people insouthern and central Ontario and 45 million people in eight U.S. states.
The blackout was due to asoftware bug in the alarm system at the control room ofFirstEnergy, which rendered operators unaware of the need to redistribute load after overloaded transmission lines dropped in voltage. What should have been a manageable local blackout cascaded into the collapse of much of the Northeast regional electricity distribution system.
According to the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO)—theISO, responsible for managing theNew York statepower grid—a 3,500megawatt power surge (towards Ontario) affected the transmission grid at 4:10:39 p.m. EDT.[6]
For the next 30 minutes, until 4:40 p.m. EDT, outages were reported in parts ofMichigan (Detroit),Ohio (Cleveland,Akron,Toledo),Ontario (Toronto,Hamilton,London,Windsor),New Jersey (Newark), andNew York (New York City,Suffolk,Nassau,Westchester,Orange andRockland counties,Rochester,Syracuse,Binghamton,Albany).
This was followed by outages in other areas initially unaffected, including all of New York City, portions of southern New York state, New Jersey,Vermont,Connecticut, as well as most of the province ofOntario.[2] Eventually, a large, somewhat triangular area bounded byLansing, Michigan,Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, the shore ofJames 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. In the minutes before the event, the NYISO-managed power system was carrying 28,700 MW of load. At the height of the outage, the load had dropped to 5,716 MW, a loss of 80%.[6]
Essential services remained in operation in some of these areas. In others, backup generation systems failed. Telephone networks generally remained operational, but the increased demand triggered by the blackout left some circuits overloaded. Water systems in several cities lost pressure, forcingboil-water advisories to be put into effect.Cellular service was interrupted as mobile networks were overloaded with the increase in volume of calls.[7] Multiple cell sites were out of commission due to power outages.[8] Television and radio stations remained on the air, with the help ofbackup generators, although some stations were knocked off the air for periods ranging from several hours to the length of the entire blackout.[vague]
High heat played a role in the initial event that triggered the wider power outage. Much of the affected region reached temperatures higher than 31 °C (88 °F) that day, increasing energy demand as people across the region turned on fans andair conditioning. This caused the power lines to sag as higher currents heated the lines.
Most of theAmtrakNortheast Corridor service was interrupted, as it relied on electricity for its signaling and crossing systems; electrified commuter railways also shut down.[2]Via Rail in Canada was able to continue most of its service. All airports in the affected area closed immediately, there were no departures, and incoming flights had to be diverted to airports with power.
The reliability of the electrical grid was called into question and required substantial investment to repair its shortcomings.[9]
In areas where power remained off after nightfall, theMilky Way and orbiting artificialsatellites became visible to the naked eye in metropolitan areas where they cannot ordinarily be seen due tolight pollution.[10]
Most places restored power by midnight, as early as 6 p.m. on August 14,[2] and theNew York City Subway had resumed limited services around 8 p.m.[2] Some areas lost power for only four to eight hours; these are:Albany and parts ofLong Island in New York; three‐quarters ofNew Jersey; parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio and Michigan;New London County, Connecticut; parts ofdowntownToronto,Mississauga, andLondon in Ontario; portions of westernOttawa in Ontario, includingKanata and south toKingston; a number of areas of theRegional Municipality of Niagara in Ontario; and parts ofSouthwestern Ontario, particularly areas near theBruce Nuclear Generating Station.[3]
By the next morning (August 15), some areas ofManhattan regained power around 5:00 a.m.;Staten Island regained power around 3:00 a.m. Half of the affected portions of Ontario regained power by the morning. By early evening of August 15, two airports,Cleveland Hopkins International Airport andToronto Pearson International Airport, were back in service. By August 16, power was fully restored in New York and parts of Toronto.[3] 500,000Detroit Edison customers were still without power at 10:00pm August 15; all were restored by 6:30am August 16.[11]
Within the area affected, about 200,000 people continued to have power—in theNiagara Peninsula of Ontario; the easternmost corner of Ontario (centered onCornwall); northwestern Ontario (west of Wawa); and theBuffalo, New York area, excluding southern Erie county, along the shore of Lake Huron via a feeder line toOwen Sound fromBruce Nuclear Generating Station. Three of the four Bruce B units were able to throttle back their output without a complete shutdown, then reconnect to the grid within five hours: the portion of New York state including parts of Albany and north and west of Albany, a small pocket of mid-east Michigan, theUpper Peninsula of Michigan, and small pockets in New Jersey. The unaffected area was protected by transmission circuit devices at theSir Adam Beck Hydroelectric Generating Stations inNiagara Falls (coincidentally, the starting point of theNortheast blackout of 1965) at a switching station of the hydroelectric power station in Cornwall, as well as central New York state.Philadelphia and the surroundingmid-Atlantic areas were also completely unaffected becausePJM disconnected them.[6] The Saint Clair power plant inEast China Township, Michigan, remained online for about 36 hours, and residents were informed that the plant would have to shut down in order to facilitate the reboot of the whole system.Orrville, Ohio, was able to restore power within an hour disconnecting the local utility from the larger grid and restarting the coal-fired generator.[citation needed]
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The load on any power network must be immediately matched by its supply and its ability to transmit that power. Anyoverload of a power line or generator can cause costly damage, so the affected device is disconnected from the network if an overload is detected.
Theelectrical resistance of a power line causes it to produce more heat as thecurrent it carries increases. If this heat is not sufficiently dissipated, the metal conductor in the line will expand and lengthen, so that it sags between supporting structures. If the line sags too low, aflash over to nearby objects (such as trees) may occur, causing atransient increase in current. Automaticprotective relays detect the excessively high current and quickly disconnect the line, so the load previously carried by the line is transferred to other lines. If the other lines do not have enough spare capacity to accommodate the extra current, their overload protection will react as well, causing acascading failure.
System operators are responsible for ensuring that power supply and loads remain balanced, and for keeping the system within safe operational limits such that no single fault can cause the system to fail. After a failure affecting their system, operators must obtain more power from generators or other regions or "shed load" (meaning to intentionally cut power to a given area, similar to arolling blackout) until they can be sure that the worst remaining possible failure anywhere in the system will not cause a system collapse. In an emergency, they are expected to immediately shed load as required to bring the system into balance.
To assist the operators there are computer systems, with backups, which issue alarms when there are faults in the transmission or generation system.Power flow modeling tools let them analyze the state of their network, predict whether any parts of it may be overloaded, and predict the worst possible failure remaining, so that they can change the distribution ofgeneration or reconfigure the transmission system 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 state of the power grid in such an event, they follow a contingency plan, contacting other plant and grid operators by telephone if necessary. 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.[12]
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 MinisterHerb Dhaliwal andU.S. Energy SecretarySpencer Abraham.
In addition to determining the initial cause of the cascading failure, the investigation of the incident also included an examination of the failure of safeguards designed to prevent a repetition of theNortheast blackout of 1965. TheNorth American Electric Reliability Corporation, a joint Canada-U.S. council, is responsible for dealing with these issues.
On November 19, 2003, 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."[13]
In April 2004, the U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force released their final report, placing the causes of the blackout into four groups:[14]
The report states that a generating plant inEastlake, Ohio, a suburb northeast of Cleveland, went offline amid high electrical demand, putting a strain on high-voltage power lines (located in Walton Hills, Ohio, a southeast suburb of Cleveland) which later went out of service when they came in contact with "overgrown trees". This trip caused load to transfer to other transmission lines, which were not able to bear the load, tripping their breakers. Once these multiple trips occurred, a number of generators suddenly lost parts of their loads, so they accelerated out of phase with the grid at different rates, and tripped out to prevent damage. The cascading effect that resulted ultimately forced the shutdown of at least 265 power plants.
Asoftware bug known as arace condition existed inGeneral Electric Energy'sUnix-based XA/21energy management system.[15] Once triggered, the bug stalled FirstEnergy's control room alarm system for over an hour. System operators were unaware of the malfunction. The failure deprived them of both audio and visual alerts for important changes in system state.[16][17]
Unprocessed events queued up after the alarm system failure and the primaryserver failed within 30 minutes. Then all applications (including the stalled alarm system) were automatically transferred to the backup server, which itself failed at 14:54. The server failures slowed the screen refresh rate of the operators' computer consoles from 1–3 seconds to 59 seconds per screen. The lack of alarms led operators to dismiss a call fromAmerican Electric Power about the tripping and reclosure of a 345 kV shared line in northeast Ohio. But by 15:42, after the control room itself lost power, control room operators informed technical support (who were already troubleshooting the problem) of the alarm system problem.[18]
The cascading failure began in the FE-controlled Cleveland–Akron area; the area was significant because it was a "transmission-constrained load pocket with relatively limited generation."[19] On August 14, a number of power generators in and around the area were offline. This reduced the available resources forvoltage control and reactive power management in contingencies but did not affect normal operation. Four or five of the area's capacitor banks—also used to manage reactive power—were also offline for routine maintenance; this did not follow the best practice of performing such maintenance during low-demand periods, and their status was not reported for regional planning purposes because FE had deemed them to be non-critical infrastructure.[20]
Incidents contributing to the blackout began after noon on August 14. FE's reliability coordinator was theMidwest Independent System Operator (MISO).[21] MISO maintained a regularly updated model of its area of responsibility with astate estimator (SE). At 12:15 p.m., the SE was mistakenly shutdown after producing anomalous results due to old data.[21] Unscheduled grid outages followed. In the Cleveland-Akron area, Eastlake Power Plant unit 5 went offline at 1:31 p.m. In Southern Ohio,Dayton Power and Light's (DPL) Stuart-Atlanta transmission line tripped from tree contact at 2:02 p.m. The outages did not affect normal operation.[22] However, the loss of the Eastlake unit put the FE system at risk of overloads in certain contingency scenarios; FE did not notice the danger.[23] At the time of the Eastlake unit outage, FE was asking for and receiving significant additional voltage support, but the situation was not unprecedented.[24]
FE's situational awareness was reduced by the development of faults in itsGeneral Electric Harris XA21energy management system (EMS) from 2:14 p.m. to 2:54 p.m. The alarm and logging software in the control room failed first, followed by some remote terminals and data links, then the primary and backup EMS servers. Control room operators were unaware of the alarm failure for over an hour. Operators began to suspect a failure after receiving a notification fromAmerican Electric Power (AEP) at 2:32 p.m. about a short AEP line outage that the FE EMS had failed to raise an alert for. FEIT was automatically notified of the remote terminal and server failures. IT performed a "warmreboot" of the primary server at 3:08 p.m. but did not realize that the alarm function remained broken. The control room notified IT of the alarm problem at 3:42 p.m. A "cold reboot"—later discovered to be the vendor-recommended action—was rejected because the power system situation was precarious and operators were concerned about the greater loss of functionality during the reboot procedure. The servers were offline again at 3:46 p.m. to 3:59 p.m. as they were rebooted in another attempt to re-enable the alarms. FE failed to notify MISO of its degraded situational awareness.[25]
Cleveland-Akron area transmission lines began failing shortly after 3:00 p.m. Three 345 kV transmission lines failed between 3:05 p.m. to 3:42 p.m. due to tree contact. The first was the Harding-Chamberlin line. Most of the load from that line was transferred to the Hanna-Juniper line, which then failed at 3:32 p.m. PJM and AEP began mitigation efforts to prevent the Star-South Canton line connecting FE and AEP from overloading; they had incomplete data on the status of FE's system and underestimated the severity of the situation. The Star-South Canton line failed at 3:41 p.m. after its loading increased from 82% to 120% after the failure of the Hanna-Juniper line. The failures in the MISO SE and FE EMS prevented either from recognizing and responding to the failures.[26] FE observed the loss of voltage after 3:32 p.m, but it was not until 3:45 p.m. that it recognized an emergency was occurring.[27] Next, the 138 kV lines failed between 3:39 p.m. to 4:08 p.m. The loss of voltage shut down industrial equipment used by customers and blacked out Akron and its surroundings.[28]
The MISO SE was reactivated at 2:40 p.m, but the results confused operators because the model did not match empirical data. The discrepancy was caused by the SE being unaware of the DPL line outage at 2:02 p.m;[29] DPL's reliability coordinator wasPJM,[21] so DPL did not automatically report data to MISO. MISO operators had the SE modelling correctly again by 4:04 p.m. It was too late for MISO to address FE's critical status; thecascading failure started minutes later.[29]
The following is the blackout's sequence of events on August 14, 2003[30][31][32] (times inEDT):
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| City | Number of people affected[citation needed] |
|---|---|
| New York City and surrounding areas | 14,300,000 |
| Torontometropolitan area andsurrounding areas | 8,300,000 |
| Newark, New Jersey, and surrounding areas | 6,980,000 |
| Detroit and surrounding areas | 6,400,000 |
| Cleveland andsurrounding areas | 2,900,000 |
| Ottawa | 780,000 of 1,120,000* |
| Buffalo, New York, and surrounding areas | 1,100,000 |
| Rochester, New York | 1,050,000 |
| London, Ontario, and surrounding areas | 475,000 |
| Kitchener-Cambridge-Waterloo, and surrounding areas | 415,000 |
| Toledo, Ohio | 310,000 |
| Windsor, Ontario | 208,000 |
| Estimated total[35] | 55,000,000 |
*Ottawa-Gatineau is a special case in that it is divided by a provincial boundary and theOntario andQuebec grids are not synchronously connected. This resulted inGatineau having power whileOttawa did not. Locals may have witnessed the drastic cutoff when they were crossing thePortage Bridge which links the capital region (street lights on the bridge were still lit on the Quebec side of the structure).
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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 offline until those plants could be slowly taken out of "safe mode". In the meantime, all available hydro-electric plants (as well as a number of coal- and oil-fired plants) were brought online, bringing some electrical power to the areas immediately surrounding the plants by the morning of August 15. 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.
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Some areas lost water pressure because pumps lacked 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 aboil-water advisory until August 18, four days after the initial outage. One county,Macomb, ordered all 2,300 restaurants closed until they were decontaminated after the advisory was lifted. Twenty people living on theSt. Clair River claim to have been sickened after bathing in the river during the blackout. The accidental release of 140 kg (310 lb) ofvinyl chloride from aSarnia, 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 hadsewage spills into waterways, requiring beach closures.Newark, New Jersey, and northern cities had major sewage spills into thePassaic andHackensack rivers, which flow directly to the Atlantic Ocean.Kingston, Ontario lost power to sewage pumps, causing raw waste to be dumped into theCataraqui River at the base of theRideau Canal.
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Amtrak'sNortheast Corridor railroad service was stopped north ofPhiladelphia, and all trains running into and out of New York City were shut down, initially including theLong Island Rail Road and theMetro-North Railroad; both were able to establish a bare-bones "all-diesel" service by the next morning. Canada'sVia Rail, which serves Toronto andMontreal, had a few service delays before returning to normal 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 August 15 due to reliable power not having been restored to itsMississauga control center. It expected to resume operations by midday. This problem affected all Air Canada service and canceled the most heavily traveled flights toHalifax andVancouver. AtChicago'sMidway International Airport,Southwest Airlines employees spent 48 hours dealing with the disorder caused by the blackout's sudden incidence.[36]
Many gas stations were unable to pump fuel due to lack of electricity. InNorth Bay, Ontario, for instance, a long line oftransport trucks was held up, unable to go further west toManitoba 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 ofBurlington, Ontario, that had power were reported to be charging prices up to $3.78 per US gallon (99.9 ¢/Litre) when the going rate prior to the blackout was lower than $2.65/gallon (70¢/L). Customers still lined up for hours to pay prices many people consideredprice gouging. Station operators claimed 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¢/L) in the United States. In Canada, gasolinerationing was also considered by the authorities.
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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. Where cell sites remained up, some cell phones still went out of service as their batteries ran out of charge without a power source to recharge from. Wiredtelephone lines 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. Most New York and multiple Ontario radio stations were momentarily knocked off the air before returning with backup power.
Cable television systems were disabled, and in areas that had power restored (and had power to their television sets), cable subscribers could not receive information until power was restored to the cable provider. Those who relied on theInternet were similarly disconnected from their news source for the duration of the blackout, with the exception ofdial-up access fromlaptop computers, which were widely reported to work until the batteries ran out of charge. Information was available by over-the-air TV and radio reception for those who were equipped to receive TV and/or audio in that way.
The blackout affected communications well outside the immediate area of power outage. The New Jersey–based internet operations ofAdvance Publications were among those knocked out by the blackout. As a result, the internet editions of Advance newspapers as far removed from the blackout area asThe Birmingham News, the New OrleansTimes-Picayune, andThe Oregonian were offline for days.[37]
Amateur radio operators passed emergency communications during the blackout.[38]
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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 theAmbassador Bridge betweenDetroit andWindsor due to the lack of electronic border check systems. Freeway congestion in affected areas affected the "just in time" (JIT) supply system. Some industries (including the auto industry) did not return to full production until August 22.
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Almost the entirety of theState of New York lost power. Exceptions includedFreeport andRockville Centre onLong Island, which relied on localized power plants; theCapital District, where power dipped briefly (a few areas, such as portions ofLatham, New York, did not lose power at all); the southernmost areas of theSouthern Tier ofUpstate New York, mostly nearWaverly, which relied on power fromPennsylvania; the city ofPlattsburgh;Starrett City, Brooklyn, which has auxiliary power; most of the city ofBuffalo; and pockets ofAmherst in the Buffalo area, running offuniversity power. There were also some small pockets of power in the suburbs ofRochester, as a few smaller power companies operating in those areas were able to keep running. TheNorth Shore Towers complex was unaffected by the blackout due to their on-site self-generating power plant. Power was also available at theKodak Park facility and its surrounding neighborhood in the city. Power was lost at theOak Hill Country Club in nearbyPittsford, where the2003 PGA Championship was being played, which caused minor interruptions to the tournament. Also, that evening'sMajor League Baseball game between theNew York Mets and theSan Francisco Giants atShea Stadium was postponed. In New York, all prisons were blacked out and switched to generator power. The twoIndian Point nuclear reactors on theHudson River nearPeekskill, the two reactors atNine Mile Point nuclear plant, the single reactor atGinna nuclear plant near Rochester, and theFitzPatrick reactor nearOswego all shut down. With three other nuclear plants shut down in Ohio, Michigan, and New Jersey, a total of nine reactors were affected. The governor of New York,George Pataki, declared astate of emergency.
Verizon's emergency generators failed several times, leaving theemergency services number9-1-1 out of service for several periods of about a quarter-hour each. New York City's3-1-1 information hotline received over 175,000 calls from concerned residents during the weekend.Amateur radio operators attached to New York CityARES provided a backup communications link to emergency shelters and hospitals. Amateur radiorepeaters were supplied with emergency power viagenerators and batteries and remained functional.
Major U.S. networks (CBS,NBC,ABC andFox) and some cable television channels (HBO,MTV andNickelodeon), centered inNew York City, were unable to broadcast normally, so backup stations and flagship transmitters inDallas were used for prime-time TV. ABC ran theirnews broadcasts fromWashington, D.C. instead.
Much ofManhattan, including theheadquarters of the United Nations, was rendered without power, as were all area airports (with the exception ofNewburgh'sStewart International Airport, which had once been a military airbase and had its own generators). All New York-area rail transportation including thesubway, thePATH lines between Manhattan and New Jersey,NJ Transit Rail Operations,Metro-North, and theLong Island Rail Road, were without power. Limited railroad service resumed early Friday morning through the use of diesel trains.[39]
More than 600 subway and commuter rail cars were trapped between stations. New York'sMetropolitan Transportation Authority (which operates the subway) and thePort Authority of New York and New Jersey (which operates the PATH lines) reported that all passengers were evacuated without serious injury. PATH resumed service on theUptown Hudson Tubes by 9:45 p.m. that evening; system-wide service resumed at 11 p.m.[39] By comparison, full service on the New York City Subway system returned gradually from Friday through Saturday morning.[39]
Without traffic lights,gridlock was reported as people in Lower andMidtown 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. A number of civilians helped direct traffic. The normally four-hour bus journey from Manhattan toWashington, D.C. took more than eight hours. According to reports, it took four hours just to get out of Manhattan.
Hundreds of people found themselves trapped in elevators at the start of the blackout, requiring urgent response from the FDNY. By late evening, theNew York City Fire Department had reportedly confirmed that all stalled elevators in approximately 800 Manhattan high-rise office and apartment buildings had been cleared.
MayorMichael Bloomberg advised residents to open their windows, drink plenty of liquids to avoidheat stroke, and not to forget their pets. Temperatures were 92 °F (33 °C) with highhumidity, 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 atpay phones asordinary telephone service remained largely unaffected. A number of people found themselves with no phone service at home.
While some commuters were able to find alternate sleeping arrangements, a number of people 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, multiple bars and pubs reported a brisk business as New Yorkers took the opportunity to spend the evening "enjoying" the blackout. Tourists' hotel rooms were blacked out, except the hallways, and most of the restaurants in lobbies gave out free food to guests. Since most perishable items were going to spoil anyway, restaurants and citizens simply prepared what they could and served it to anyone who wanted it, leading to vast block parties in multiple New York City neighborhoods. Any ice cream in frozen storage also had to be quickly served to any and all passers by.
TheIndigo Girls were scheduled to perform that evening atCentral Park SummerStage, and the band took the stage as planned to play one of the only shows in the affected area, using generators that had been filled with fuel that morning. Their performance was not a full-length concert, as they needed to end early to allow all attendees to exit Central Park before dark. The venue also had bathrooms, and vendors cooking food on propane grills.
Forty thousand police officers 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 a number of non-fatal fires also resulted from the use ofcandles. New York City'sOffice of Emergency Management activated its 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 theAmerican Stock Exchange.
Affected areas included most ofHudson,Morris,Essex,Union,Passaic, andBergen counties, including the major cities ofNewark,Jersey City andPaterson, although some sections of Newark andEast Orange still had power. Small sections of certain towns in Essex, Hudson, and Union counties had power.[40]
Power was returned first to the urban areas because of concerns of safety and unrest. Counties as far south asCumberland were affected, where power was restored within an hour. Some towns in Bergen County only momentarily lost power, and had wild oscillations in power line voltage, ranging from about 90 V to 135 V every few minutes for an hour.[41]
The day following the blackout, August 15, theNew Jersey Turnpike stopped collecting tolls until 9:00 a.m.
Parts ofNew London,Hartford,New Haven,Litchfield, andFairfield counties, fromGreenwich toDanbury andBridgeport 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 ofInterstate 91, and some places west of I-91, had power during the duration of the blackout, with some ofNew 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 power companies to energize theHVDCCross Sound Cable between New Haven andLong Island. This cable had been installed, but not activated due to environment and fishery concerns. TheAttorney General of Connecticut (and future U.S. Senator),Richard Blumenthal, and theGovernor of New York,George Pataki, traded insults over the cable. Connecticut politicians, without regard for public safety, 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.
A small area of westernMassachusetts was affected. InWorcester the event was of sufficient magnitude to reboot some computers, while inSpringfield the effect of the event was enough to cause the automatic startup of commercial and industrial backup generation facilities. Some areas were subjected to lower-than-normal voltage (as low as 100 volts AC) andbrownouts for periods of up to 24 hours. TheBoston area was spared from the blackout.
About 2.3 million households and businesses were affected, including almost all ofMetro Detroit,Lansing,Ann Arbor, and surrounding communities in southeast Michigan. The blackout affected three Michigan utilities:Detroit Edison (whose entire system went down),Lansing Board of Water & Light, and a small portion ofConsumers Energy's system in the southeastern corner of the state.
Word quickly spread to the surrounding areas without power and people flocked to surrounding areas that still had power, resulting in crowded stores, packed restaurants, booked hotels, and long queues for the gas stations in these towns. Locales closest to the affected areas in the northernDetroit suburbs that did not lose power included the areas ofOxford andHolly, communities alongM-24 andM-15, and into theLapeer andFlint/Tri-Cities area.[citation needed] The city limits ofBrighton andHowell were unaffected as well, as they received electricity from Consumers Energy via the Genoa-Latson 138 kV line which interconnects Detroit Edison and Consumers Energy.
Television and radio 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 August 18, were closed until clean water was available. A planned August 15 concert atComerica Park featuringKiss andAerosmith was postponed until September 7.[42][43]
AMarathon Oil refinery inMelvindale, near Detroit, suffered a small explosion from gas buildup, necessitating an evacuation within one mile (1.6 km) around the plant and the closure ofInterstate 75.
Officials feared the release of toxic gases. Heavy rains on August 17, 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 summerheat wave,Michiganders were deprived ofair conditioning. Several people, mostly elderly individuals, had to be treated for symptoms ofheat stroke.
In the Detroit area, local television stations' news helicopters were told by each station's management to "stay above the cars' headlights" at night, and to not venture into Downtown Detroit (due to the hazard of flying into an unlitskyscraper). During the days immediately after the blackout, a number of TV stations were back on the air, with limited resources. In one case,WXYZ-TV's news anchor was wearing a T-shirt and shorts, as opposed to his normal news suit, and apologized to viewers for the "rather warm conditions" in the station, as they only had one air conditioner and a couple of fans working.
TheDownriver communities had to contend with basements flooded with sewage-laden water on the weekend immediately after the blackout due to water and sewage pumps offline from a lack of power, much to the general annoyance of residents in the areas. News crews of the areas broadcast notices during their coverages of the blackouts to the Downriver residents, explaining why the pumps had shorted out, as well as to limit water usage. "Most places have water pressure, some have low pressure...some have none, and some even havenegative pressure. That means in the next few hours, people in the downriver communities should expect flooded basements from, so move all your valuables high up and out of the basements," asWDIV-TV warned.
West Michigan, including the communities ofGrand Rapids,Muskegon, andHolland were mostly unaffected, although a large portion was within "seconds" of joining the blackout according to local U.S. RepresentativeFred Upton.[44] Some communities in Southwest Michigan were impacted, being among the most western locations impacted.[45] Although right across the border fromSault Ste. Marie, Ontario,Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan was unaffected by the outage, as the two cities are not electrically connected.
Over 540,000 homes and businesses were without power. InCleveland, water service stopped because the city is supplied by electric pumps and backup electricity was available only on a limited basis. Water had to be boiled for several days afterwards.
Portions of the cities ofAkron,Mansfield,Massillon,Marion, andAshland were without power.
Cleveland declared acurfew on all persons under the age of 18. AtCedar Point amusement park inSandusky, park employees had to help guests walk down the steps of the 205-foot-tall (62 m)Magnum XL-200 roller coaster, which had stopped on the lift hill due to the blackout. Several other guests had to be helped off rides as a result of the blackout. InToledo, theMud Hens baseball team postponed the game scheduled for that night. Some parts of the city were unaffected by the blackout, notably the suburb ofSylvania. Other surrounding cities likeBowling Green only experienced a brief outage.
The area affected by the blackout included allSouthern Ontario, except Grimsby, Pelham,Niagara Falls andFort Erie, fromWindsor toOttawa and all the way to theQuebec border, except for theCornwall area.[46] Also affected wasNorthern Ontario, as far north asAttawapiskat andMoosonee onJames Bay and west toMarathon on theLake Superior shoreline. Communities affected in northern Ontario includedTimmins,Cochrane,Sudbury,Kirkland Lake,North Bay,Wawa, andSault Ste. Marie. Most ofNorthwestern Ontario (includingThunder Bay) was not affected.
Traffic lights, which had no backup power, were all knocked out. All intersections were to be considered anall-way stop. Coupled with the beginning of the evening rush hour, this caused traffic problems. In multiple major and minor intersections in large cities, such as Ottawa and Toronto, ordinary citizens began directing traffic until police or others relieved them. Since there were not enough police officers to direct traffic at every intersection during the afternoon rush hour, passing police officers distributed fluorescent jackets to civilians who were directing traffic. Drivers and pedestrians generally followed the instructions from them, even though they were not police officers.[4]
In Ottawa, the federal government was shut down. The Parliamentary Precinct andParliament Hill were evacuated.
In Toronto, theToronto subway and RT and theToronto streetcar system were shut down.[47] Passengers had to be evacuated from subway trains by walking through the tunnels. Major Toronto hospitals reported that they had switched to generators and did not experience problems.[48] The9-1-1 system was operational.[48] The streetcars remained suspended on August 18 and 19, resuming after assurances they would be exempt from any potential rotating blackouts.
Toronto officials asked residents to curtail unnecessary use of water, as pumps were not working and there was only a 24-hour supply. Entertainment events were canceled for several days. English bandRadiohead rescheduled a planned August 16 concert in Toronto until the following October 15 due to the power outage. The opening of theCanadian National Exhibition, scheduled for August 15, was postponed to August 19. The roof of theSkydome in Toronto remained open in an effort to conserve power until August 21, when a thunderstorm struck.
Large disruptions of truck traffic in northeastern Ontario were reported due to the unavailability of fuel, including the backlog nearNorth Bay. Thetunnel andbridge betweenWindsor and Detroit were also closed, with the bridge's pillars illuminated by emergencyfloodlights, as to not pose ashipping andairplane hazard.
About 140 miners were marooned underground in theFalconbridge mine inSudbury when the power went out. Mine officials said they were safe and could be evacuated if necessary, but were not, due to the risks of doing so with no power. They were safely evacuated by the morning. InSarnia, arefinery scrubber lost power and released above-normal levels of pollution; residents were advised to close their windows.
On the evening of August 14,Ontario premierErnie Eves declared a state of emergency, instructing nonessential personnel not to go to work the next day and that rolling blackouts could occur for weeks.[49] Residents were asked not to use televisions, washing machines, or air conditioners if possible, and warned that some restored power might go off again.[49] Although the full state of emergency was lifted the next day, residents were warned that the normal amount of power would not be available for days, and were still asked to reduce power consumption.[49]
For two days of this recovery period, diversion of water from theNiagara River forhydroelectric generation was increased to the maximum level, normally used only at night and in winter in order to maintain the scenic appearance ofNiagara Falls. The resultant drop in the river level below the falls meant that theMaid of the Mist tour boats could not dock safely, and their operation had to be suspended.
ThePetro-Canadarefinery inOakville had to perform anemergency shutdown due to the lack of power. The plant'sflare system produced large flames during the shutdown, leading to erroneous reports in the media that there had been a fire in the plant.[citation needed] The Petro Canada lubricants plant inMississauga experienced a fire one week later while restarting normal operations.[50][51]
Many Torontonians remember that night as a moment where the community came together: "Without power, residents of Toronto took to the streets to help direct traffic; florists arranged flowers for weddings by candlelight; and convenience stores served customers in the blackness. The night sky was a rarely seen canopy of dazzling stars, twinkling down on the darkened city through soft summer heat that lingered into the evening."
The blackout was confined to the northwest portion of the state. The state's most populated metros of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were unaffected. According to emergency officials in Erie, Crawford, Venango, Clarion, Bradford, Forest and Warren counties, outages lasted into the night, but there were no serious injuries or incidents.[52]
In New York, about 3,000 fire calls were reported, a number of them from people using candles. Emergency services responded to 80,000 calls for help, more than double the average.
From 4 p.m. of August 14 to midnight of August 15, there were 60 all-hands or greater alarm fires, caused mostly by candles. The FDNY answered over 7,500 calls which resulted in the transmission of over 4,000 alarms.[53]
The blackout contributed to almost 100 deaths.[54]
The blackout prompted the federal government of the United States to include reliability provisions in theEnergy Policy Act of 2005. The standards of theNorth American Electric Reliability Corporation became mandatory for U.S. electricity providers.
In the United States, theBush administration had emphasized the need for changes to the U.S. national energy policy,critical infrastructure protection, andhomeland security. During the blackout, most systems that would detect unauthorized border crossings, port landings, or detect unauthorized access to a number of vulnerable sites failed. There was considerable fear that future blackouts would be exploited forterrorism. In addition, the failure highlighted the ease with which the power grid could be taken down.
The Ontario government fell in aprovincial election held in October 2003; power had long been a major issue. The government may have been hurt by the success ofQuebec andManitoba, which were not affected whereas Ontario was shut down. The extra publicity given to Ontario's need to import electricity from the United States, mostly due to a decision of the government not to expand the province's power generating capabilities, may also have adversely affected the Conservative government. PremierErnie Eves's handling of the crisis was also criticized; he was not heard from until long after Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki had spoken out. Due to the regular announcements he gave in the days following the blackout, Eves enjoyed a moderate increase in the polls that his party took as a sign of an opportunity to call anelection they could win, but they lost instead.
By evening of August 14, power had been restored to:
Con Edison retracted its claim that New York City would have power by 1 a.m. That night some areas of Manhattan regained power at approximately 5 a.m. (August 15), the New York City borough ofStaten Island regained power around 3 a.m. on August 15, and Niagara Mohawk predicted that theNiagara Falls area would have to wait until 8 a.m. In the New York City borough of Brooklyn power was not fully restored until around sunset on August 15.
By early evening of August 15, two airports,Cleveland Hopkins International Airport andToronto Pearson International Airport, were back in service.
Half of the affected part of Ontario had power by the morning of August 15, though even in areas where it had come back online, some services were still disrupted or running at lower levels. The last areas to regain power were usually suffering from trouble at localelectrical substations that was not directly related to the blackout itself.
By August 16, power was fully restored in New York and Toronto. Toronto's subway and streetcars remained out of service until August 18 to prevent the possibility of equipment being stuck in awkward locations if the power was interrupted again. Power had been mostly restored in Ottawa, though authorities warned of possible additional disruptions and advised conservation as power continued to be restored to other areas. Ontarians were asked to reduce their electricity use by 50% until all generating stations could be brought back on line. Four remained out of service on the 19th. Illuminated billboards were largely dormant for the week following the blackout, and multiple stores had only a portion of their lights on.
Preparations against the possible disruptions threatened by theYear 2000 problem have been credited for the installation of new electrical equipment and systems which allowed for a relatively rapid restoration of power in some areas.[citation needed]
In the United States and Canada, the regional blackout dominated news broadcasts and news headlines beginning August 15. U.S. and Canadian television networks pre-empted normal programming in favor of full-time, advertising-free coverage of the unfolding story. Once terrorism had been conclusively ruled out as a cause, multiple stations switched back to normal programming following an 8:30 p.m. EDT address by PresidentGeorge W. Bush.[57] National news stations, such as theCBC andCNN, continued to cover the story by inviting politicians and electrical experts to discuss the situation and suggest ways to prevent blackouts. Internationally, coverage of the story focused on the development of the situation in theNew York City metropolitan area.[citation needed]
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During the first two hours of the event, various officials offered speculative explanations as to its root cause:
In Ontario, some cities took part in power conservation challenges or events to remind citizens of the blackout, the most well-known event being the Voluntary Blackout Day hosted by theOntario Power Authority (OPA). During these events, citizens were encouraged to maximize theirenergy conservation activities. Smaller cities such asLondon,Guelph,Woodstock andWaterloo took part in the challenges annually. The final Voluntary Blackout Day was held on August 14, 2010, with OPA moving to more year-round energy conservation efforts.[60]
In Toronto, an annual blackout anniversary party has been held on August 14 since 2006.[61] The event takes place at a different downtown location each year and typically features a parade, bike rave, fire performances, live music, bonfires, and cookouts. In 2024, attendance was estimated at 1,500 to 2,000 people.[62]
