The worm was spreading from computer to computer Wednesday and was initially considered a potential cause. Government officials said quickly ruled out the "Blaster" computer worm as a cause. George Pataki declared a state of emergency for the state and deployed additional state police.īryan Lee, a spokesman for the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, said it appeared that a "cascading blackout" destabilized the Niagara-Mohawk power grid as far north as Canada and as far west as Detroit and Cleveland.Ĭrowds line up for buses at the Port Authority bus terminal in New York. As of late afternoon, no reports of looting or other disturbances had been reported. The New York Stock Exchange announced plans to open on schedule Friday, using emergency power if necessary.īloomberg mobilized 40,000 police officers and the entire fire department overnight to maintain order. "Expect extended flight delays and long wait times," a United Airlines spokesman said. The airports were operating on backup power, officials said. Planes were still grounded at New York's JFK Airport as of 8:30 p.m. By early evening, two New York area airports and the Cleveland airport were fully operational, although continued delays should be expected. ( Full story)Īirports across the affected region experienced delays and some shut down temporarily. It took 2.5 hours to evacuate passengers from stalled subway trains, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority said. New York subways resumed limited service around 8 p.m., according to the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. the Long Island Power Authority said its 1.2 million customers were beginning to see power restored, although it could take hours to get everyone back on line in the New York area. the power was being restored in parts of the affected area, starting with the northern and western edges, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said at a news conference.Īt 9:30 p.m. In Michigan, water supplies were affected because water is distributed through electric pumps, a governor's spokeswoman said.īy 6 p.m. The outage stopped trains, elevators and the normal flow of traffic and life. A spokeswoman for the Niagara-Mohawk power grid said the cause was still unknown, but that it was not a lightning strike.Ī spokesman for the Canadian prime minister's office said the cause was a fire at a Con Edison power plant in New York.Ĭanadian Defense Minister John McCallum blamed an outage at a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania, but the state's Emergency Management Agency said there had been no problems at any of the state's five nuclear plants and that all were operating normally. side of the border, according to the Canadian Department of National Defense. One possibility was a lightning strike in the Niagara region on the U.S. It was unclear what caused the outage, although state and federal officials agreed that it was not terrorism. In just three minutes, starting at 4:10 p.m., 21 power plants shut down, according to Genscape, a company that monitors the output of power plants. Cities affected included New York, Cleveland, Ohio, Detroit, Michigan, and Toronto and Ottawa, Canada. The outage occurred quickly and rippled across a large area. The power company had predicted that residents closer to Niagara Falls in upstate New York would have to wait until 8 a.m. In New York City, however, Con Edison backed off previous predictions that power for most of the metropolitan area would be restored by 1 a.m. Power was being restored in Pennsylvania and Ohio, too. in New Jersey, power had been restored to all but 250,000 of the nearly 1 million customers who had been in the dark since just after 4 p.m., a spokeswoman for Public Service Energy and Gas said. NEW YORK (CNN) - Power began to flicker on late Thursday evening, hours after a major power outage struck simultaneously across dozens of cities in the eastern United States and Canada.īy 11 p.m.
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