MASSIVE Powercuts in the US

[danielf]

Apparently there's massive powercuts in several US cities. It's on BBC news

http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0...100431,00.html

edit: link added

It is abit worrying but the US Government has stressed this is not terrorist related. New York Police are saying all major operations are non-operational, i.e public transport, mobile phone services, thousands of people are walking the streets.

yes it's on BBC as well

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/3152451.stm

- simultaneous again - it does sound worrying!?

<edit> sorry, it's a question, not a statement!

[danielf]

Originally posted by Dr. Plummer
It is abit worrying but the US Government has stressed this is not terrorist related. New York Police are saying all major operations are non-operational, i.e public transport, mobile phone services, thousands of people are walking the streets.

They just said that it would be possible for one plant to go down and having effects all over the country (and even in Canada) as is the case.

Edit: and there is no evidence of terrorism.

Originally posted by danielf
They just said that it would be possible for one plant to go down and having effects all over the country (and even in Canada) as is the case.

Edit: and there is no evidence of terrorism.

that's true. We shouldn't jump to conclusions - a solar flare can have the same effect.

[Theodoric]

Originally posted by homealone
that's true. We shouldn't jump to conclusions - a solar flare can have the same effect.

True. there was a case, IIRC, of a major disruption in, I think, Canada a number of years ago.

Originally posted by Theodoric
True. there was a case, IIRC, of a major disruption in, I think, Canada a number of years ago.

a similar event - now - would cause even more chaos - mobile phone networks would struggle to cope, as would GPS. They weren't around "then".

[Emperordalek]

I was joking when I said will the last one out please turn out the lights.................................

This actually happened at least once before, back in, IIRC, the 1970s.

A power plant had to shut down for some reason and this caused the load to be shunted onto other power lines. Unfortunately this exceeded their allowable load, causing them to shut down, shunting the power again and the problems cascaded over a large portion of the eastern seaboard of the USA.

I believe it was mentioned in James Burke's Connections book.

[Jerrek]

WOW.

About 4:30 pm EST today the power at my work went out. We thought it was just some random screwup, but when we saw the people accross the street came out we were thinking hmm... perhaps someone cut a big cable to our area.

I was in a conference call with people from three countries, CEOs and other executive officers, when the power went out. Our PBX was unfortunately not connected to the emergency power. We managed to shut down all the database servers gracefully, and after about 10 minutes I had to contact the people individually to tell them we're having problems with our power.

So I got my cellphone out, and they, in the Grand Cayman Islands, were like "yeah, we saw on CNN you have a blackout."

Apparently the Niagara-Mahawk grid went down. 21 power stations, 10 nuclear power stations, went down in 3 MINUTES at 4:10 to 4:13pm EST. This grid serves the ENTIRE Ontario, including Toronto, Detroit, New York STATE, Cleveland, Toledo, Albany, and other major cities. In fact, most of the north-eastern United States and Canada went down.

NO traffic lights, NO power to the subways of several cities, NO power for the cellular towers, NO power to emergency centers. (Except the emergency power generators of course.)

Going home was a bit chaotic. And I'm OUTSIDE of the major population centers. Can you imagine evacuating all the thousands of people that use subways? New York City, Toronto, etc.? And getting them OUT of the city HOME? More than a million people use the public transit everyday in Toronto.

Can you imagine the powers it caused with networks? Several MAJOR, MAJOR backbone connections come into New England. Just about all telecommunication lines with Europe. All down except those with emergency power generators.

Well, at about 6:00 CBC1, a radio station I was listening for news (I thought it was some terrorist attack, or something bad that happened... And I prayed.), stated that they are now signing off because they don't have any more power. The batteries are dead. 680 News went down, but came back later.

I went home, and then went to a friend that lived close by. Civilians were voluntarily directing traffic at intersections. I think the situation, here in Georgetown area, was handled very well.

Power came back at about 11pm in SOME parts. They are turning the grid back on itty bitty at a time so as not to overload it all at once. Most of the houses were without electricity while the street lights and traffic lights and emergency centers' power were turned back on, and one by one cities were turned back on all over northeastern United States.


*sigh* what a night.

Here are two links, which I can't visit at the moment because there are some network links down at the moment. Grrr.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3152451.stm

http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/08/14/pow...age/index.html

I'd show more news, but google is down (grr), as well as foxnews and all other newspapers I read... grrr.

[Jerrek]

The states/provinces affected by the blackout:

[zoombini]

Methinks when this is all over, there will be a slight reconfiguration of the power grid...

[zoombini]

And as a big advert now to terrorists, for what to hit next.
Will the US be sighting more air defence units near the power stations?

[Russ]

I just wish the internet wasn't so relient on America, that way they could get on with sorting out their little problems with electricity without it affecting the rest of us!!

And I prayed

Mmmmmm.... there have to be some conspiracy theories circulating about this event by now.... Anyone heard any as yet?
If not.... give it a couple of days.....