Major power surge in NY? (Blackout is in NYC, Detroit, Ottawa and Toronto, per Fox News)

8-14-03 | Joe Hadenuf

[Joe Hadenuf]

Hannity station went dead for about 20 seconds. Said he had never seen anything like it.

[Dane]

The head of some electrical industry board meant to try to avert blackouts was on ABC and just stated on Good Morning America, that the cause happened somewhere in Ohio and it took 9 seconds for the blackout to happen.

[NYC GOP Chick]

Yep. Power came back on at *precisely* 5:45 this morning -- the VCR, digital clock, fax machine, etc., all clicking on woke me. :)

[js1138]

Now will someone tell me why this is now being reported that LIGHTING was the cause of the outage here in JAX on 4-29-02.

I was there -- still am. I don't recall hearing a final statement of cause. But I remember being without power for over 12 hours. The outage covered much of the city.

[mewzilla]

We've been through blackouts in hotels before. Whenever we travel we always carry a little black-out backpack with flashlight, transistor radio, batteries, water, snacks, and playing cards. It's payed off more than once.

[ninenot]

CHretien is CRAZY.

Local weatherguy showed radar for East at 10PM news. No rain, no clouds, no lightning within 250 miles of Niagara Falls.

Evidently the dopesmokers took over in Canada...

[condi2008]

We have Hurricane Hugo twins and we are way over here in LA!

[Conspiracy Guy]

In layman's simple terms.

The sun effects weather. I will bet that this turns out to be weather related. Heat causes huge consumption. Heat causes thundestorms which have lightning, A few lightning strikes in the grid can knock out a few transformers. Surges race about and next thing you know the whole distribution system goes wacko. This chaos can knock a station down.

BTW I was kidding about the sun blinking.

[stanz]

Hi
Well, when our computers started to flicker at 3:30, I thought it was my eyes. Then blooie-- - darkness except for a few emergency lights. We waited around for a few minutes to see if the power would come back on, but it soon became apparent that we were in the midst of a blackout.
First hurdle...evacuate the building. That meant descending from the 45th floor. On the way to the stairs, we could hear the emergency alarms inside the elevators. There were people stuck inside. By the time we arrived at the lobby, my knees were shaking. I had a couple of heavy bags to carry which I did not want to leave behind.
I then had to decide the next step. That was to take the ferry to N.J. Since I had never taken the ferry from downtown, I soon found out I had plenty of walking to do to get there. About half of the way, I took my shoes off. I was wearing new leather flip flops and they gave me some nasty blisters. I soon found myself on a mile long line in the blazing sun barefoot. I was on that line for over an hour. Finally got a ferry and was home by 6:30. I was one of the lucky ones.
I couldn't get in touch with my daughter who was working at NY Sports Club. Both their lines and her cell phone was down. We finally made contact at about 7:30. She wound up staying in N.Y. with friends at their apartment up near Columbia University. I don't know exactly what time the power was restored here in NJ. I kept wakimg up every couple of hours. I think it came back on around 5:30 AM. It was tough trying to sleep in this heat.
I just heard that only 20% of the power has been restored in NYC. The subways are not running, Port Authority bus terminal is not open, but the tunnels are open. I tried calling my firm's emergency numbers, but the lines are down. I guess I'll be staying home today.

[mewzilla]

The problem is the cascade. Sure, part of the grid can be taken out, but the whole thing shouldn't start to go. And that's what happened. Even if lightning or an overload did cause part of the grid to go, that section should dropped out in such a way so that the cascade couldn't happen. If I understand this properly at any rate.

[OXENinFLA]

FLASHBACK

JACKSONVILLE, Fl - Areas around the First Coast experienced a power outage Monday afternoon. The turbines at the Kennedy power generating station at Talleyrand and East 28th Street kicked on due to high temperatures today. However, the power transformer exploded around 4:30pm causing a wide-spread power outage. The fire was put out around 5:15pm. No injuries were reported at the generating station. Fire officials are at the scene.

--------------------

http://www.jacksonville.com/tu-online/stories/042902/met_blackout.html

According to JEA Managing Director Walt Bussells, the problem began at roughly 4:30 p.m. when two major power transmission lines on the Westside of Jacksonville detected a fault and shut down.

Shortly thereafter, an explosion occurred and a fire broke out at the Kennedy Generating Station at Talleyrand. Computers then shut down the entire electrical system to prevent it from being damaged. The fire at the generating station was reportedly extinguished by 5:30 p.m.

According to Bussells, the two transmissions lines that had tripped earlier in the day tripped again, causing the second interruption. The St. Augustine Record reported that this may have been the result of overuse by customers.

I don't see any mention of Lighting here.

[Neets]

I agree with you Flurry about being weather related.

I posted on another thread about how we have been suffering through extreme humidity (from 85- 99% daily for 3 weeks straight) and fairly high temps (80's and ups) with thunderstorms on a nightly basis...the humidity broke the day before yesterday, but in it's place came even higher temps (90's plus) and those temps will remain through to today...

I have no doubt the 3 weeks of extreme weather on the east coast was a major contribution to this blackout event.

[P.O.E.]

Glad to hear you made it.

McCheesey is on MSNBC, making me ill. He keeps saying "we" got everybody home, "we" got power back, etc. What a glommer.

[Straight Vermonter]

Yesterday when I saw the huge crowds waiting for the NJ bound ferries I had visions of a Dunkirk style evacuation. One would think that some large ships could have been brought in to help. That assumes, of course, that there was a pier that would accomodate them.

[LizardQueen]

On scene report (Long Island):

We lost power at about 4 yesterday PM. Got it back on finally at about 4 AM. It came on 2 or 3 times before that but didnt stay on.

I'm down here visiting my parents - all my cousins were here for a barbecue. They just got here when the power went out. We had no water or phone for the first hour, then those came on.

We had all the neighbors in for dinner - the 80 year old woman next door was in bad shape, as she didn't know what to do. She really shouldn't be living alone anymore.

The biggest problem was gas - when the cuzs went to leave they realized that some of them didn't have enough gas to get home, and no one was pumping. A neigboring town (Rockville Center) had power as they have their own station but the line at the only open gas station was miles long.
So they took my dad's car and will return and get theirs today.

For a place that was affected by 911 I was astounded at how unprepared everyone was. My parents didn't even have a working battery operated radio. We had to steal batteries out of my nephews toy to get any news.

LQ

[Conspiracy Guy]

Preventing the cascade requires swift human reaction. Some but not all automation. In the area we are talking about the grid is so dense that one false move results in this. Each station requires human hands to say uh oh and start issuing commands. It would most likely never occur in another part of the country except the West Coast. After the pinball game is over the humans really have to work hard. Restoring power is hell due to the surge/load/down again routine. Transformers and circuit breakers and even sub-stations need hands on.

I'll stick to weather.

[Momaw Nadon]

[Malsua]

>>Preventing the cascade requires swift human reaction. <<

ABC Radio is reporting that the entire grid went down in 9 seconds. Which is about how I recall it.

A blink, then the fans on the lasers started slowing...then back up...and then slowing and then out. It was definately under 30 seconds.

I can't imagine anyone even got to a console to answer a warning light, much less react in that amount of time.

[firewalk]

.

[Mo1]

And tonight the sleepers were innocent citizens that are like an open invitation on the streets of NY ;(

I agree .. this isn't good

Commuters sleep on the steps of the Post Office on 33rd Street and Eighth Avenue in New York during the early hours of Friday, Aug. 15, 2003 after being stranded by the city's electrical blackout. (AP Photo/ Mike Appleton)

[ChefKeith]

according to the local paper today You are correct on isolation of our grid