Posted on 08/15/2003 5:19:39 PM PDT by blam
It's all your fault, Canada and US tell each other
By David Rennie in Washington
(Filed: 16/08/2003)
As engineers struggled to find the cause of the power failure yesterday, Canadian and American officials exchanged mutual accusations.
Though their explanations were at times contradictory, all shared a single theme: this began in the other country.
The office of the Canadian prime minister, Jean Chretien, said the cause was a lightning strike at a plant near Niagara Falls, but on the southern, American bank.
Mr Chretien's spokesman said: "We have been informed that lightning struck a power plant in the Niagara region on the US side." Mr Chretien's aides then changed that to a fire at the plant.
However, Brian Warner at the New York Power Authority said the plant in question, the Niagara Power Project, "has at no time during this incident ceased to operate. We also have not experienced a lightning strike at that facility."
The Canadian defence minister, John McCallum, announced that a fire at a nuclear power plant in Pennsylvania was to blame.
Soon afterwards, Mr McCallum corrected himself, saying the problem might not be a fire but an "outage" at the Pennsylvania plant.
The Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency called the Canadian allegations "bizarre" and "not true". An agency spokesman said: "We have a direct line to each of our five plants and they are all running at 100 per cent."
Mr McCallum did not name the Pennsylvania plant that was supposedly out of action. His spokesman said later that Canada remained convinced "the source is an outage in a north-eastern United States power plant".
Ernie Eves, the premier of Ontario, the only Canadian province affected, denied all responsibility, saying: "We didn't create the problem . . . We can't control what happens in other jurisdictions."
South of the border, a spokesman for the governor of New York State, George Pataki, said a power transmission problem in Canada was the most likely cause.
He was joined in the accusation by the senator for New York, Hillary Clinton, who said: "Our best understanding is that whatever did happen to start these cascading outages began in Canada." However, officials at Ontario Hydro, the local Canadian utility, denied any flaws and said they would be temporarily separating their grid from the US to restore power as soon as possible.
Al Manchee, a spokesman for Hydro One, a subsidiary, said: "We're confident that the trigger for this widespread outage did not occur on our system. There was no indication that there was anything wrong in our system prior to the outage."
The mayor of New York city, Michael Bloomberg, at one point suggested that the root of the problem might be a lightning strike in Quebec.
But Quebec Hydro officials said all lights were on in the French-speaking province and offered to send some power south to the United States if asked for help.
Canadians' long-standing love-hate relationship with their neighbour has soured recently amid Canadian opposition to the war in Iraq.
President George W Bush and Mr Chretien have a cool relationship, not helped when the prime minister's press aide told a reporter the US president was a "moron".
Sheila(Kyle's mom):Times have changed, our kids are getting worse They won't obey their parents they just want to fart and curse
Mrs. Marsh: Should we blame the government?
Ms. Cartman: Or blame society?
Boys fathers: Or should we blame the images on TV?
Sheila(Kyle's mom): No,blame Canada, blame Canada
With all their beady little eyes have packed their heads so full of lies,
blame Canada, blame Canada,
we need to form a full assault its Canada's fault...
They killed Kenny, too...
What's a hoser.
"Have you ever seen the United States take the blame for anything?" fumed Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman
Lastman is a hot-head.
Prairie
According to WJR AM 760AM out of Detroit, MI. & they had a enniger with IGRID, and he stated that the events started at 1604:02 local out of Lansing MI. He cited an "event" in the grid there and then Cleveland,OH went off line a few seconds later. For data please go to www.igrid.com to see the raw data that the experts see.Other claimed "experts" are saying it was triggered by an event an hour earlier at a GM stamping plant south of Cleveland. Cleveland and Lansing were on the edges of the blackout area. It spread one way and not another?
My guess is the real cause highlights a weak point wrt terrorism and isn't being revealed until it is fixed. Not neccesarily a bad idea.
-Eric
I'm pretty sure by the time we get to the Sunday morning talk shows, we'll know it was the fault of the Bush tax cut, his cowboy unilateral approach to Iraq, and/or Republican racism/sexism/homophobia in general.
IIRC, a hoser was a guy who siphoned gas from his buddie's ride because he was too feckless to know when to fill up or too cheap or thieving to buy his own. When I was a lad, a short length of hose in the back of your car or truck was called a 'Cariboo Credit Card'. ;^)
Not that we haven't all siphoned gas from time to time, needfully.
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