More puzzling information from another article:
""Our data-gathering network shows that in the first minute -- between 4:09 and 4:10 p.m. Eastern time -- power plants hundreds of miles apart in three different states began tripping offline as the grid became unstable," says Mr. O'Leary. In the second minute the blackout spread much farther, "but it was not a simple domino-like failure moving one area to an adjacent geographic area. The failures hop-scotched all around the Northeast and Midwest regions and into Canada," he says.
"Our unique set of data will help everyone involved find the answer to the most important question -- why the systems that were installed to prevent widespread blackouts didn't function as intended," Mr. O'Leary says. "We are working to increase the availability of our data to maximize the understanding of the source of the blackout event."
http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030815/laf061_1.html There is something about this article that does not make sense. They are talking about this event taking one or two minutes to occur. Everything else says the whole thing was over in nine seconds, which is about the time frame I speculated it would take last night. If it really did take a couple of minutes it would indicate a much more serious problem with the grid managers. A nine second long event happens so fast that only automatic responses will occur. If it took two minutes for the blackout to stop it would give operators time to respond.
It may be that most of the blackout happened in the first nine seconds with several systems on the edge struggling to maintain power for a minute or two.