[FITZ]

With all the information they use to balance the power and so on, they have nothing concrete to talk about other than mythical lightning strikes?

I know in one longer power-out I've been through, it was blamed on a squirrel getting in somewhere and shorting everything out. I've had transformers near my house get hit by lightening and the breakers tripped --- I think people in the big cities expect everything to work always ---but electricity has only been commonly used less than 100 years --maybe we're just not as advanced as we like to think. Some of the infrastructure in NY and those other big cities is old and maybe wasn't meant to carry the loads they carry.

[GOPrincess]

"Some of the infrastructure in NY and those other big cities is old and maybe wasn't meant to carry the loads they carry."

Interesting point. Maybe the system simply isn't as up-to-date as some of us, myself included, would tend to expect (especially given that this supposedly wasn't supposed to be able to happen again).