Most places restored power by midnight, as early as 6 p.m. The reliability of the electrical grid was called into question and required substantial investment to repair its shortcomings. All airports in the affected area closed immediately, so there were no take-offs, and incoming flights had to be diverted to airports with power. Via Rail in Canada was able to continue most of its service. Most of the Amtrak Northeast Corridor service was interrupted, as it relies on electricity for its signaling and crossing systems electrified commuter railways also shut down. In areas where power remained off after nightfall, the Milky Way and orbiting artificial satellites became visible to the naked eye in metropolitan areas where they cannot ordinarily be seen due to the effects of air particulates and light pollution. This caused the power lines to sag as higher currents heated the lines. The high ambient temperature increased energy demand, as people across the region turned on fans and air conditioning. It was a hot day (over 31 ☌, or 88 ☏) in much of the affected region, and the heat played a role in the initial event that triggered the wider power outage. Television and radio stations remained on the air, with the help of backup generators, although some stations were knocked off the air for periods ranging from several hours to the length of the entire blackout. Many cell sites were out of commission due to power outages. Cellular service was interrupted as mobile networks were overloaded with the increase in volume of calls. Water systems in several cities lost pressure, forcing boil-water advisories to be put into effect. Telephone networks generally remained operational, but the increased demand triggered by the blackout left many circuits overloaded. In others, backup generation systems failed. Įssential services remained in operation in some of these areas. At the height of the outage, the load had dropped to 5,716 MW, a loss of 80%. In the minutes before the event, the NYISO-managed power system was carrying 28,700 MW of load. Marie, Ontario, the shore of James Bay, Ottawa, New York, and Toledo was left without power.Īccording to the official analysis of the blackout prepared by the US and Canadian governments, more than 508 generating units at 265 power plants shut down during the outage. Eventually, a large, somewhat triangular area bounded by Lansing, Michigan, Sault Ste. This was followed by outages in other areas initially unaffected, including all of New York City, portions of southern New York state, New Jersey, Vermont, Connecticut, as well as most of the province of Ontario. EDT, outages were reported in parts of Maryland ( Baltimore), Michigan ( Detroit), Ohio ( Cleveland, Akron, Toledo), Ontario ( Toronto, London, Windsor), New Jersey ( Newark), and New York ( New York City, Suffolk, Nassau, Westchester, Orange and Rockland counties, Rochester, Syracuse, Binghamton, Albany). 9 Voluntary Blackout Day commemorationsĪccording to the New York Independent System Operator ( NYISO) – the ISO responsible for managing the New York state power grid – a 3,500 megawatt power surge (towards Ontario) affected the transmission grid at 4:10:39 p.m.What should have been a manageable local blackout cascaded into the collapse of much of the Northeast regional electricity distribution system. The blackout's proximate cause was a software bug in the alarm system at the control room of FirstEnergy, an Akron, Ohio–based company, which rendered operators unaware of the need to redistribute load after overloaded transmission lines drooped into foliage. The outage, which was much more widespread than the Northeast blackout of 1965, affected an estimated 10 million people in southern and central Ontario, and 45 million people in eight U.S. At the time, it was the world's second most widespread blackout in history, after the 1999 Southern Brazil blackout. Full power was restored to New York City and Toronto on August 16. on August 14 (within 2 hours), while the New York City Subway resumed limited services around 8 p.m. Most places restored power by midnight (within 7 hours), some as early as 6 p.m. The Northeast blackout of 2003 was a widespread power outage throughout parts of the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, and most parts of the Canadian province of Ontario on Thursday, August 14, 2003, beginning just after 4:10 p.m. Software bug in the alarm system in the control room of FirstEnergy Northeastern United States, Southeastern Canada Not all areas within these political boundaries were affected. This image shows states and provinces that experienced power outages.
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