Northeast blackout of 2003

The 2003 U.S.-Canada blackout was a massive power outage that occurred in parts of the northeastern United States and eastern Canada on August 14, 2003. It was the largest blackout in North American history, affecting an estimated 10 million people in Southern Ontario, Canada (about one-third of the population of Canada) and 40 million people in eight U.S. states (about one-seventh of the population of the U.S.).

Satellite image before blackout
NOAA satellite image of northeastern US and Canada taken before blackout on Aug. 13, 2003, at 9:21 p.m. EDT. (Larger image)

Satellite image during blackout
Satellite image during blackout taken on Aug. 14, 2003, at 9:03 p.m. EDT. (Larger image)

Immediate impact

According to system logs, a massive power fluctuation affected the transmission grid at 4:10:48 p.m. EDT. Between 4:12 and 4:15 p.m. EDT, outages were initially reported in Cleveland, Toledo, New York City, Albany, Detroit, and parts of New Jersey. This was followed by other areas initally unaffected, including all 5 boroughs of New York City and parts of Long Island, Westchester County, New Jersey, Vermont, and Connecticut, and most of southern Ontario including Toronto, Hamilton and Windsor, Ontario. It was estimated that the blackout covered an area of roughly 9,300 square miles (24,000 square kilometers). Eventually a large area bounded by Detroit, Sault Ste. Marie, the shore of James Bay, Ottawa, New York and Toledo was left without power. At least 21 power plants shut down during the outage.

Amazingly, over 200,000 people in the Niagara Peninsula of Ontario, Canada continued to have power while the entire area surrounding them dropped off the power grid. This was due to the quick reaction of a worker at Sir Adam Beck Generating Station who managed to decouple the local grid before it was knocked offline with the rest of the Northeast. Power remained in Niagara Falls, Half of Welland, A Quarter of St. Catharines and most of Fort Erie until rolling blackouts began 24 hours later in an effort to provide power to areas that hadn't had it for nearly 24 hours.

Many essential services remained in operation in most of these areas, although backup generation in some cities was not up to the task. The phone systems remained operational in most areas, however the increased demand by people phoning home left many circuits overloaded. Cellular telephones experienced significant service disruptions as cellular transmission towers depleted their reserves of backup power. Television and radio stations mostly remained on the air with the help of backup generators.

In areas where power remained off until 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 light pollution.

Media coverage and official reports

In the United States and Canada, the regional blackout dominated news broadcasts and news headlines beginning August 15th. Although only a few states were actually without power, a great deal of Amtrak and international air transporation was shut down, and the impact on international financial markets was widespread. Meanwhile, the reliability and vulnerability of all electrical power grids was called into question. Internationally, coverage of the story focused on the development of the situation in New York City.

When news of the blackout first broke, different official explanations were reported. Official reports from the office of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien stated that lightning struck a power plant in northern New York, resulting in a cascading failure of the surrounding power grid and wide-area electricity distribution grid. However, power officials in the state of New York responded by stating that the problem did not originate in the United States, that there was no rain storm in the area where the lightning strike was supposed to have taken place, and that the power plant in question remained in operation throughout the blackout. Canadian Defence Minister John McCallum blamed an outage at a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania, but that state's authorities reported that all the plants were functioning normally.

CNN reported officials as saying that the Niagara-Mohawk power grid, which provides power for New York and parts of Canada, was overloaded. Between 4:10 and 4:13 p.m., 21 power stations throughout that grid shut down. Others claim that the blackout may have started in Ohio [1] up to one hour before the network shut down. Officials believe that the problem started in the Lake Erie Transmission Loop, a system of transmission lines that circles Lake Erie.

Days later, the cause of the blackout is still not known for certain, but the possibily of a terrorist attack was quickly dismissed. Even so, the United States Department of Homeland Security is currently looking into the blackouts. Meanwhile, a joint federal task force has also been setup by the Canadian and American governments to oversee the investigation and report directly to Ottawa and Washington. The task force is being led by Canadian Natural Resource Minister Herb Dhaliwal and American Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham.

In addition to determining the initial cause of the cascading failure, investigation of the incident will also include an examination of why safeguards designed to prevent a repetition of the Northeast Blackout of 1965 failed. Issues of failure to maintain the electrical infrastructure, failure of upgrading to so-called "smart cables", failure of shunting and rerouting mechanisms, AC vs DC intersystem ties, and substitution of market forces for central planning are expected to arise. The North American Electric Reliability Council, a joint Canada-US council, is responsible for dealing with these issues.

New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, who formerly headed the Department of Energy, in a live television interview characterized the United States as "a superpower with a third-world electricity grid". Other critics have focused on the role of electricity market privatization that has generally reduced the incentive to create backup power routes and maintain surge capacity.

Causes

Electricity cannot easily be stored over extended periods of time, and is generally consumed less than a second after it is produced. The demand load on any power grid must be matched by supply coming on. Any overload is dangerous to equipment, so, in general a system shuts down if a serious problem is detected. This is exactly what happened on August 14. According to the CBC and other sources, a power imbalance lasting about 9 seconds caused a cascade of subsystem shutdowns which affected the entire grid in short order.

Effects

Affected infrastructures

Generation

With the power fluctuations on the grid, power plants automatically went into "safe mode" to prevent damage in the case of an overload. This put much of the nuclear power normally available offline until those plants could be slowly taken out of "safe mode". In the meantime, the coal and oil fired plants were brought online, bringing some electrical power availability to the area by the morning of the 15th.

Regional Transportation

Amtrak Northeastern corridor railroad service was stopped north of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. VIA Rail service suffered delays, but was still running; normal service resumed on several routes by morning.

Passenger screenings at affected airports ceased. Regional airports were shut down for this reason.

Air Canada flights remained grounded on the morning of the 15th due to reliable power not having been restored to its Mississauga, Ontario control centre. It expected to resume operations by mid-day. This problem affected all Air Canada service and cancelled the most heavily travelled flights to Halifax and Vancouver.

In New York, flights were cancelled even after power had been restored to the airports because of difficulties accessing "electronic-ticket" information.

Many gas stations were unable to pump fuel due to lack of electricity. In North Bay, Ontario, for instance, a long line of transport trucks was held up, unable to go further North to Manitoba without refuelling there. Gas stations operating in pockets of Burlington, Ontario that had power were reported to be gouging prices up to 99.9 cents/liter when the going rate prior the blackout was under 70 cents/liter. Customers still lined up for hours to pay these exorbitant prices.

Communication

Many people were very surprised to find that (unlike wired telephones) cellular communication devices were disrupted. Many people who in prior blackouts would have relied on transistor radios for news discovered to some dismay that they no longer had one, having long since replaced them with portable CD players and other such devices. Most New York and many Ontario radio stations were momentarily knocked off the air but were able to return with back-up power.

Cable television systems were disabled and areas that had power restored (and had power to their television sets proper) could not receive information until power had also been restored to the cable provider. Those who relied on the Internet were similarly disconnected from their news source for the duration of the blackout.

Looting

Incidents of looting were reported in Ottawa (notably in the suburb of Orleans where it appeared to be systematic) and Brooklyn. However, these were isolated incidents in specific areas. All of New York City suffered only four burglaries as of noon August 15 -- in fact, crime rates for the night of August 14 were actually down from statistical averages.

Unlike the previous northeast blackouts looting was minimal. In general, the public was orderly; public officials attributing this to increased public awareness and emergency preparedness plans put in place since the terrorist attacks of Septebmer 11, 2001.

By region

New York

In New York State, all prisons were blacked out and switched to generator power. The two Indian Point nuclear reactors on the Hudson River near Peekskill, New York, the two reactors at Nine Mile Point nuclear plant near Oswego, New York, the FitzPatrick reactor near Syracuse, and several Long Island nuclear reactors all shut down as had two in Ohio, for a total of nine reactor shutdowns. The governor of New York State, George Pataki, declared a state of emergency.

Manhattan, including Wall Street and the United Nations, was completely shut down, as were all area airports, and all New York area rail transportation including the subway, the P.A.T.H. lines between Manhattan and New Jersey, Metro North Railroad and the Long Island Rail Road. Hundreds of people were trapped in elevators; by late evening the New York City Fire Department had reportedly confirmed that all stalled elevators in approximately 800 Manhattan high-rise office and apartment buildings had been cleared. Over 600 subway and commuter rail cars were trapped between stations; the NY state Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey -- which operates the PATH lines -- reported that all passengers were evacuated without serious injury.

Without traffic lights, a gridlock was reported as persons in lower and midtown Manhattan fled their offices on foot; for hours into the evening the streets, highways, bridges and tunnels were jammed with traffic and pedestrians leaving Manhattan. Mayor Michael Bloomberg advised residents to open their windows, drink plenty of liquids to avoid heat stroke in the heat, and not to forget their pets. Temperatures were 92°F (33°C), with high humidity as New York had just experienced a record-breaking rain spell that had started at the end of July. With cell phone operation mostly stalled by circuit overloads, New Yorkers were lining up 10 deep or more at pay phones as ordinary telephone service remained largely unaffected.

While some commuters were able to find alternate sleeping arrangements, many were left stranded in New York and slept in parks and on the steps of public buildings. While practically all businesses and retail establishments closed down, many bars and pubs reported a brisk business as some New Yorkers took the opportunity to spend the evening "enjoying" the blackout.

40,000 police and the entire fire department were called in to maintain order. At least two fatalities were linked to the use of flames to provide light, and many non-fatal fires also resulted from the use of candles.

New Jersey

Affected areas included most of Essex, Passaic and Bergen Counties, including the major cities of Newark and Paterson. Power was returned first to the urban areas because of concerns of safety and unrest.

The day following the black out, August 15, the New Jersey Turnpike stopped collecting tolls until 9:00 am.

Massachusetts

A small area of extreme western Massachusetts was affected.

Michigan

TV stations were knocked off the air in Michigan, and water supplies were disrupted in Detroit due to the failure of electric pumps. The cities of Detroit, Lansing and Ann Arbor were affected. A Marathon Oil refinery in Detroit suffered a small explosion from gas buildup, necessitating an evacuation of one mile around the plant. Officials feared the release of toxic gasses.

Ohio

Over 540,000 homes and businesses were without power. In Cleveland, water service stopped because the city is supplied by electric pumps and backup electricity was available only on a very limited basis. Portions of the cities of Mansfield, Marion and Ashland without power. Cleveland declared a curfew on all persons under the age of 18.

Ontario, Canada

Traffic lights, the subway and streetcar, the Toronto Stock Exchange, the CBC's Toronto studios, and Pearson International Airport were shut down in Toronto. Major Toronto hospitals reported that they had switched to generators and hadn't experienced problems. 911 service was working. Highway 407, the world's first all-electronic toll highway, was gridlocked with passengers hoping to get a free ride.

Toronto officials were asking residents to curtail unnecessary use of water, as the pumps were not working and there was only a 24-hour supply.

Traffic lights were out and Parliament Hill was evacuated in Ottawa. Passers-by were reported to be directing traffic.

Fierce disruptions of truck traffic in northeastern Ontario were reported due to the unavailability of fuel, including the backlog near North Bay. The tunnel between Windsor and Detroit was also closed.

About 140 miners were marooned underground in the Falconbridge mine in Sudbury when the power went out. Mine officials said that they were safe and could be evacuated if necessary, but were not being evacuated due to the risks of doing so with no power. They were safely evacuated by the morning. In Sarnia, a refinery scrubber lost power and released above-normal levels pollution; residents were asked to close their windows.

In the evening of the 14th, Ontario premier Ernie Eves declared a state of emergency, advising non-essential personnel not to go to work on the 15th. Residents were asked not to use televisions, washing mashines, or air conditioners if possible, and warned that some restored power might go off again.

Long Term Effects

A provincial election was expected in the fall in Ontario and power has long been a major issue. The government may be hurt by the success of Quebec and Manitoba in avoiding calamity while Ontario was shut down. The extra publicity given to Ontario's need to import electricity from the United States, mostly due to a decision of the government not to expand the provinces power generating capabilities, may also adversly effect the Conservative government. Premier Ernie Eves' handling of the crisis was also criticized; he was not heard from until long after mayor Bloomberg and Governor Pataki had spoken out. It is quite likely that the provincial election will thus be postponed until the spring. If it is discovered that the blackouts were Ontario's fault, as New York officials have claimed, the chances of the government being re-elected would probably suffer.

In the United States, the effects may be even more profound, as the George W. Bush administration has emphasized the need for changes to the US national energy policy, Critical Infrastructure Protection, and Homeland Security. During the blackout, most systems that would detect unauthorized border crossings, port landings, or detect unauthorized access to many vulnerable sites, failed. There was considerable fear that future blackouts would be exploited for terrorism. In addition, the failure highlights the ease with which the power grid can now be tken down.

Restoration of service

By evening of August 14, power had been restored to:

Burlington, Ontario - seemingly the first place which had lost it to have it restored
most of London, Ontario;
western Ottawa and Kanata;
a portion of downtown Toronto;
three-quarters of the million customers who had lost power in New Jersey;
parts of Pennsylvania and Ohio.
parts of Long Island

Con Edison retracted its claim that New York City would have power by 1 AM that night, and predicted that the Niagara Falls area would have to wait until 8 a.m.

By early evening, two New York airports and Cleveland airport were back in service.

Half of the affected part of Ontario had power by the morning of August 15, though even in areas where it had come back online, some services were still disrupted or running at lower levels.

By August 16, power was fully restored in New York and Toronto and mostly restored in Ottawa, though authorities warned of possible additional disruptions and advised conservation as power continued to be restored to other areas.

Preparations against the possible disruptions threatened by the Year 2000 problem have been credited for the installation of new electrical equipment and systems which allowed for a relatively rapid restoration of power in some areas.

External links

News stories

Nature: Blackouts inherent in power grid