State of emergency in NY

NEW YORK: The biggest power blackout in American history hit steamy US and Canadian cities yesterday, stranding people in subways, closing nuclear power plants in Ohio and New York state and choking streets with workers driven from stifling offices. A state of emergency was declared last night in New York, as Governor George Pataki said there would be 40,000 police and fire officers out on the streets. Officials were looking at a power transmission problem from Canada as the most likely cause, said a spokeswoman for New York Govenor Pataki. There was no sign of terrorism, officials in New York and Washington agreed. The blackouts robbed power for millions of people in a broad swath of the US Northeast — stretching west to Ohio and Michigan — and in southern Canadian cities, starting shortly after 4 pm EDT (2000 GMT). In Toronto, Canada’s largest city, workers fled their buildings when the power went off. There also were widespread outages in Ottawa, the capital.
          
Power was restored in some cities as afternoon turned to evening, but officials said full restoration would take hours longer.  Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland and other major cities, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour. New York state lost 80 percent of its power, said Matthew Melewski, speaking for the New York Independent System Operator, which manages the state power grid. Both New York and New Jersey declared states of emergency. In New York City, subways, elevators and airports, including John F Kennedy and LaGuardia airports, lost electricity or resorted to limited backup power. Thousands of people streamed into the streets of lower Manhattan in 90-degree Fahrenheit (32 Celsius) heat; some subway commuters were still stuck underground two hours after the blackout hit. There were outages in northern New Jersey and in several Vermont towns. In Connecticut, commuter train service was knocked out and lights were flickering at state government buildings. In Albany, New York, several people were trapped in elevators in Empire State Plaza, but most had been freed within an hour. People in New York City lined up ten deep or more at pay phones, with cell phone service disrupted in some areas.

In Cleveland, Olga Kropko, a University Hospital labour and delivery nurse, said the hospital was using its backup generators and had limited power. “Everyone is very hot because the air conditioning is off,” she said. “Our labouring moms are suffering.” Police in Mansfield, Ohio, spread into the streets to keep traffic flowing. “A lot of officers are out there trying to make sure nobody gets hurt, to try to cut down on the accidents,” said jail officer Randi Allen. The blackouts rivalled those in the West on August 11, 1996, when heat, sagging power lines and unusually high demand for electricity caused an outage that affected four million customers in nine states, one of the most severe outages in US history. A blackout in New York City in 1977 left some nine million people without electricity for up to 25 hours. Yesterday is estimated to have affected more than 16 million people. yesterday, Amtrak suspended passenger rail service between New Haven, Connecticut, and Newark. Some northbound trains from Washington — a city that did not lose power — turned around at Newark. New York City Mayor

Michael Bloomberg asked the city’s more than eight million people to be calm, go home, open windows and drink water. “Be sure you don’t make an inconvenience into a tragedy,” he said. As for the cause, he said: “It was probably a natural occurrence which disrupted the power system up there and it apparently, for reasons we don’t know, cascaded down through New York state over into Connecticut, as far south as New Jersey and as far west as Ohio.” In Washington, the Health and Human Services Department said the biggest health concern was people getting overheated and dehydrated, something local health systems appeared to be handling, said spokesman Campbell Gardett. The FBI and Homeland Security Department both said the outages appeared to be a natural occurrence and not the result of terrorism. Said Michael Sheehan, deputy commissioner for terrorism of New York City’s Police Department: “We’ve talked to Washington and there are rumours, but none of them pan out.”

For police, the focus was on the ramifications of the blackout rather than its cause. “We’re more concerned about getting the traffic lights running and making sure the city is OK than what caused it,” said a spokesman at the department’s operations centre downtown. “The good news is that in New York City, while we have lost all the power, Con Ed’s facilities have shut down properly, which we have programmed them to do,” said Bloomberg. Four nuclear power reactors — two in New York and two in Ohio — reported they were shut down because of the loss of offsite power, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Bethesda, Maryland. They were the two Indian Point reactors in New York state, and the Perry and Fermi nuclear power plants in Ohio. Flights at six airports — Kennedy, LaGuardia, Newark, Cleveland, Toronto and Ottawa — were grounded, according to the US Transportation Department.