This week marked the ten-year anniversary of The Northeast Blackout, a power outage that occurred along the entire northeast of the United States and parts of Canada back on August 14th, 2003. The blackout started at 4pm on August 14th, and lasted for an estimated 31 hours in New York City when the power was finally restored.
The blackout cut off lights and air conditioning, especially in hospitals and prisons, affected phone services, and disrupted transportation from New England to Michigan. The blackout also obstructed power plants.
The blackout occurred when huge power fluctuations in three failed transmission lines. The fluctuations occurred as the result of a bug within the software system in the control room of a FirstEnergy Corporation located in northern Ohio.
The glitch in the software disenabled operators to notice the overloading transmission line causing what would have been a manageable blackout at a local scale to erupt into a widespread one knocking out a total of eight U.S. states and parts of Canada’s electric grid into distress.
Before widespread fear would grip the country, two years after the 9/11 events, the U.S. intelligence assured the public the cause was not terrorist-related. New York City’s Mayor Office and the U.S. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC) confirmed the cause of the blackout.
The blackout in New York City shut the entire city down.
In a U.S. Department of Transportation report about the blackout in New York City, a total of 11,600 traffic signals to go dark causing mass gridlocks throughout lower and midtown Manhattan. In offices throughout Manhattan it there was a recorded 800 elevator rescues for trapped civilians. In the subways, a total of 413 subway trains came to a halt with an estimated 400,000 passengers still aboard also needing rescue.
Along with the gridlock and no power to run them the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA), Long Island Railroad (LIRR), the MetroNorth, and New Jersey Transit and PATH trains were shut down some New Yorkers were left with no other alternative but to walk over bridges if they were in Manhattan to get home. Some New Yorkers who left their offices during the daylight hours after the blackout found themselves not returning home until late in the evening.
The blackout couldn’t have hit the city at a problematic time. Since late July the city was under a dry rain spell with heat temperatures ranging from the late 80s to early 90s. The blackout resulted in one of the largest mortality and hospital admissions due to renal, respiratory, cardiovascular diseases reported in New York City.
On August 16th 2003, parts of Canada and all of New York City were reported to have power back.
Since the blackout of 2003, and a much smaller blackout in Florida back in 2008, a nonprofit North American Electric Reliability Corp has re-established from a voluntary industry group to a government-sanctioned to oversee the new reliability requirements to recommend penalties to be brought before a federal regulatory commission for approval under a 2005 Energy Policy Act to penalize those who are supposed to be responsible for grid maintenance and cast down potential penalties against violations so that a similar event in 2003 will not happen again.
According to records the 2003 blackout was the second largest widespread blackout in history since the 1999 Brazilian blackout where southern areas of the country experienced a power outage. The big blackout of 2003 lasted for four days ending with power being fully restored in Canada.
