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Is this true,just watching CNN and in NY there is no power,nor in Toronto and mostly in the East Cost.Hope they repair it until nightfall.That could transform in chaos,seen images from NY,the ppl really freaked out thinking about terrorists and stuff....hope they'll repair it soon!

Yeh its just came on the news that that there is indeed no power, apparantely its simultaneous power cuts,a series of major US and Canadian cities have been hit,subways and airports have also been hit,with many people being stuck in the subway. They say it is likely to have been caused by a power grid overload.

Parties over I guess...

man I don't know if any of you have ever been stuck in a subway, but it sucks @$$. Things are probably gonna go to shit tonight on the East Coast. I'll bet their gonna have to call the guarde de nationale in and sh*t.

Lights out is when the party start Diego.

I do hope that it gets fixed though. It isn't a big deal in the smalltown I live in, but in a city it may cause trouble.

Is all of New York City in the dark???

Indeed it's true...mum just called from Toronto and said traffic was incredibly scary to drive in. And yes, I believe New York is completely dark.

Lucky for me, my dad lives in a really small town west of Toronto that wasn't harmed.

That is strange indeed that this happens today...*thinks*...Even though I live all the way over here in Arizona...I still am shocked that this happened

People are thinking it's terrorists...the FBI is relating it to the virus that was spread a couple days ago.

It could be anything.

whats this thing about the blackout of 2003

Faulty power grids! Too much heat...Too much demand = Blackout

Official word right now is that it was a simple power surge and technical failure that spread through the system. It happens.

*Points* What diegocala said!

Yankee retards!
All my favorite shows are supposed to be on, but they've been pre-empted to cover the blackouts!

many peaople r ding now cause of this ****in black out and do u know how much ****in mony it is going to cost in the billions it is probly a terroist act i am sure of it cause u would think we would have a back up plan for a power outage like that not to mention why would it be such a big black out and why now when it was nice there today . i say the ****in terriost

Things go wrong. The chances of it being a terrorist attack are pretty small.

i wouldnt rule that verdict out though this will be a big hit on our country we r leading right into a depression if this keeps up

These things happen.

You have a calming way about you Ush

Yeah, that happened today. I live in Nj and good thing I didn't get hit hard. The power was on the fritz for about an hour and then was fine. I doubt it was a terrorist act. It must have started because of all the strain....It started in Canada or Manhatten.

Word is that a lightning strike started it off.

A lightning strike is believed to have been the cause.

WHAT THE HELL HAPPENED IN NEW YORK!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? :gasp:

Lightning strike? could it really do that much damage? what haapened to the back up power source?

I live in NY funny thingis there isn't any power at my work so I got to go home early when I got home I had full power only a couple miles apart.

I was in the area and there was no lightning strike I live in Buffalo that's right next to Niagra Falls and I didn't see any lightning.

I dont think thaT lightning could do that much damage.

it wasn't even over cast today

Lightning is what they are saying is the cause of the overload.

But what about back up power? even if it overloaded one plant, the back up power should have kicked in.

it's easy to explain ahs anyone here seen the movie Oceans eleven they were explaining grids the lightning although I doubt there was any would have knocked out one grid and the others would have fallen one by one domino effect.

Godshinto has it right
Read this for why that can happen
http://www.msnbc.com/news/297115.asp

we got like total blackout..coz i live up in NE ohio, and our whole city lost power for like 2-4 hours (not sure exactly, bc i went outside after the power went out)

that'd be AWSOME to be in right now!!

my power went out i was pissed!!! me and my friend were riding bikes to go get drinks from this gas station and people were rushing to get ice and there weer no traffic lights working. this person was backing out of there spot and slammed into another guys car and they started fighting it was like a riot lol

ehehe, i don't live in america or canada, so lucky for me i think it was probably a power surge like Ush said. probably nothing big, eh?

finally got power

but this isn't unusual to me

i used to live in a neighborhood where the transformer blew all the time

"the system was down, the system was down"

doodadadadoodoodoo, doodadadadoodoodoo, doodadadadoodoodoo,

i agree with ush that these things happen and that its probably not terrorism. it will cost an assload of money to fix it though.

Right now, the Canadians are saying lightning, the Americans seem less sure, either way it was a naturally occuring cascade power failure.

Meanwhile, as this has a definitve subject, I am moving this to the GDF and merging it with the thread there.

I really don't belive that crap with the overuse of the network and stuff...
For sure something else happened,maybe a EMP or somethin'....

EMP!?! Oh gawd what if they hit the west coast OH GAWD! What about the childeren? WON'T SOMEONE PLEASE THINK OF THE CHILDEREN!??!

oh..christ. The power has just turned on here, in toronto...after..let's see...20 hours I doubt there was any lightning. The sky was as clear as it could be yesterday ad if the americans also say that..it means it isn't true. It was amaizing...i'm still expecting another black-out any time now. they're doing a power cicle..sending to everyone to try and cool their fridges again a little bit, because they don't expect a full power management untill monday morning..so i dunno what we'll do.
New york was out, boston, buffallo..almost the whole ontario region...hell....north eastern usa and south eastern canada were in the dark. It was very annoying.
HOW CAN SUCH A THING HAPPEN IN THE 21st CENTURY??? they say the line fell like a domino game...
The traffic was all screwed up..no subway ofcourse..no stop lights. Civilians directing traffic!!! No gas stations opened..no shops... ANyway..i was pleasantly surprised. The ppl round here really help eachother.

here are some pics i made myself yesterday, somewhere near the house

II

III

IV

this one is made on night vision mode...cuz u couldn't see a god damn thing. It was as dark as it could be. creepy.....i didn't see a skunk and it almost got me, the bastard

It's the Americans saying it WASN'T lightning, Dexx; the Canadians were saying it was.

And why shouldn't this sort of thing happen in the 21st century? Where the hell did this impression of infallibility come from? Things go wrong. large scale failures CAN happen. That is the way of things. I am sure they will now spend millions on an upgrade which realy does not- and cannot- solve the central problem of all things, which is that ALL things can fail.

i heard that people were really freaking out over there. did anybody die, i wonder?? and Bush is saying he thinks it wasn't terrorist-related. i doubt it was, probably just a big blow-out. but they say it was the biggest blackout in history since 1966 and 1974 i think it was?
and also i was watching the news today and they said it wasn't lightning cuz they would've seen it or detected it. so it wasn't the cause of that.

one person died...we had one candle related fire. the americans had 60 .
I'm saying ush..that such a thing could have been prevented. ontario already had a power deficit....a surplus would have been good in such a time. SO they were supposed to be watching the things.....to separate the lines from one another..not just let it overload one another till all the network falls. Even so..let's say it falls...but you don't take 3 DAYS!! to fix it....

my brother predicted that it was an overload of the use of air conditioning, haywire electricity, etc. i have to say i agree with him because look at how many people live in new york city alone.

Apparently, they don't think full power will be restored until Monday sometime.

yeah..well.....the americans and canadians blame eachother so far. the lighting theory doesn't seem plausible..because it was a sunny day. As far as i could see

i think it was just an overload. and why the hell would the americans and canadians blame each other?

why they always do. then again..it doesn't matter whose fault it was. i wouldn't have thought you could keep huge cities without power like that.

Keep them? Like they would float away?

28 DAYS LATER II: THE VIRUS STATESIDE STARRING DEXX AS ONLY SOLE SURVIVOR GUY

naah..that isn't me. i was making the pic. I was out in the night on the bike with the camera tryign to get some good pics of..something. these were in the evening.

lol.

Dexx, somehow I don't think your testiomy as to how easy it should have been to keep things going really compares against that of the experts who run these things. There was no way things could have been kpet running after the power surge that caused the problem. In the end, most of the system was shut down by safety systems designed to prevent permanent damage. But it is NOT easy to fully restart an entire grid when it has gone down!

You mean it doesn't just have a pull cord??

At least it didn't happen in the middle of winter.

yes...you're correct. but my opinions are not exactly ENTIRELY mine. I have heard,as expected, a lot of ideas on the (battery supplied ) radio. I don't have a noticeable experience in this area. I am not commenting (too much) on the long time to restart the system, but why in is down in the first place. I hope you agree with me that a black-out on such a big scale is not 'supposed' to happen

This was probably fun...not
Ohio rollercoster freeze!

That would be awesome, and it would suck. Good story to tell the grand kids, Especially if you met their Grandmother while you were stuck there.

I would be so terrified if I was on the roller coster. When did the power go out exactly. I've known about this but I wasn't told when it happened.

From what I have seen it was indeed a surge in demand that caused the failure. However it should not have been able to shut down the entire grid. The safety systems should have shut down the overloaded sections before it pulled the rest of the system with it.

As to the availability of backup power, what backup power? Most buildings will have limited or no self-sufficiencty simply because it is expensive and; to be honest major power cuts are rare. Being in the business i am suprised to hear that the cellular phone sites have no backup. in the UK someting in the order of 4 hours supply is common and 8 hours not unknown.

See CNN at http://edition.cnn.com/2003/US/08/15/power.outage/index.html
for their latest report.

I heard that the main people of the plant knew this was going to happen. Is that true? If it is then WHY DIDN'T THEY STOP IT! I feel so bad for the people without power and water. *Sniff*

I would doubt that anyone knew this was going to happen. It seems that no one has any real idea about what kicked it off. The comments I have seen do admit that the US grid system has suffered huge underinvestment compared to the huge increase in demand over the last few years. Although that might explain why the system collapsed in such a drastic way it does not explain what started the whole thing off.

I think part of the problem with getting the system back-up was that some of the transformers probably blew when power was returned. I heard one blow somewhere in our area last night. When I shared a house with my sister our transformer blew out all the time because they put all the new houses in the neighborhood on the same line as our house instead of spreading it about the other lines in the neighborhood. Man, we got so good at the no power thing, even when it went during the winter when we got a butt-load of snow and it stayed on the ground for a week. We didn't have any heat for five days that time.

Well, of course it SHOULDN'T have happened, Dexx! But when the crisis hit, something went wrong! Statistically speaking it was bound to happen sometime.

However, it does seem all affected areas were affected because of deliberate shut-downs of 21 stations for safety. It wasn't actually the entire grid that was down (else we would have had NO-ONE in the affacted areas on the board yesterday)

I think its Udai and Quasi back in electrical ghost form to reek havoc upon America.

I don't think that's funny...

I dont really care

Forum diva lol

what do u mean by that?

I would not be suprised to find that the 21 stations shut down automatically simple due to each one attempting to take more load as other parts of the system shut down. This would be done to stop damage to the generation equipment and is quite normal.

The latest I have seen suggests that althought no one knows exactly what happened and the Americans and Canadians are pointing fingers at each other, it appears tha a 34.5KV line in Ohio on the "Lake Erie Loop" may have come down. I would susspect that this connection was allowing two major parts of the grid to share power.

Yeah, watching the blame game is rather amusing.

The Canadians said it was caused by a lightning strike on the American side of Niagara. Then they said it was just a fire there. Soon afterwardds, they said it was in fact a fire at a nuclear plant in Pennsylvania. Then they said it was not a fire, but an outage. After this accusation was called 'bizarre' by the Americans, as it was blatantly not true, the Candians eventually settled by saying it was some problem, somewhere, with one of the plants in the north-east US. Apparently.

Not wanting to be outdone on the wild accusations the US played their part rather well. At first they blamed a general power transmission problem in Canada, but that wasn't weird enough so THEN they went on to blame, of all things in all places, a lighting strike in obviously unaffected Quebec. I am sure there is SOME logic behind that accusaton but it has not been made clear to me.

Of course, it is people that speak rather than countries; on the Canadian side it was the aide to Prime Minister Jean Chretien, and then the defence Minsiter John McCallum and his spokesman, both of whom are probably rather wishing they had stayed quiet, whilst on the American side no less a people than Hilary Clinton and Michael Bloomburg were making their confident assertions...

Why don't you care? I mean that's really mean. You shouldn't say things like that. Exspecially if everyone is worried about this situation. And who cares who did it! Just fix the problem! You know...people these days.

Don't you think it is important that officials get to grip with making a sensible investigation into the cause rather than simply firing wild accusations about each other? The people affected by this are NOT served by petty blame games.

And quite by what logic you think that finding out who did it- i.e. the CAUSE- is not important to fixing it, I do not know! But I reckon you should tone down hasty accusations of me not caring in future.

It's almost amusing to see how all of these causes of what happened are presented when in fact nobody fully confirmed. IT seems that the overloaded line is the most probable cause. Ontario had broken it's consume record a few days earlier. i dunno...i'm gratefull they didn't shut the power down anymore since then.

i personally think it's not all that necessary to point blame, but once they find out what happened (in either countries) that country can learn to improve on their system next time something like this happens. i don't think it's all that important, but as long as they fix it and know what to do next time it happens, everything'll be cool.

the blame has to fall on someone, in the end. it always does...(i'd call it a side effect of democracy...picking escape goats )


I loved how a guy called the info office after the power had gone down for a few hours saying that
"i don't have no god damn power! only the nuclear power plant is lit like a fu*kin christmass tree!!"

somebody needs a hug

Looks like Ohio is going to get the guilty verdict!

And I am sorry, Angel, I see you were talking to Tex... but you really should make that clearer in future, when you are replying to something a few posts up!

looks like Bush should take a serious look at alternative energy sources

it was a bright sunny day imagine what a little solar power could have done for all of us

(all the highway street lights in germany had separate solar pannels....each!! and i don't assume it stops there)

that's right..blame the americans...i felt it was their fault

some of the highway lights in Charleston have those panels by them so it can be done

You still can't run an energy grid on solar power. The Niagara power plant is hydroelectric as it is, which is pretty alternative already.

yes, of course. But whatever solar energy can be used to draw some things off the main power grid is welcomed.

I'm sorry Ushgarak, I'll make sure to make it more clear next time. And why would Ohio be blames? Did they do something that I didn't hear on the news or something...

they pulled the plug, the bastards

The fault seems to have been traced to there, is all.

I blame Ohio for everything...like Cleveland

Lol, I was born in Ohio. I dunno, I guess we'll have to see.

I saw something that said an alarm was broken that should have alerted someone to switch to back-up power when three transmission lines went down.

*bored face* oh..that's a new one.
*writes it down*

well I just found out we can blame parma ohio's chevy plant.it's true and only 5mins from me! cleveland the mistake on the lake!augh

*writes this one down also* cheee...vvvy.....plant

..

An Off-Topic Forum veteran of 63 posts, Ladies and Gentlemen, and with her very first post in the General Discussion Forum, would you please give a round of applause for...nikki101!

This was funny. It caused such a funny problem here In Ontario Canada.
Problems
1. People accuse the Govt of giving power to the rich people (new homes) faster. True new homes did get power first (i got it 9 hours after) however my phone did not work.
2. After the Govt said don't use Air Conditioning. Then neighbours started yelling at each other about people using the AC and some fights started around the Toronto area.

Was not bad. My neighbourhood has alot of Indian people living in it so they all had large propane stoves so we could have lasted a weak but it was only 9 hours.

Originally posted by botankus
An Off-Topic Forum veteran of 63 posts, Ladies and Gentlemen, and with her very first post in the General Discussion Forum, would you please give a round of applause for...nikki101!

just simply mmmaaaarrrvelous...super duper....jolly good and spiffing ideedy diddly do da

Originally posted by nikki101
..

wow dude!!! you are just so funny and cool and most of all original!
BUMP AN OLD THREAD FOR NO REASON!!!
i think you were the first to ever think of it!!!!

btw, have you considered ending yourself?

Whoa PVS... That was a truely dangerous amount of sarcasm there..!!
Sacasm readings are off the scale and it injured Mrs.Bodowski's kitten three blocks away....!!!! hysterical

I myself will be limping for a week...

yes, your right.
i must learn to control this power