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Ottawa-Gatineau is a special case in that it is divided by a provincial boundary and the
Ontario and
Quebec grids are not synchronously connected. This resulted in
Gatineau having power while
Ottawa did not. Locals may have witnessed the drastic cutoff when they were crossing the
Portage Bridge which links the capital region (street lights on the bridge were still lit on the Quebec side of the structure).
Affected infrastructure Power 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 offline until those plants could be slowly taken out of "safe mode". In the meantime, all available hydro-electric plants (as well as a number of coal- and oil-fired plants) were brought online, bringing some electrical power to the areas immediately surrounding the plants by the morning of August 15. Homes and businesses both in the affected area and in nearby areas were requested to limit power usage until the grid was back to full power.
Water supply Some areas lost water pressure because pumps lacked power. This loss of pressure caused potential contamination of the water supply. Four million customers of the Detroit water system in eight counties were under a
boil-water advisory until August 18, four days after the initial outage. One county,
Macomb, ordered all 2,300 restaurants closed until they were decontaminated after the advisory was lifted. Twenty people living on the
St. Clair River claim to have been sickened after bathing in the river during the blackout. The accidental release of 140 kg (310 lb) of
vinyl chloride from a
Sarnia, Ontario chemical plant was not revealed until five days later. Cleveland also lost water pressure and instituted a boil water advisory. Cleveland and New York had
sewage spills into waterways, requiring beach closures.
Newark, New Jersey, and northern cities had major sewage spills into the
Passaic and
Hackensack rivers, which flow directly to the Atlantic Ocean.
Kingston, Ontario lost power to sewage pumps, causing raw waste to be dumped into the
Cataraqui River at the base of the
Rideau Canal.
Transportation Amtrak's
Northeast Corridor railroad service was stopped north of
Philadelphia, and all trains running into and out of New York City were shut down, initially including the
Long Island Rail Road and the
Metro-North Railroad; both were able to establish a bare-bones "all-diesel" service by the next morning. Canada's
Via Rail, which serves Toronto and
Montreal, had a few service delays before returning to normal the next morning. Passenger screenings at affected airports ceased. Regional airports were shut down for this reason. In New York, flights were cancelled even after power had been restored to the airports because of difficulties accessing "electronic-ticket" information.
Air Canada flights remained grounded on the morning of August 15 due to reliable power not having been restored to its
Mississauga control center. It expected to resume operations by midday. This problem affected all Air Canada service and canceled the most heavily traveled flights to
Halifax and
Vancouver. At
Chicago's
Midway International Airport,
Southwest Airlines employees spent 48 hours dealing with the disorder caused by the blackout's sudden incidence. 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 west to
Manitoba without refueling. In some cities, traffic problems were compounded by motorists who simply drove until their cars ran out of gas on the highway. Gas stations operating in pockets of
Burlington, Ontario, that had power were reported to be charging prices up to $3.78 per US gallon (99.9 ¢/Litre) when the going rate prior to the blackout was lower than $2.65/gallon (70¢/L). Customers still lined up for hours to pay prices many people considered
price gouging. Station operators claimed that they had a limited supply of gasoline and did not know when their tanks would be refilled, prompting the drastic price increases. Many oil refineries on the East Coast of the United States shut down as a result of the blackout, and were slow to resume gasoline production. As a result, gasoline prices were expected to rise approximately 10 cents/gallon (3¢/L) in the United States. In Canada, gasoline
rationing was also considered by the authorities.
Communication Cellular communication devices were disrupted. This was mainly due to the loss of backup power at the cellular sites where generators ran out of fuel. Where cell sites remained up, some cell phones still went out of service as their batteries ran out of charge without a power source to recharge from. Wired
telephone lines continued to work, although some systems were overwhelmed by the volume of traffic, and millions of home users had only cordless telephones depending on house current. Most New York and multiple Ontario radio stations were momentarily knocked off the air before returning with backup power.
Cable television systems were disabled, and in areas that had power restored (and had power to their television sets), cable subscribers could not receive information until power was restored to the cable provider. Those who relied on the
Internet were similarly disconnected from their news source for the duration of the blackout, with the exception of
dial-up access from
laptop computers, which were widely reported to work until the batteries ran out of charge. Information was available by over-the-air TV and radio reception for those who were equipped to receive TV and/or audio in that way. The blackout affected communications well outside the immediate area of power outage. The New Jersey–based internet operations of
Advance Publications were among those knocked out by the blackout. As a result, the internet editions of Advance newspapers as far removed from the blackout area as
The Birmingham News, the New Orleans
Times-Picayune, and
The Oregonian were offline for days.
Amateur radio operators passed emergency communications during the blackout.
Industry Large numbers of factories were closed in the affected area, and others outside the area were forced to close or slow work because of supply problems and the need to conserve energy while the grid was being stabilized. At one point a 7-hour wait developed for trucks crossing the
Ambassador Bridge between
Detroit and
Windsor due to the lack of electronic border check systems. Freeway congestion in affected areas affected the "
just in time" (JIT) supply system. Some industries (including the auto industry) did not return to full production until August 22.
By region New York in
New York City during the blackout Almost the entirety of the
State of New York lost power. Exceptions included
Freeport and
Rockville Centre on
Long Island, which relied on localized power plants; the
Capital District, where power dipped briefly (a few areas, such as portions of
Latham, New York, did not lose power at all); the southernmost areas of the
Southern Tier of
Upstate New York, mostly near
Waverly, which relied on power from
Pennsylvania; the city of
Plattsburgh;
Starrett City, Brooklyn, which has auxiliary power; most of the city of
Buffalo; and pockets of
Amherst in the Buffalo area, running off
university power. There were also some small pockets of power in the suburbs of
Rochester, as a few smaller power companies operating in those areas were able to keep running. The
North Shore Towers complex was unaffected by the blackout due to their on-site self-generating power plant. Power was also available at the
Kodak Park facility and its surrounding neighborhood in the city. Power was lost at the
Oak Hill Country Club in nearby
Pittsford, where the
2003 PGA Championship was being played, which caused minor interruptions to the tournament. Also, that evening's
Major League Baseball game between the
New York Mets and the
San Francisco Giants at
Shea Stadium was postponed. In New York, all prisons were blacked out and switched to generator power. The two
Indian Point nuclear reactors on the
Hudson River near
Peekskill, the two reactors at
Nine Mile Point nuclear plant, the single reactor at
Ginna nuclear plant near Rochester, and the
FitzPatrick reactor near
Oswego all shut down. With three other nuclear plants shut down in Ohio, Michigan, and New Jersey, a total of nine reactors were affected. The governor of New York,
George Pataki, declared a
state of emergency.
Verizon's emergency generators failed several times, leaving the
emergency services number 9-1-1 out of service for several periods of about a quarter-hour each. New York City's
3-1-1 information hotline received over 175,000 calls from concerned residents during the weekend.
Amateur radio operators attached to New York City
ARES provided a backup communications link to emergency shelters and hospitals. Amateur radio
repeaters were supplied with emergency power via
generators and batteries and remained functional. Major U.S. networks (
CBS,
NBC,
ABC and
Fox) and some cable television channels (
HBO,
MTV and
Nickelodeon), centered in
New York City, were unable to broadcast normally, so backup stations and flagship transmitters in
Dallas were used for prime-time TV. ABC ran their
news broadcasts from
Washington, D.C. instead.
New York City Much of
Manhattan, including the
headquarters of the United Nations, was rendered without power, as were all area airports (with the exception of
Newburgh's Stewart International Airport, which had once been a military airbase and had its own generators). All New York-area rail transportation including the
subway, the
PATH lines between Manhattan and New Jersey,
NJ Transit Rail Operations,
Metro-North, and the
Long Island Rail Road, were without power. Limited railroad service resumed early Friday morning through the use of diesel trains. More than 600 subway and commuter rail cars were trapped between stations. New York's
Metropolitan Transportation Authority (which operates the subway) and the
Port Authority of New York and New Jersey (which operates the PATH lines) reported that all passengers were evacuated without serious injury. PATH resumed service on the
Uptown Hudson Tubes by 9:45 p.m. that evening; system-wide service resumed at 11 p.m. Power was returned first to the urban areas because of concerns of safety and unrest. Counties as far south as
Cumberland were affected, where power was restored within an hour. Some towns in Bergen County only momentarily lost power, and had wild oscillations in power line voltage, ranging from about 90 V to 135 V every few minutes for an hour. The day following the blackout, August 15, the
New Jersey Turnpike stopped collecting tolls until 9:00 a.m.
Connecticut Parts of
New London,
Hartford,
New Haven,
Litchfield, and
Fairfield counties, from
Greenwich to
Danbury and
Bridgeport were affected, although most of the state had power all evening, aside from a few momentary interruptions that caused computers to reboot.
Metro-North trains stopped and remained on the tracks for hours, until they could be towed to the nearest station. Generally, most of the state east of
Interstate 91, and some places west of I-91, had power during the duration of the blackout, with some of
New Haven's eastern suburbs being seen as the easternmost extreme of the effects of the blackout. A local controversy ensued in the days after the blackout, when the federal government ordered power companies to energize the
HVDC Cross Sound Cable between New Haven and
Long Island. This cable had been installed, but not activated due to environment and fishery concerns. The
Attorney General of Connecticut (and future U.S. Senator),
Richard Blumenthal, and the
Governor of New York,
George Pataki, traded insults over the cable. Connecticut politicians, without regard for public safety, expressed their outrage that the cable was being turned on, since it did not help anyone in Connecticut, as the cable would transport power from Connecticut to Long Island.
Massachusetts A small area of western
Massachusetts was affected. In
Worcester the event was of sufficient magnitude to reboot some computers, while in
Springfield the effect of the event was enough to cause the automatic startup of commercial and industrial backup generation facilities. Some areas were subjected to lower-than-normal voltage (as low as 100 volts AC) and
brownouts for periods of up to 24 hours. The
Boston area was spared from the blackout.
Michigan About 2.3 million households and businesses were affected, including almost all of
Metro Detroit,
Lansing,
Ann Arbor, and surrounding communities in southeast Michigan. The blackout affected three Michigan utilities:
Detroit Edison (whose entire system went down),
Lansing Board of Water & Light, and a small portion of
Consumers Energy's system in the southeastern corner of the state. Word quickly spread to the surrounding areas without power and people flocked to surrounding areas that still had power, resulting in crowded stores, packed restaurants, booked hotels, and long queues for the gas stations in these towns. Locales closest to the affected areas in the northern
Detroit suburbs that did not lose power included the areas of
Oxford and
Holly, communities along
M-24 and
M-15, and into the
Lapeer and
Flint/Tri-Cities area. The city limits of
Brighton and
Howell were unaffected as well, as they received electricity from Consumers Energy via the Genoa-Latson 138 kV line which interconnects Detroit Edison and Consumers Energy. Television and radio stations were temporarily knocked off the air and water supplies were disrupted in Detroit due to the failure of electric pumps. Because of the loss of water pressure, all water was required to be boiled before use until August 18. Several schools, which had planned to begin the school year August 18, were closed until clean water was available. A planned August 15 concert at
Comerica Park featuring
Kiss and
Aerosmith was postponed until September 7. A
Marathon Oil refinery in
Melvindale, near Detroit, suffered a small explosion from gas buildup, necessitating an evacuation within around the plant and the closure of
Interstate 75. Officials feared the release of toxic gases. Heavy rains on August 17, coupled with the lack of sewage pumps, closed other expressways and prompted urban flood warnings. Untreated sewage flowed into local rivers in Lansing and Metropolitan Detroit as contingency solutions at some sewage treatment plants failed. In the midst of a summer
heat wave,
Michiganders were deprived of
air conditioning. Several people, mostly elderly individuals, had to be treated for symptoms of
heat stroke. In the Detroit area, local television stations' news helicopters were told by each station's management to "stay above the cars' headlights" at night, and to not venture into Downtown Detroit (due to the hazard of flying into an unlit
skyscraper). During the days immediately after the blackout, a number of TV stations were back on the air, with limited resources. In one case,
WXYZ-TV's news anchor was wearing a T-shirt and shorts, as opposed to his normal news suit, and apologized to viewers for the "rather warm conditions" in the station, as they only had one air conditioner and a couple of fans working. The
Downriver communities had to contend with basements flooded with sewage-laden water on the weekend immediately after the blackout due to water and sewage pumps offline from a lack of power, much to the general annoyance of residents in the areas. News crews of the areas broadcast notices during their coverages of the blackouts to the Downriver residents, explaining why the pumps had shorted out, as well as to limit water usage. "Most places have water pressure, some have low pressure...some have none, and some even have
negative pressure. That means in the next few hours, people in the downriver communities should expect flooded basements from, so move all your valuables high up and out of the basements," as
WDIV-TV warned.
West Michigan, including the communities of
Grand Rapids,
Muskegon, and
Holland were mostly unaffected, although a large portion was within "seconds" of joining the blackout according to local U.S. Representative
Fred Upton. Some communities in Southwest Michigan were impacted, being among the most western locations impacted. Although right across the border from
Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario,
Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan was unaffected by the outage, as the two cities are not electrically connected.
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 limited basis. Water had to be boiled for several days afterwards. Portions of the cities of
Akron,
Mansfield,
Massillon,
Marion, and
Ashland were without power. Cleveland declared a
curfew on all persons under the age of 18. At
Cedar Point amusement park in
Sandusky, park employees had to help guests walk down the steps of the
Magnum XL-200 roller coaster, which had stopped on the lift hill due to the blackout. Several other guests had to be helped off rides as a result of the blackout. In
Toledo, the
Mud Hens baseball team postponed the game scheduled for that night. Some parts of the city were unaffected by the blackout, notably the suburb of
Sylvania. Other surrounding cities like
Bowling Green only experienced a brief outage.
Ontario , on the evening of 14 August 2003 during the blackout The area affected by the blackout included all
Southern Ontario, except Grimsby, Pelham,
Niagara Falls and
Fort Erie, from
Windsor to
Ottawa and all the way to the
Quebec border, except for the
Cornwall area. Also affected was
Northern Ontario, as far north as
Attawapiskat and
Moosonee on
James Bay and west to
Marathon on the
Lake Superior shoreline. Communities affected in northern Ontario included
Timmins,
Cochrane,
Sudbury,
Kirkland Lake,
North Bay,
Wawa, and
Sault Ste. Marie. Most of
Northwestern Ontario (including
Thunder Bay) was not affected.
Traffic lights, which had no backup power, were all knocked out. All intersections were to be considered an
all-way stop. Coupled with the beginning of the evening rush hour, this caused traffic problems. In multiple major and minor intersections in large cities, such as Ottawa and Toronto, ordinary citizens began directing traffic until police or others relieved them. Since there were not enough police officers to direct traffic at every intersection during the afternoon rush hour, passing police officers distributed fluorescent jackets to civilians who were directing traffic. Drivers and pedestrians generally followed the instructions from them, even though they were not police officers. Passengers had to be evacuated from subway trains by walking through the tunnels. Major Toronto hospitals reported that they had switched to generators and did not experience problems. The
9-1-1 system was operational. Residents were asked not to use televisions, washing machines, or air conditioners if possible, and warned that some restored power might go off again. Many Torontonians remember that night as a moment where the community came together: "Without power, residents of Toronto took to the streets to help direct traffic; florists arranged flowers for weddings by candlelight; and convenience stores served customers in the blackness. The night sky was a rarely seen canopy of dazzling stars, twinkling down on the darkened city through soft summer heat that lingered into the evening."
Pennsylvania The blackout was confined to the northwest portion of the state. The state's most populated metros of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh were unaffected. According to emergency officials in Erie, Crawford, Venango, Clarion, Bradford, Forest and Warren counties, outages lasted into the night, but there were no serious injuries or incidents. == Emergency services ==