thanks matt_mcl and detop, i’m wondering where i read that.
they just announced that lightening may be the cause on the new york side of the niagara falls plant. also that some of the nuc. plants were tripped off in the cascade.
I read the news on-line today and thought, well that sucks (and why the hell did foxnews.com take so long to pick up the story?)
I just now turned on the TV for the first time tonight - CNN showing the massive lines of commuters making their way home in the dark. Holy shit! I feel for you guys. What a nightmare! I see that Bush will be making a statement soon - I for one, want to know how this can happen in our (supposedly) high-tech environment with no warning. If lightning was the cause, Mother Nature had PMS today!
Power is back up in some parts of Ontario. Confirmed are parts of Burlington, parts of Owen Sound and all of Port Elgin as far as I can see.
“The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to stop up the drain.” — Mr. Scott, ST: TOS.
they just announced that the subways are 100% evacuated.
50 million people are blacked out.
mets game is canceled.
the bronx is starting to get power.
they are shuttling people from nyc to the meadowlands in new jersey. from there they are sorting them into buses.
jersey city looks like it is getting power.
diane sawyer reported that she saw people walking from laguardia with luggage. people would help them carry their bags.
canada is saying there was a lightening strike on the new york side of niagara, new york is saying “nope, no lightening.”
Seconding Ice Wolf’s good wishes. Take care everybody. It helps to know you guys have proven your toughness and resilience before. Just… I dunno… go home and contribute to the May 2004 birthrate spike.
Many of us in Memphis recently experienced up to two weeks without power (I was in the dark for 11 days). So everyone in affected areas listen up:
Start eating.
If you’re likely to be out of power for more than a day or two, go ahead and eat all the refrigerated food you can. If you have steaks in the freezer, eat them. Food in the fridge will stay good for about a day (if you don’t go opening it all the time), and food in the freezer will hold for about two days.
So learn from my mistake; I had several thick, juicy steaks that I had to throw out.
Yeah, I learned about the cascade effect when reading a story on how earlier blackouts happened. This one seems to cover an extrodinarily large area in comparison.
also that after '77 they put in safeguards to stop a cascade effect. the safeguards seemed to have failed over quite a large area.
i’m in philly, we are in the pjm (new jersey to wash d.c.) grid. it seems that the computers in valley forge saw the power blip and quickly isolated the blip. that is why only parts of north new jersey went out. the pjm grid is sending power up toward nyc and out toward ohio right now, without blowing our power. the pjm grid should be able to get up to 100% by tomorrow.
penn station nyc to penn station newark is back online. train service is starting to flow.
I’m in Cleveland-area. and I’VE GOT THE POWER ::starts dancing and singing::
alright vanyel!
there are miners stuck in sudbury ont. they have been told to go to the lunchrooms nearest them and wait for further instructions.
it is amazing the amount of places people can get stuck in. i didn’t even think of mines or even amusement parks.
I couldn’t decide between a “Youve got the power” music reference, or a Star Trek “I’ve got all the power ye could want, cap’n!”
Second to what jackelope said about START EATING. Unless you’ve made extraordinary preparations like we do every time a tropical storm comes through (putting several extra milk jugs of ice in our big deep freeze to keep it cold – it held out for four days earlier this summer without anything unfreezing as a result), you might as well eat and enjoy it!
Good luck to everyone getting home. I bet there are going to be a lot of people with really sort feet for a while, though!
Hmm… so THAT’s where all my East Coast peeps have been today and perhaps late yesterday too. Ah well… good luck and better thoughts to 'em, I say.
F_X
I live about fifteen blocks from the Hudson River in Jersey City, and work in Rockland County (about an hour drive, normally). After the power went out at work, I drove home on local roads, took me about twice as long as normal. There were occasional spots with some power, and a few traffic lights on (could some of them been on generators?) along the route. Most lights were down and most gas stations were closed. Thankfully the major intersections mostly had someone directing traffic.
However, when I got home, the power was on here. In fact, it never went off! How the whole of NYC is out, and many other parts of Jersey City are, and I’m not, I have no idea… I’m not complaining, though.
As a precaution, I finished off the container of B&J’s ice cream that was in the freezer… just in case the power were to go out again. The sacrifices one must make.
Power here in Western CT went off about 4:10 pm EDT. We don’t know what time the power came back on because we (my daughter, Fotos and myself) were sitting around on the living room floor playing cards. Fotos went to look at how dark it was outside with no street lights on when he noticed that the neighbors had lights. He checked ours, and we had power (we turned everything off to protect against surges). This was about 9:50 pm EDT.
Just for the record, I was at the doctor’s office with my daughter at the time the power failed (her annual checkup) and Fotos was at work (Banquet for 100 - by candlelight - luckily ended early)
I’m still annoyed at the people who thought a dead traffic light was the same as a green one. Full and complete STOP, people.
It was kind of scary for a while there. At work, we lost power and network, but not phones. About five minutes in, while we were just waiting for it to go back on, I got a call from one of our other offices, which is outside Binghamton, NY. They wanted to let us know their power was out, so they wouldn’t be able to do any more testing that day. Having the power out in two places 4 hours apart, and not being able to hear the news or check the net, just gave me a sense of dread inside. Who knows what disaster could have struck, that we all were just ignorant of. Luckily it all worked out, but…
Hope everyone is okay.
[This board has never been so fast]
I’m back after having been without power and phones for 10 hours. It was actually kind of fun. Our Nextel cell phones have radios, so I could contact everyone from work and make sure they were okay. One of my neighbors had set up their barbecue, and people were cooking food they didn’t want to go bad. We had a good impromptu block party. Someone else stopped at a gas oven pizza place and bought two big pizzas back. Then we ate all the ice cream in everyone’s freezer so it wouldn’t melt.
Later the neighborhood children and I went to the park and rode bikes. It was pitch black and you couldn’t see your hand in front of your face. Power came on at 2:00 a.m. I’m very tired.
Poor Eve : Worm AND major blackout? Back to back? She’ll never recover!