natural failure of the grid
http://www.cnn.com/2003/US/08/14/power.outage/index.html
Major power outage hits New York, other large cities
Thursday, August 14, 2003 Posted: 4:58 PM EDT (2058 GMT)
NEW YORK (CNN) -- A major power outage simultaneously struck dozens of
cities in the United States and Canada late Thursday afternoon.
Cities affected include New York; Boston, Massachusetts; Cleveland, Ohio;
Detroit, Michigan; Toronto, Ontario; and Ottawa, Ontario. The power outage
occurred shortly after 4 p.m.
State officials said the Niagara-Mohawk power grid was overloaded. The
grid provides power for New York and stretches into Canada. The officials
said the outage is a natural occurrence and not related to terrorism.
Much of Midtown Manhattan and Wall Street were shut down. All area
airports and the Long Island Railroad were also affected. The airports
were operating on back-up power and operations were reported to be normal,
officials said.
The New York City Police Department said they were trying to determine
what happened.
Thousands of people could be seen leaving buildings and walking into the
streets. New York subways were reported stopped and people were trapped in
the cars.
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