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CNN Newsnight Aaron Brown

Power Back in Most of New York

Aired August 15, 2003 - 22:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.


ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Anderson Cooper live in Times Square. As Larry mentioned, this is a special two-hour edition of NEWSNIGHT. The lights are on. The power is back here in Times Square as it is throughout most, much of New York I should say.
We have correspondents all throughout the field, both in New York and around the country. Richard Roth is standing by for us in New York, Richard a headline.

RICHARD ROTH, CNN SR. U.N. CORRESPONDENT: This is the night the lights went on in New York City. The utility company says 100 percent electrical returned but some homes and businesses are still out. Looking for a subway, wait until tomorrow -- Anderson.

COOPER: All right, we'll be back to you shortly.

Now, to John Zarrella in Cleveland where the problem is of a different sort -- John.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, things are beginning to get back to normal here. The lights are on. The Cleveland Browns are playing football behind us. The big issue is water where at least until Sunday people are going to have to boil it as a precaution -- Anderson.

COOPER: Water, water, everywhere, not a drop to drink tonight, John Zarrella thanks very much.

Now, in Michigan there are plenty of headaches as well. We're going to find Lisa Leiter there as well. We'll speak to her shortly.

Also, finally in Washington, D.C., Kelli Arena is on the hunt for answers as to what caused it all, Kelli a headline.

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, investigators have come up with some detailed information on what happened but they still do not know why. I'll tell you what they do know in just a bit.

COOPER: All right, look forward to that. Kelli and everyone else we'll get back to all of you very shortly.

There is a lot to cover tonight but first this is one of those stories that is almost impossible to get one's arms around. Fifty million people, 9,300 square miles, every city, state, and province able to tick off the statistics of rescues, 911 calls, et cetera. While there are plenty of numbers what most people are looking for tonight are answers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): The day after the big blackout everyone it seems had at least some of the answers people were looking for.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This particular incident has -- it has made it abundantly clear to the American people that we've got an antiquated system and now we got to figure out what went wrong and how to address it and I'm confident we will.

COOPER: And everyone else from state governors to city mayors to the millions and millions stuck without power could barely believe it had even happened in the first place.

GOV. GEORGE PATAKI, NEW YORK: First of all, where did this happen and how did it happen and given the safeguards that were supposed to have been put in place after the last systemic failures back in the '60s and '70s, why did the system that was supposed to have the security and the safeguards fail?

COOPER: The biggest city affected, New York, was inching back to full power but even by late afternoon commuter trains were only just beginning to run. Subways were not operating and officials were just starting to add up the cost.

MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, NEW YORK CITY: Just to put some numbers to the story, last night 10,000 police officers patrolled our streets directing traffic, preventing crime, and helping those in need. They responded to 80,000 911 calls, more than double the average.

Three thousand firefighters put out 60 serious fires up from an average of ten a night but almost all of the 60 appear accidental. Many of them of those we've investigated seem to be from candles.

COOPER: There were only a handful of fatalities across the affected states and Canadian provinces. Some cities were struggling more than others to recover. In Cleveland, the water system was shut down. It won't be fully operational, officials said, until the weekend.

Things were bad in Detroit as well and in Canada, where one report said the blackout began, officials were quick to point out they were working overtime to get facilities back to normal.

PREMIER ERNIE EVES, ONTARIO PROVINCE: I want everyone to know that there are literally tens of thousands of people working very hard to restore power, to keep people safe and secure, and to make sure that you can all get back to work in your normal routines as soon as possible.

COOPER: The airlines took another hit. Nearly 400 flights were canceled into or out of New York, Detroit, Cleveland, Toronto, and Ottawa. Gasoline availability was tight in some places. Lines quickly formed when there was power to run the pumps. Wall Street, though, operated on schedule and some even said the upgrading of business systems after 9/11 helped keep potential damage to a minimum.

An organization most people had never heard of before yesterday began to be mentioned, the North American Electricity Reliability Council had some kind of overall responsibility for the power grid that failed so miserably and its officials say they were as mystified as anyone else as to the cause an explanation not good enough for most caught in the line of fire.

PATAKI: Whether it's the North American Electric Reliability Council, FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, we have to have answers to this. It's 2003. We are an energy dependent society, particularly in urban areas like New York City and we just have to make sure that whatever safeguards are taken to make sure that the system doesn't have this type of failure again.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, we should point out that the latest information we have is that all power has been restored here in New York, also to surrounding Westchester County.

Certainly before you can prevent another blackout such as the monumental proportions of the one that just happened you have to figure out just what went wrong in the first place. All the pointing of fingers in the last day hasn't done much, if anything, to unravel the mystery.

CNN's Kelli Arena has been looking at the cause.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA (voice-over): Experts have stopped speculating. They say they simply won't know what caused the blackout for days but people in the blackout states want answers now.

PATAKI: And why did this happen and why did the safeguards that were supposed to have been put in place after the '65 blackout and after the '75 blackouts not work?

ARENA: The experts investigating the problem also don't know why the outages stopped but they do know when and where they started.

MICHAEL GENT, ELECTRIC RELIABILITY COUNCIL: If we're right, it looks like this all started at about 3:06 Eastern Daylight Time, what we're calling 14:06, so this started with a loss of a 345,000 volt line in the Cleveland area.

ARENA: That's part of the so-called Lake Erie power loop that experts say has been a long time problem. Starting in Niagara Falls, near Buffalo, power in the loop flows clockwise down into New York, around to Cleveland, Detroit, into Canada and then back into the U.S.

Officials say power was flowing west to east along the line where there was a dramatic and intense reversal. Then the outages started. But why did a computerized system designed to contain a major problem allow power losses to spread across the northeastern U.S. and Canada? KYLE MCSLARROW, DEPUTY ENERGY SECRETARY: It's very technical, very complex, so it's one of the reasons why we shouldn't be leaping to conclusions. I mean we need to figure it out.

ARENA: The Department of Energy initially is going to have to rely on industry to find the cause because private companies control most of the nation's power lines. Industry officials are concerned a company may have broken what are now only voluntary rules on transferring power in a system already running close to the edge.

GENT: I'm very disappointed that we've had this outage. This is designed so that we don't have this outage. It's not supposed to happen but it did.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA: Now, the cascading did eventually stop in Erie, Pennsylvania. The system at that point kicked in and acted the way that it was designed to. Obviously, many questions remain. While the industry investigation continues the United States and Canada will set up a joint task force to look into the incident and Congress is calling for hearings -- Anderson.

COOPER: Well, it sounds like there are a lot of investigations that are going to be going on all at once. Any sense of a timetable for any answers?

ARENA: Well, we're expecting a little bit more detail over the weekend in terms of a time, you know, a time frame for exactly what happened where, where the outages struck first but they don't think they'll have the why answered until next week at the earliest -- Anderson.

COOPER: All right, Kelli Arena thanks very much tonight for that report.

We have a lot to cover still tonight on NEWSNIGHT.

Now since Thomas Edison first made the light bulb, the use of electric power has grown exponentially. There are a lot of questions tonight exactly how our energy system is set up.

One of the states, and you know what was interesting about a lot of the coverage of this story was that it really focused on New York, often even Washington. Really one of the states most affected was Ohio where the loss of power caused, among other major problems, problems with water, a water shortage.

I'm joined now by Jennette Bradley, the lieutenant governor of Ohio. Lieutenant Governor thank you very much for being with us. How are things right now in your state?

JENNETTE BRADLEY, OHIO LT. GOVERNOR: Well, I'm very pleased to say that we've made significant progress. At approximately ten o'clock this morning all the critical systems were on and operating in Cleveland.

I just spoke about 15 minutes ago with Mayor Campbell and the water is restored to all the residents. There are only about 4,000 citizens without power and that should be restored before morning, so we're very happy.

We still have our National Guard units there for water distribution but we've made significant progress from 1.3 million individuals to down to 4,000, we're very happy with where we are.

COOPER: And it was the National Guard who came in to help distribute the water. At what point, I mean did you realize there was going to be a problem with the water?

BRADLEY: Oh, very early in the event yesterday when I was talking with Mayor Campbell she did tell me that she was concerned about two things and one was the two hour water supply and at that time we started making plans with her to get the water restored as well as to back up with the National Guard. So, they are still there. They have not been released and they probably will not be until later on tomorrow.

COOPER: What do you think needs to change? I mean let's talk specifically about your state. I mean you mentioned this two hour water supply is that enough of a supply? Is it normally, you know, just a two hour supply? As you look back on this, as you try to move forward what do you want to see differently done?

BRADLEY: Well, actually I'm very pleased with the way the emergency management agencies worked together on the local level as well as with the state level. With regard to what needs to be done about the water that's a question that should be addressed to Mayor Campbell because I don't have all the specifics as to why they were in that particular situation.

We focused more on what state services and resources we could provide and we did that with additional highway patrol to relieve the law enforcement officers in Cuyahoga County as well as deploying our National Guard.

So, we think that our system worked very well. Obviously, we are concerned about the unanswered questions and we will be working with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to see how well we did, where we could improve, and what could happen on the national level that could be done to improve the situation.

COOPER: Lieutenant Governor, I'm curious to know what it's like, I mean when you first found out about this, when the power first went out wherever you were, how much information do you actually have? I mean I was fascinated at CNN, for instance. I mean our computers went down. Suddenly, there is this dearth of information and it's very difficult to find out actually what is going on. Is it the same way in state government?

BRADLEY: No. As I said, I'm very pleased because when we heard the news about the outage in our Cleveland area we activated our emergency operations center. They were immediately in contact with all the local county emergency management agencies.

We then started making daily periodic -- I mean, sorry, hourly periodic contact. I contacted all of the mayors personally who had been affected so I had updates from them. I think our system worked very well. We utilized our fire chiefs' mutual aid agreement this time for the first time ever. It had been a plan but it worked perfectly. At five o'clock this morning we had 36 tankers ready for fighting fires in Cuyahoga County.

So I am very pleased with the citizens of Ohio, how they responded with calmness and I'm very pleased with the EMA agencies in all the counties and with the state operation.

COOPER: All right, Jennette Bradley, Lieutenant Governor of Ohio, thank you very much for being with us tonight.

BRADLEY: Thank you.

COOPER: A lot ahead tonight. We're going to have more on the great blackout of 2003 when we return. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Just some of the images from around the country in the last 24 hours or so.

Safe to say that all of us, even those of you who weren't stuck in a subway train or throwing out the food in your refrigerator today already know more than you ever thought you would about power grids but here's some more from Kathleen Koch.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fifty years ago, plants generated power for a local area. Today they pump electricity clear across the country over lines that weren't built to handle that much power.

LLEWELLYN KING, PUBLISHER, "ENERGY DAILY": Suddenly, these (unintelligible) became very, very, very stressed and they remain stressed but they're inadequate for the amount of power that is being moved and they don't have any new technology in them.

KOCH: Deregulation opened the flood gates and power companies now facing increased competition are loathe to spend on infrastructure improvements like updated transmission lines. Rising natural gas prices have even made power plants using that clean fuel risky investments.

JAMES LEWIS, ENERGY POLICY ANALYST: You find yourself in a position where it's harder and harder to make money and, in fact, you aren't even sure about the supply of natural gas.

KOCH: Finally, new power lines and plants are tough to build. No one wants them in their backyard and there are no guarantees the power they generate will stay local. (on camera): Congress and the power industry say nothing will change unless the federal government steps in.

THOMAS KUHN, EDISON ELECTRIC INSTITUTE: Well, I think you need to have incentives for investment in the transmission system and in generating plants.

REP. EDWARD MARKEY (D), ENERGY AND COMMERCE: The free market does not work for electricity transmission reliability. Only the government can mandate a national standard which protects the strongest, the most anticipatory states and systems from the weakest laggards that refuse to make the investment.

KOCH (voice-over): President Bush is backing power investment and research in his energy plan but officials insist...

KEVIN MCSLARROW, DEP. SECRETARY OF ENERGY: There's a lot more that can be done but the private sector principally has to be able to step up to the plate, know they're going to get a return on their investment.

KOCH: So, blackout concerns remain. The latest assessment from the North American Electric Reliability Council prophetically said potential trouble spots this summer were southwestern Connecticut, New York City and Long Island, and that it had concerns about Ontario and Michigan. It's also worried about Wisconsin, California, and states in the western and southeastern grids, all vulnerabilities in a power grid showing its age.

Kathleen Koch, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, it certainly has been showing its age.

To sort all of this power grid stuff out, I'm joined now by Patrick DiJusto. He writes for "Wired" magazine. Thanks for being with us.

PATRICK DIJUSTO, "WIRED" MAGAZINE: Thank you for having me.

COOPER: A surprise to you, I mean that this happened?

DIJUSTO: Not really. It wasn't supposed to happen but as long as you link different grids together, as long as you make such a big network something like this is bound to happen.

COOPER: I mean, you know, I said before that a lot of people probably didn't even know about power grids. I didn't really know much about them before all this happened. You described it almost as a system like the Internet.

DIJUSTO: The international power grid system is very much like the Internet. Each individual country or state started out with its own power grid. They realized that there was some economic advantage to linking to their neighbor. One or two countries or states link to each other, then more link in and more link in very much the way the Internet was built.

COOPER: Linking between because when power needs are low in one state they can sell their power to another state?

DIJUSTO: They just might very well be able to swap power wherever it's needed or whenever it's needed.

COOPER: But, I mean I guess there's two ways to look at the connectivity, one that it's good, the other that it's bad. I mean the bad certainly we've seen. When it goes in one place it goes, it cascades.

DIJUSTO: It can cascade. The good thing, though, is that for the price of a simple power line you don't have to build a brand new power generator system in your area. You can just use someone else's power. So, as long as there are safeguards connecting up these grids makes a lot of sense.

COOPER: Is that part of the reason you think that some of these systems are not modernized that they can remain old because they can kind of jerry rig a system so that they can get power from another place when they need it?

DIJUSTO: That does happen. You don't necessarily have to tear down what you've got and build up a new thing as long as you can make connections elsewhere and get what you need from somewhere else. That's why the grids are actually connecting not just states but countries and even continents now.

COOPER: And for those who think this grid thing is an ominous thing, I mean it is only going to increase.

DIJUSTO: Oh, very definitely. There's -- it makes more economic sense to just connect everybody rather than to build a lot of power plants that you'll only use half the time.

COOPER: So, how connected, I mean, are we going to be?

DIJUSTO: South America, all the countries in South America are almost totally connected. North America is almost totally connected. Eventually those two continents will connect to each other through Central America. Europe is connected. Africa is getting connected so it will be global.

COOPER: So, there really could be a system where there are two major grids, North America -- Canada, North America, Central America, South America, and Europe/Africa/Asia?

DIJUSTO: Exactly. We're heading that way.

COOPER: And is that a good thing? I mean part of me thinks that sounds ominous.

DIJUSTO: It can be ominous but, again, the deal is either do it that way or build lots of power plants that you'll only use during the summer or lots of power plants that you'll only use during the daytime.

As long as you can share power, especially between winter and summer in North and South America, or between day and nighttime in Europe and Asia, you can just smooth out what you have and use it fairly everywhere.

COOPER: And there is a power already, a power line being gone from South Africa all the way up through Europe?

DIJUSTO: All the way up to the tip of North Africa and then there are already power lines going from North Africa into Europe, yes.

COOPER: Would it ever be possible that there would be, I mean the grid would be one grid connecting Europe, Asia, United States?

DIJUSTO: In theory if someone really wanted to build a 50 mile cable between Siberia and Alaska it probably could be done. That would be the weakest link.

COOPER: All right, interesting, Patrick DiJusto appreciate you joining us from "Wired" magazine.

DIJUSTO: Thank you for having me.

COOPER: Thank you very much.

Well, as we continue this evening from Times Square and we are live in Times Square for a special two hour edition of NEWSNIGHT, we're going to go back to Ohio, as well as Michigan, to check out the situation in those states, see where they are right now at this hour.

We'll also hear from a roundtable of mayors about how they dealt with the blackout in their city. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Welcome back to our special two hour edition of NEWSNIGHT live from New York's Times Square where the lights are back on here as they are throughout the rest of New York and Westchester.

A couple of numbers for you right now, 1.4 million, that's the number of people in northern Ohio who were without power at the peak of the outage. The other number is four, a lot smaller number but a lot more important because four stands for the four pumping stations in Cleveland that went down when they lost power and residents there are still feeling the effect.

Here again CNN's John Zarrella.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZARRELLA (voice-over): Three-year-old Owen Mani kept cool playing outside on his skateboard. His mom, Bethany, and friends hung out on the upstairs porch. It was too hot to be indoors. BETHANY MANI, LAKEWOOD RESIDENT: I've definitely done something to adjust to it. It's like going back to the old times having to readjust your life.

ZARRELLA: Late Friday afternoon the Lakewood suburb of Cleveland was still without power in some spots but ten minutes down the road the Carriage Car Wash was open for business. The power was on and the water was running but business was slow.

DAVE MCGLYNN, CAR WASH OWNER: It cost us about 50 percent of our business today just because people aren't sure whether we have water.

ZARRELLA: Water is the greatest concern in Cleveland. Although it's back on, people are being told to boil it as a precaution against contamination. For Holiday Inn General Manager Todd Middleton that meant buying 40 bags of ice. The restaurant has an ice maker and power but they can't use it because it draws from city water.

TODD MIDDLETON, HOTEL GENERAL MANAGER: We have a lot of people here that came in last night stranded and we just got to accommodate them the best that we can.

ZARRELLA: They're boiling water too for everything from instant coffee to ice tea and while people can't drink from the tap they could still water their lawns.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZARRELLA: Although the pumping stations are back on and the water is flowing the people are being asked to boil it at least until Sunday at noon. That's just in case there was any contamination in the lines. The water authority wants to make sure that they get that signed off on that the water is safe to drink from the tap.

The National Guard has brought in a couple of dozen water buffaloes, water tankers. They're being positioned at hospitals just to make it a little easier on the hospitals to get potable water out to the people in the hospitals.

And, as one woman put it to me today, Anderson, she said, you know, when things like this happen you finally get to appreciate the things that we often take for granted -- Anderson.

COOPER: That is certainly true, John. I think an experience anyone has had, a lot of people have had at least, myself included, in the last 30 hours or so. John Zarrella thanks very much from Cleveland.

We are joined right now by New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly who is joining us live here in Times Square. Commissioner Kelly thanks very much for being with us.

RAYMOND KELLY, NYC POLICE COMMISSIONER: Good to be with you.

COOPER: How's the city doing? KELLY: We're doing well. Things are quiet. It's kind of a normal night, summer night here in Times Square. Things are quiet in the rest of the city. Of course, power is back. We're very happy about that, about 29 hours and things are relatively speaking back to normal.

COOPER: I was talking to the commissioner of the fire department, Nicholas Capetta (ph) and he was saying when he first heard about it, first experienced it, he thought instantly back to 9/11. What went through your mind when you first heard or how did you first hear about it?

KELLY: I was riding in my car. We saw that street lights were out. There were no lights in the building. We weren't able to transmit on our radio so obviously something was amiss. We got back to police headquarters and we found out, of course, that there was a total blackout. So, yes, our first reaction was certainly post 9/11 something of a terrorist nature may have happened.

COOPER: Obviously the city has learned a lot since 9/11. How was the reaction to this event informed by what happened on 9/11?

KELLY: Well, we've done a lot since 9/11. We drill all the time. We have a lot more mobility, we're a lot more flexible to move officers around. We have groups of heavily armed officers that you may see throughout the city, and we move them on unannounced basis.

So I think our mindset is such that we're much more able to react to any event these days.

COOPER: I'm curious to know what it's like, when you're riding in that-- in your vehicle, or in the-- you know, you get to your office, in those early moments, minutes, hours, how good is the flow of information? I mean, I was surprised that CNN, I mean, our computers were down. It's very hard as a reporter to get the proper information.

Now, you talk to generals in war, and those early reports that are coming in are often inaccurate. How tough is it to get your hands around the problem?

KELLY: It's very difficult, it's confusing. And you've heard the expression "the fog of war." Well, the fog of any major event, you simply don't know what's happened. The information, as you say, is confusing, it's contradictory. So that's the most crucial time in trying to get a sense of what's happened.

But again, we drill a lot now, so there are certain things that we're going to do irrespective of what-- of what happened. We're going to cover our sensitive locations, we're going to deploy people to key spots throughout the city.

COOPER: And were you pleased with the response of your police department?

KELLY: Yes, absolutely. The men and women of the department just did a terrific job. And we had some--

COOPER: How many officers did you have, I mean, deployed out, you know, at (UNINTELLIGIBLE)--

KELLY: Well, we had almost 10,000 officers. And again, we're a big organization. We have 52,000 employees, both uniformed and civilian. But, you know, they did exactly what we wanted them to do. There's some minor glitches that you're going to find in any major event, but by and large, it was just terrific.

We had minor looting incidents throughout the city. We made arrests and made arrests quickly. Officers were in the right location at the right time. It just worked out for us.

COOPER: Well, what is it that's changed? I mean, the last, you know, in 1977, there was, you know, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a lot more instances of looting. There were problems in 1965. What has changed? I mean, has something changed in the city? Is it in the policing that has changed?

KELLY: Well, as far as the policing is concerned, the department is much bigger than it was in 1977. Again, we do an awful lot of drilling, as I say, post 9/11. We have mobility, we have vans and vehicles that enable us to move a fairly large number of officers quickly.

And again, the mindset has changed. We want to be able to move. In 1977, I was a member of the department then. It just wasn't the type of thing that we thought about very much.

COOPER: You were, you were here in blackout in '77?

KELLY: I was not in the city--

COOPER: Oh, OK, (UNINTELLIGIBLE)--

KELLY: --(UNINTELLIGIBLE) happened to be on vacation.

COOPER: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)--

KELLY: But I was in the department--

COOPER: --(UNINTELLIGIBLE)--

KELLY: --at the time.

COOPER: --(UNINTELLIGIBLE)--

KELLY: That's right, (UNINTELLIGIBLE), perfect timing.

COOPER: All right. Well, I appreciate all your efforts, and I appreciate you coming in to speak to us tonight.

KELLY: Great, good to be with you.

COOPER: (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Thank you very much. (UNINTELLIGIBLE), very busy man these last 30 hours or so.

Well, one thing you notice in a time like this is that electricity is a very important commodity, it is also very democratic. The folks in the fancy penthouses on Park Avenue were just as much in the dark as the people in the walkups in Hell's Kitchen.

Yet there is a lot of randomness as well. You could stand on the river's edge here in Manhattan and see plenty of lights shining just across the river in New Jersey. They seemed so very far away.

Our next story is about randomness, of two towns in Michigan, and the cards dealt each of them by power or the lack of it.

Here's Lisa Leiter.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LEITER (voice-over): Chelsea, Michigan, is usually known for its historic clock tower and the Jiffy Mix plant. But on Friday, it was known as one of the only places where Detroit could find gas.

Cars lined up bumper-to-bumper at gas stations on Main Street in this town unaffected by the blackout.

JOHN MCKENZIE, GAS STATION MANAGER: People have been calling from all over southeast Michigan asking us still if we're open and have fuel. So they're coming.

LEITER: Those who came waited up to 40 minutes for gas, whether to fill their cars or their cans.

TODD LANDS, SALINE RESIDENT: The weekend's coming, so didn't know when power would be back on, so we might as well get gas now.

LEITER: Todd Lands lives in Saline, 25 miles down the road, where the lights went out at 4:00 Thursday afternoon. Businesses in Saline were forced to stay closed, except for a few grocery stores with their own generators. At this dimly lit store, a week's worth of bottled water sold in a day.

RICK LACK, MANAGER, BUSCH'S: I've never seen anything like this. I mean, big snowstorms come through every once in a while. But when you're without power for this long a time period, yes. And as hot as it's been too. So it's been nothing like I've seen.

LEITER: While the fear factor drove many to the stores, others were just restocking their pantries.

RUTH ANN ROHN, SALINE RESIDENT: I had to throw out a few things, yes, eggs, and a couple things I wasn't sure of, but better to be safe than sick.

LEITER: Ruth Ann Rohn arrived home from the store, and discovered she had more than just dinner.

ROHN: Power is back on. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What are you thinking?

ROHN: Wow, wonderful.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEITER: Well, Anderson, we left Saline a short while ago, where all 8,000 residents there had their power restored.

And talk about randomness, on the drive northeast of here to where we're standing now in Utica, Michigan, there were periods of the highway where there were no lights at all, on the road or on the side, that with the homes there, or in the big office buildings to the side either. And then you'd go a few miles down the road, and there would be lights.

So we definitely experienced that here in Michigan.

And Detroit officials are reporting tonight that in the area 1.2 million customers have had their power restored, but that still leaves 900,000 customers without power tonight. And officials are telling those who do have power to only use what they need, so that everyone can get power sooner.

And Anderson, today, in traveling around to these towns, we really saw a sense of community. And though every town had its own story, the thread was that everyone was really patient, kind, and friendly, and really good-humored about all this.

Back to you.

COOPER: Well, that is certainly good to hear. And it is, it's so difficult, as soon as your power does go back on, not to immediately run to that air conditioner and turn it up full blast. Obviously, a lot of authorities are warning people and asking people not to do that, to try to conserve the power so that there is not some sort of secondary blackout.

Lisa Leiter reporting. Thank you very much, Lisa, appreciate it.

As we continue tonight live from Times Square, the crossroads of the world, we're going to meet some mayors from around the country and hear the stories of how they are coping and their cities are coping. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Welcome back. A special two-hour edition of NEWSNIGHT, live from New York City's Times Square, where the lights are back on, as they are throughout the rest of this city and many of the other states throughout the nation.

No doubt that since September 11, every mayor in North America has worried a lot about disasters of one sort or another. We're not sure that this is exactly what was on their radar screen. So we've gathered a few mayors to find out how their cities responded. Joining us from Rochester, New York, is Mayor William Johnson. On the telephone from Ottawa, Canada, is Mayor Bob Chiarelli, and Mayor Donald Plusquellic also joins us tonight from Akron, Ohio.

Appreciate all of you joining us.

Mayor Plusquellic, let me start off with you in Akron. How did your city do? How are you doing right now?

MAYOR DONALD PLUSQUELLIC, AKRON, OHIO: Well, I think we reacted about the same as every other medium-sized city. We responded, opening up our emergency management center, because no one really could tell us how long this was going to last. We started to make certain that hospitals and our public utilities, our water, for instance, had backup service. Our safety forces had backup-- through generators, backup energy.

And so then we started to prepare for the worst, feeling that if this went through today, that we would have to respond to people who were on respirators and all the typical things that our emergency management agency here in the county has been established to do in emergency situations.

So we did many of the things, I think, that probably most cities did, preparing for this under other conditions, probably terrorism is the thing that most people think of, but also natural disasters. And the plan worked pretty well. The clear question for everyone was, how long was this going to last? And, of course, no one could answer that for us.

COOPER: Yes, that was the question everyone wanted to know as well here, as well. Mayor Johnson in Rochester, Rochester, you know, third-largest city in New York State. How good was the flow of information to you? When you at first experienced the blackout, how quickly did it take, or how long did it take, to try to figure out what was going on?

MAYOR WILLIAM JOHNSON, ROCHESTER, NEW YORK: Well, ironically, I had just left my office and headed out to the PGA tournament here. We have the major golf tournament being played. And I had promised my grandson I'd take him out. And as soon as I arrived on the grounds, I heard. My staff began to call and say that we were experiencing this major blackout, and there was no certain information whether or not it could be terrorists.

But pretty soon, information began flowing in. And I would say that many of us relied on CNN, because all of our major stations were off the air.

So-- but we moved rather quickly. The county executive declared a county-wide emergency, and all of our emergency systems went immediately into operation. And so things went rather well throughout the evening.

COOPER: We're also joined on the telephone by Mayor Bob Chiarelli of Ottawa, Canada. Mayor Chiarelli, I understand that Quebec, your next-door neighbor, had-- did not have any power outages. Are they doing something that, that, that your district is not? What, what lesson you do take from, from, from the, the difference in, in experience?

MAYOR BOB CHIARELLI, OTTAWA, CANADA: Well, eastern Canada and the eastern states share an industrial complex. And that's the power grid. We're really joined at the hip. And Quebec is not part of that grid. Quebec has been very independent in its generation and transmission of power.

In fact, the province of Quebec supplies a very large portion of the power, the electricity, that goes into that eastern Canada, eastern states grid. And so they've been fairly isolated from this problem.

So we've had the good fortune of having across the river, which separates two provinces and two twin cities here, some resources which we could access throughout this emergency. But the city of Ottawa is very well honed and well practiced in this type of emergency.

We survived the ice storm of the century, when our power went down for well over a week in the dead of winter. In the 9/11 crisis, the city of Ottawa is Canada's capital. We have a large diplomatic community. We have the U.S. embassy, for example, to protect. U.S. installations were under very severe stress, from a security point of view.

We've had to manage the emergency measures of G-8 demonstrations, because after 9/11 we took a couple of international conferences here.

So we get our team together very quickly, as soon as something occurs. And as quickly as possible, we call a media briefing, and we start communicating twice a day with all of our major emergency measures people at the table, getting a briefing and being available for media questions.

We have tremendous leadership in the community from our population. And together, we get through it. We get through it well.

COOPER: I'm interested to know the response, let's start with Mayor, Mayor Plusquellic in, in Akron. Obviously, so many people, I'm sure, have come up to you and said, you know, Who is to blame? What, what, what went wrong? As you look at this problem, who, who do you think is to blame? What needs to change?

PLUSQUELLIC: Well, I think several presidents have talked about the maybe archaic, certainly outdated system, the grid system, in trying to make efforts on a federal level here, and certainly, obviously, we know now that it should be in cooperation with our neighbors to the north in Canada.

But I think clearly the federal officials need to take this seriously. I would suggest that it's the same as a lot of other infrastructure problems in the United States that we can't overlook.

Everybody wants to find the culprit whenever something happens. But many of these problems have existed over the years. And I'm just going on what past presidents and the present President Bush has said about having, I think his reference was, I think Bill Richardson, actually the former energy secretary, said something about, you know, we have all this high-tech technology, and we have a third world grid system.

And so I think the federal government really needs to address that and figure out. We've deregulated on a national level many of these industries, a lot of things that have been taken away from any state or local control.

And so we really have to depend on our federal officials to look at this seriously, and say, you know, while New York City experienced much of the terrible problems with the subway system, we can't really say that this was a terrible situation for us. It was a concern.

But I think the possibility of this going out and lasting for days, in the middle of a hot summer, and having the problems with people dying of heat stroke and people needing the respirators, all those things, our hospitals running out of fuel for backup, our emergency services, I think it's an important issue that really our federal officials really need to be serious about and start to address.

COOPER: Mayor Johnson of Rochester, do you think change really will occur? I mean, you know, in '65, big blackout in New York, everyone said things need to change. In '77, is the same thing. This wasn't supposed to happen after '70-- what happened in '77. Do you really think anything's going to get changed?

JOHNSON: Well, we are a crisis-oriented society. But I think Don Plusquellic is absolutely right. Something has to give. In Rochester, this is the second blackout we've had this year. We had a major ice storm to take our power out. Most of the community lost power back in April. And it took many days for that to be fully restored.

We were lucky yesterday, given the time of the year and the weather wasn't too severe. But I think it does raise a real concern for many of us, whether or not, as a country, we are vulnerable. And with this archaic and obsolete system, can we afford any longer to ignore the need to update and modernize it?

COOPER: We are going to have to leave it there, gentlemen. William Johnson, Bob Chiarelli, and Donald Plusquellic, mayors all, I appreciate you joining us tonight for your perspective. Thank you very much.

JOHNSON: Thank you, thank you.

COOPER: We are going to continue in just a moment with a look at some of the other important stories making news today. There have been a lot of them. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) COOPER: Hey, welcome to our special two-hour edition of NEWSNIGHT live from New York's Times Square. It is just a few minutes before 11:00 p.m. here in New York City. The Lights are on here in Times Square, as they are elsewhere throughout New York. Life is slowly getting back to normal, although frankly, on a Friday night in Times Square, nothing is all that normal.

We're going to have more on the blackout shortly. But first, let's check in with Erica Hill in Atlanta, who has some of the day's other top stories-- Erica.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, Anderson.

There's more information now about the capture of the al Qaeda leader known as Hambali.

CNN national security correspondent David Ensor has details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He is under intense questioning now by the CIA in an undisclosed location. Officials around the world are saying Ridouan Isamudin (ph), known as Hambali, is the operational brains of the al Qaeda- linked group Jemaah Islamiyah, Asia's most-wanted man.

ALEXANDER DOWNER, AUSTRALIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: This is an enormous breakthrough not to be underestimated. Hambali is very much the Osama bin Laden of Southeast Asia.

ENSOR: Captured after a struggle in this Muslim neighborhood in Thailand, along with two of his top lieutenants, Hambali was a mastermind, say U.S. officials, of the Bali bombing that killed over 200. He's suspected of involvement in last week's bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. He was also, officials say, an organizer of the January 2000 al Qaeda meeting in Kuala Lumpur, attended by two of the 9/11 hijackers.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Hambali was one of the world's most lethal terrorists.

ENSOR: And the president himself may have been on Hambali's target list. Some Thai officials suggest Hambali was plotting an attack against the planned gathering in Thailand of presidents and prime ministers, the APEC meeting, scheduled for October.

U.S. officials say, though, they have no evidence to date to confirm that.

Not since the capture five months ago of al Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has such a senior figure been captured.

BRUCE HOFFMAN, RAND: Taking him Hambali from the scene deals a blow to al Qaeda. It weakens their ability to rely upon and call upon other terrorist groups throughout the world to do al Qaeda's bidding for them. ENSOR (on camera): President Bush is known to keep a terrorism scorecard in his desk, a list of senior al Qaeda figures still at large. He can now cross another important name off that list.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HILL: Take a look now at some of the day's other news.

Libya delivered a long-awaited letter to the U.N. Security Council today taking responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103. The airliner exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. Libya is expected to pay each victim's family $10 million in return for the eventual lifting of U.N. sanctions.

Officials in Paris say it may take 10 to 15 days to get all the victims of the heat wave there buried. The hot weather is blamed for as many as 3,000 deaths across France.

And the Texas Gulf Coast may wake up to a hurricane tomorrow. Tropical storm Erica is gaining strength as it moves toward Brownsville near the Texas border with Mexico. Sustained winds are nearly 60 miles per hour. And forecasters say the storm could reach hurricane force by the time it comes ashore early tomorrow morning.

And that's a look at some of the other stories making news.

Anderson, back to you.

COOPER: Erica, thanks very much, appreciate it.

We have a lot ahead on this continuing edition of NEWSNIGHT. When we come back, a look at some of the stories of the people who experienced the blackout will no doubt be telling their grandkids.

We are live in Times Square when we return.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: As I was walking down the streets of New York last night at the height of the blackout, about 10:00 at night, I walked by a woman who was pointing to the sky, pointing and showing her child, she said, Look, you can never see the stars in New York. And one of the good things about this blackout, you can actually see the stars.

New Yorkers may have been powerless during the blackout in a literal way, but they were powerful in a way that matters most. They got along by getting along. A spirit of cooperation that was forged in some uniquely New York events.

Here is CNN's Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST (voice-over): At times, it looked like the Big Apple's version of "Survivor," where you stumble in the dark trying to fight your way off the island.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thirty-second Street, Sixth, go over here, make a right turn, two blocks down.

GREENFIELD: Or maybe a different reality show. Who wants to get something to eat? The streets were packed, the air was hot, the phones were dead, all in a city where the people speak 100 languages, and, by reputation, not one of them has a phrase that means "Excuse me."

(on camera): Then you might think when a massive power blackout cripples the biggest city in America on one of the hottest days of the year, this ought to be a cause for alarm. But as they say, Fuggedaboudit. After all that New York's been through this last generation, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) this was more like a walk in the park.

(voice-over): New York has paralyzed itself with transit strikes, when a million New Yorkers trudged across bridges on an hours-long journey home. Strikes have shut a million children out of public schools as parents and teachers battled for political power. Sanitation strikes have helped make the very act of breathing in the city's air a memorable experience.

In the mid 1970s, the city stood at the edge of bankruptcy, confronting its own mismanagement, and a president's apparent indifference. All through the '70s and into the 1980s, the endlessly escalating crime rate made the city a place to shun, a Big Apple gone rotten to the core, where the only menace more fearsome than street crime was a sudden explosion of racial hostility.

And two years ago, as New York was reveling in its prosperity, as the crime wave was steadily receding, came the worst assault ever on any American community.

The city held.

So perhaps it's no wonder that the city's citizens took this latest assault in stride.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We'll get through it.

GREENFIELD: No wonder New Yorkers, on this morning after, were already finding new modes of transportation, and reviving themselves at some of New York's finest dining establishments.

(on camera): And as the power slowly came back to New York City, its citizens found themselves puzzling about a new, unfamiliar attribute. In addition to New York's intensity, its pressure, its size, its beauty, its ugliness, its wealth, its poverty, we now discover that the Big Apple has something else in its quiver-- civility.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're a nice New Yorker. Thank you very much.

GREENFIELD: Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York. (END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: One more New York story to tell you about. Yesterday, as I was running about 3:00 in the afternoon, drenched in sweat in my suit, running to try to get to a broadcast point, a man was running next to me. And he turned to me, we'd been running together about a block, he turned to me and said, "I'll never make fun of the Amish again."

One more New York story.

We're going to continue in just a moment with an update on the day's news and some interesting stories of coping with the darkness. Stay with us.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com







Aired August 15, 2003 - 22:00   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN ANCHOR: I'm Anderson Cooper live in Times Square. As Larry mentioned, this is a special two-hour edition of NEWSNIGHT. The lights are on. The power is back here in Times Square as it is throughout most, much of New York I should say.
We have correspondents all throughout the field, both in New York and around the country. Richard Roth is standing by for us in New York, Richard a headline.

RICHARD ROTH, CNN SR. U.N. CORRESPONDENT: This is the night the lights went on in New York City. The utility company says 100 percent electrical returned but some homes and businesses are still out. Looking for a subway, wait until tomorrow -- Anderson.

COOPER: All right, we'll be back to you shortly.

Now, to John Zarrella in Cleveland where the problem is of a different sort -- John.

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Anderson, things are beginning to get back to normal here. The lights are on. The Cleveland Browns are playing football behind us. The big issue is water where at least until Sunday people are going to have to boil it as a precaution -- Anderson.

COOPER: Water, water, everywhere, not a drop to drink tonight, John Zarrella thanks very much.

Now, in Michigan there are plenty of headaches as well. We're going to find Lisa Leiter there as well. We'll speak to her shortly.

Also, finally in Washington, D.C., Kelli Arena is on the hunt for answers as to what caused it all, Kelli a headline.

KELLI ARENA, CNN JUSTICE CORRESPONDENT: Anderson, investigators have come up with some detailed information on what happened but they still do not know why. I'll tell you what they do know in just a bit.

COOPER: All right, look forward to that. Kelli and everyone else we'll get back to all of you very shortly.

There is a lot to cover tonight but first this is one of those stories that is almost impossible to get one's arms around. Fifty million people, 9,300 square miles, every city, state, and province able to tick off the statistics of rescues, 911 calls, et cetera. While there are plenty of numbers what most people are looking for tonight are answers.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER (voice-over): The day after the big blackout everyone it seems had at least some of the answers people were looking for.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: This particular incident has -- it has made it abundantly clear to the American people that we've got an antiquated system and now we got to figure out what went wrong and how to address it and I'm confident we will.

COOPER: And everyone else from state governors to city mayors to the millions and millions stuck without power could barely believe it had even happened in the first place.

GOV. GEORGE PATAKI, NEW YORK: First of all, where did this happen and how did it happen and given the safeguards that were supposed to have been put in place after the last systemic failures back in the '60s and '70s, why did the system that was supposed to have the security and the safeguards fail?

COOPER: The biggest city affected, New York, was inching back to full power but even by late afternoon commuter trains were only just beginning to run. Subways were not operating and officials were just starting to add up the cost.

MAYOR MICHAEL BLOOMBERG, NEW YORK CITY: Just to put some numbers to the story, last night 10,000 police officers patrolled our streets directing traffic, preventing crime, and helping those in need. They responded to 80,000 911 calls, more than double the average.

Three thousand firefighters put out 60 serious fires up from an average of ten a night but almost all of the 60 appear accidental. Many of them of those we've investigated seem to be from candles.

COOPER: There were only a handful of fatalities across the affected states and Canadian provinces. Some cities were struggling more than others to recover. In Cleveland, the water system was shut down. It won't be fully operational, officials said, until the weekend.

Things were bad in Detroit as well and in Canada, where one report said the blackout began, officials were quick to point out they were working overtime to get facilities back to normal.

PREMIER ERNIE EVES, ONTARIO PROVINCE: I want everyone to know that there are literally tens of thousands of people working very hard to restore power, to keep people safe and secure, and to make sure that you can all get back to work in your normal routines as soon as possible.

COOPER: The airlines took another hit. Nearly 400 flights were canceled into or out of New York, Detroit, Cleveland, Toronto, and Ottawa. Gasoline availability was tight in some places. Lines quickly formed when there was power to run the pumps. Wall Street, though, operated on schedule and some even said the upgrading of business systems after 9/11 helped keep potential damage to a minimum.

An organization most people had never heard of before yesterday began to be mentioned, the North American Electricity Reliability Council had some kind of overall responsibility for the power grid that failed so miserably and its officials say they were as mystified as anyone else as to the cause an explanation not good enough for most caught in the line of fire.

PATAKI: Whether it's the North American Electric Reliability Council, FERC, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, we have to have answers to this. It's 2003. We are an energy dependent society, particularly in urban areas like New York City and we just have to make sure that whatever safeguards are taken to make sure that the system doesn't have this type of failure again.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, we should point out that the latest information we have is that all power has been restored here in New York, also to surrounding Westchester County.

Certainly before you can prevent another blackout such as the monumental proportions of the one that just happened you have to figure out just what went wrong in the first place. All the pointing of fingers in the last day hasn't done much, if anything, to unravel the mystery.

CNN's Kelli Arena has been looking at the cause.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA (voice-over): Experts have stopped speculating. They say they simply won't know what caused the blackout for days but people in the blackout states want answers now.

PATAKI: And why did this happen and why did the safeguards that were supposed to have been put in place after the '65 blackout and after the '75 blackouts not work?

ARENA: The experts investigating the problem also don't know why the outages stopped but they do know when and where they started.

MICHAEL GENT, ELECTRIC RELIABILITY COUNCIL: If we're right, it looks like this all started at about 3:06 Eastern Daylight Time, what we're calling 14:06, so this started with a loss of a 345,000 volt line in the Cleveland area.

ARENA: That's part of the so-called Lake Erie power loop that experts say has been a long time problem. Starting in Niagara Falls, near Buffalo, power in the loop flows clockwise down into New York, around to Cleveland, Detroit, into Canada and then back into the U.S.

Officials say power was flowing west to east along the line where there was a dramatic and intense reversal. Then the outages started. But why did a computerized system designed to contain a major problem allow power losses to spread across the northeastern U.S. and Canada? KYLE MCSLARROW, DEPUTY ENERGY SECRETARY: It's very technical, very complex, so it's one of the reasons why we shouldn't be leaping to conclusions. I mean we need to figure it out.

ARENA: The Department of Energy initially is going to have to rely on industry to find the cause because private companies control most of the nation's power lines. Industry officials are concerned a company may have broken what are now only voluntary rules on transferring power in a system already running close to the edge.

GENT: I'm very disappointed that we've had this outage. This is designed so that we don't have this outage. It's not supposed to happen but it did.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ARENA: Now, the cascading did eventually stop in Erie, Pennsylvania. The system at that point kicked in and acted the way that it was designed to. Obviously, many questions remain. While the industry investigation continues the United States and Canada will set up a joint task force to look into the incident and Congress is calling for hearings -- Anderson.

COOPER: Well, it sounds like there are a lot of investigations that are going to be going on all at once. Any sense of a timetable for any answers?

ARENA: Well, we're expecting a little bit more detail over the weekend in terms of a time, you know, a time frame for exactly what happened where, where the outages struck first but they don't think they'll have the why answered until next week at the earliest -- Anderson.

COOPER: All right, Kelli Arena thanks very much tonight for that report.

We have a lot to cover still tonight on NEWSNIGHT.

Now since Thomas Edison first made the light bulb, the use of electric power has grown exponentially. There are a lot of questions tonight exactly how our energy system is set up.

One of the states, and you know what was interesting about a lot of the coverage of this story was that it really focused on New York, often even Washington. Really one of the states most affected was Ohio where the loss of power caused, among other major problems, problems with water, a water shortage.

I'm joined now by Jennette Bradley, the lieutenant governor of Ohio. Lieutenant Governor thank you very much for being with us. How are things right now in your state?

JENNETTE BRADLEY, OHIO LT. GOVERNOR: Well, I'm very pleased to say that we've made significant progress. At approximately ten o'clock this morning all the critical systems were on and operating in Cleveland.

I just spoke about 15 minutes ago with Mayor Campbell and the water is restored to all the residents. There are only about 4,000 citizens without power and that should be restored before morning, so we're very happy.

We still have our National Guard units there for water distribution but we've made significant progress from 1.3 million individuals to down to 4,000, we're very happy with where we are.

COOPER: And it was the National Guard who came in to help distribute the water. At what point, I mean did you realize there was going to be a problem with the water?

BRADLEY: Oh, very early in the event yesterday when I was talking with Mayor Campbell she did tell me that she was concerned about two things and one was the two hour water supply and at that time we started making plans with her to get the water restored as well as to back up with the National Guard. So, they are still there. They have not been released and they probably will not be until later on tomorrow.

COOPER: What do you think needs to change? I mean let's talk specifically about your state. I mean you mentioned this two hour water supply is that enough of a supply? Is it normally, you know, just a two hour supply? As you look back on this, as you try to move forward what do you want to see differently done?

BRADLEY: Well, actually I'm very pleased with the way the emergency management agencies worked together on the local level as well as with the state level. With regard to what needs to be done about the water that's a question that should be addressed to Mayor Campbell because I don't have all the specifics as to why they were in that particular situation.

We focused more on what state services and resources we could provide and we did that with additional highway patrol to relieve the law enforcement officers in Cuyahoga County as well as deploying our National Guard.

So, we think that our system worked very well. Obviously, we are concerned about the unanswered questions and we will be working with the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to see how well we did, where we could improve, and what could happen on the national level that could be done to improve the situation.

COOPER: Lieutenant Governor, I'm curious to know what it's like, I mean when you first found out about this, when the power first went out wherever you were, how much information do you actually have? I mean I was fascinated at CNN, for instance. I mean our computers went down. Suddenly, there is this dearth of information and it's very difficult to find out actually what is going on. Is it the same way in state government?

BRADLEY: No. As I said, I'm very pleased because when we heard the news about the outage in our Cleveland area we activated our emergency operations center. They were immediately in contact with all the local county emergency management agencies.

We then started making daily periodic -- I mean, sorry, hourly periodic contact. I contacted all of the mayors personally who had been affected so I had updates from them. I think our system worked very well. We utilized our fire chiefs' mutual aid agreement this time for the first time ever. It had been a plan but it worked perfectly. At five o'clock this morning we had 36 tankers ready for fighting fires in Cuyahoga County.

So I am very pleased with the citizens of Ohio, how they responded with calmness and I'm very pleased with the EMA agencies in all the counties and with the state operation.

COOPER: All right, Jennette Bradley, Lieutenant Governor of Ohio, thank you very much for being with us tonight.

BRADLEY: Thank you.

COOPER: A lot ahead tonight. We're going to have more on the great blackout of 2003 when we return. We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Just some of the images from around the country in the last 24 hours or so.

Safe to say that all of us, even those of you who weren't stuck in a subway train or throwing out the food in your refrigerator today already know more than you ever thought you would about power grids but here's some more from Kathleen Koch.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): Fifty years ago, plants generated power for a local area. Today they pump electricity clear across the country over lines that weren't built to handle that much power.

LLEWELLYN KING, PUBLISHER, "ENERGY DAILY": Suddenly, these (unintelligible) became very, very, very stressed and they remain stressed but they're inadequate for the amount of power that is being moved and they don't have any new technology in them.

KOCH: Deregulation opened the flood gates and power companies now facing increased competition are loathe to spend on infrastructure improvements like updated transmission lines. Rising natural gas prices have even made power plants using that clean fuel risky investments.

JAMES LEWIS, ENERGY POLICY ANALYST: You find yourself in a position where it's harder and harder to make money and, in fact, you aren't even sure about the supply of natural gas.

KOCH: Finally, new power lines and plants are tough to build. No one wants them in their backyard and there are no guarantees the power they generate will stay local. (on camera): Congress and the power industry say nothing will change unless the federal government steps in.

THOMAS KUHN, EDISON ELECTRIC INSTITUTE: Well, I think you need to have incentives for investment in the transmission system and in generating plants.

REP. EDWARD MARKEY (D), ENERGY AND COMMERCE: The free market does not work for electricity transmission reliability. Only the government can mandate a national standard which protects the strongest, the most anticipatory states and systems from the weakest laggards that refuse to make the investment.

KOCH (voice-over): President Bush is backing power investment and research in his energy plan but officials insist...

KEVIN MCSLARROW, DEP. SECRETARY OF ENERGY: There's a lot more that can be done but the private sector principally has to be able to step up to the plate, know they're going to get a return on their investment.

KOCH: So, blackout concerns remain. The latest assessment from the North American Electric Reliability Council prophetically said potential trouble spots this summer were southwestern Connecticut, New York City and Long Island, and that it had concerns about Ontario and Michigan. It's also worried about Wisconsin, California, and states in the western and southeastern grids, all vulnerabilities in a power grid showing its age.

Kathleen Koch, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: Well, it certainly has been showing its age.

To sort all of this power grid stuff out, I'm joined now by Patrick DiJusto. He writes for "Wired" magazine. Thanks for being with us.

PATRICK DIJUSTO, "WIRED" MAGAZINE: Thank you for having me.

COOPER: A surprise to you, I mean that this happened?

DIJUSTO: Not really. It wasn't supposed to happen but as long as you link different grids together, as long as you make such a big network something like this is bound to happen.

COOPER: I mean, you know, I said before that a lot of people probably didn't even know about power grids. I didn't really know much about them before all this happened. You described it almost as a system like the Internet.

DIJUSTO: The international power grid system is very much like the Internet. Each individual country or state started out with its own power grid. They realized that there was some economic advantage to linking to their neighbor. One or two countries or states link to each other, then more link in and more link in very much the way the Internet was built.

COOPER: Linking between because when power needs are low in one state they can sell their power to another state?

DIJUSTO: They just might very well be able to swap power wherever it's needed or whenever it's needed.

COOPER: But, I mean I guess there's two ways to look at the connectivity, one that it's good, the other that it's bad. I mean the bad certainly we've seen. When it goes in one place it goes, it cascades.

DIJUSTO: It can cascade. The good thing, though, is that for the price of a simple power line you don't have to build a brand new power generator system in your area. You can just use someone else's power. So, as long as there are safeguards connecting up these grids makes a lot of sense.

COOPER: Is that part of the reason you think that some of these systems are not modernized that they can remain old because they can kind of jerry rig a system so that they can get power from another place when they need it?

DIJUSTO: That does happen. You don't necessarily have to tear down what you've got and build up a new thing as long as you can make connections elsewhere and get what you need from somewhere else. That's why the grids are actually connecting not just states but countries and even continents now.

COOPER: And for those who think this grid thing is an ominous thing, I mean it is only going to increase.

DIJUSTO: Oh, very definitely. There's -- it makes more economic sense to just connect everybody rather than to build a lot of power plants that you'll only use half the time.

COOPER: So, how connected, I mean, are we going to be?

DIJUSTO: South America, all the countries in South America are almost totally connected. North America is almost totally connected. Eventually those two continents will connect to each other through Central America. Europe is connected. Africa is getting connected so it will be global.

COOPER: So, there really could be a system where there are two major grids, North America -- Canada, North America, Central America, South America, and Europe/Africa/Asia?

DIJUSTO: Exactly. We're heading that way.

COOPER: And is that a good thing? I mean part of me thinks that sounds ominous.

DIJUSTO: It can be ominous but, again, the deal is either do it that way or build lots of power plants that you'll only use during the summer or lots of power plants that you'll only use during the daytime.

As long as you can share power, especially between winter and summer in North and South America, or between day and nighttime in Europe and Asia, you can just smooth out what you have and use it fairly everywhere.

COOPER: And there is a power already, a power line being gone from South Africa all the way up through Europe?

DIJUSTO: All the way up to the tip of North Africa and then there are already power lines going from North Africa into Europe, yes.

COOPER: Would it ever be possible that there would be, I mean the grid would be one grid connecting Europe, Asia, United States?

DIJUSTO: In theory if someone really wanted to build a 50 mile cable between Siberia and Alaska it probably could be done. That would be the weakest link.

COOPER: All right, interesting, Patrick DiJusto appreciate you joining us from "Wired" magazine.

DIJUSTO: Thank you for having me.

COOPER: Thank you very much.

Well, as we continue this evening from Times Square and we are live in Times Square for a special two hour edition of NEWSNIGHT, we're going to go back to Ohio, as well as Michigan, to check out the situation in those states, see where they are right now at this hour.

We'll also hear from a roundtable of mayors about how they dealt with the blackout in their city. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Welcome back to our special two hour edition of NEWSNIGHT live from New York's Times Square where the lights are back on here as they are throughout the rest of New York and Westchester.

A couple of numbers for you right now, 1.4 million, that's the number of people in northern Ohio who were without power at the peak of the outage. The other number is four, a lot smaller number but a lot more important because four stands for the four pumping stations in Cleveland that went down when they lost power and residents there are still feeling the effect.

Here again CNN's John Zarrella.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

ZARRELLA (voice-over): Three-year-old Owen Mani kept cool playing outside on his skateboard. His mom, Bethany, and friends hung out on the upstairs porch. It was too hot to be indoors. BETHANY MANI, LAKEWOOD RESIDENT: I've definitely done something to adjust to it. It's like going back to the old times having to readjust your life.

ZARRELLA: Late Friday afternoon the Lakewood suburb of Cleveland was still without power in some spots but ten minutes down the road the Carriage Car Wash was open for business. The power was on and the water was running but business was slow.

DAVE MCGLYNN, CAR WASH OWNER: It cost us about 50 percent of our business today just because people aren't sure whether we have water.

ZARRELLA: Water is the greatest concern in Cleveland. Although it's back on, people are being told to boil it as a precaution against contamination. For Holiday Inn General Manager Todd Middleton that meant buying 40 bags of ice. The restaurant has an ice maker and power but they can't use it because it draws from city water.

TODD MIDDLETON, HOTEL GENERAL MANAGER: We have a lot of people here that came in last night stranded and we just got to accommodate them the best that we can.

ZARRELLA: They're boiling water too for everything from instant coffee to ice tea and while people can't drink from the tap they could still water their lawns.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

ZARRELLA: Although the pumping stations are back on and the water is flowing the people are being asked to boil it at least until Sunday at noon. That's just in case there was any contamination in the lines. The water authority wants to make sure that they get that signed off on that the water is safe to drink from the tap.

The National Guard has brought in a couple of dozen water buffaloes, water tankers. They're being positioned at hospitals just to make it a little easier on the hospitals to get potable water out to the people in the hospitals.

And, as one woman put it to me today, Anderson, she said, you know, when things like this happen you finally get to appreciate the things that we often take for granted -- Anderson.

COOPER: That is certainly true, John. I think an experience anyone has had, a lot of people have had at least, myself included, in the last 30 hours or so. John Zarrella thanks very much from Cleveland.

We are joined right now by New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly who is joining us live here in Times Square. Commissioner Kelly thanks very much for being with us.

RAYMOND KELLY, NYC POLICE COMMISSIONER: Good to be with you.

COOPER: How's the city doing? KELLY: We're doing well. Things are quiet. It's kind of a normal night, summer night here in Times Square. Things are quiet in the rest of the city. Of course, power is back. We're very happy about that, about 29 hours and things are relatively speaking back to normal.

COOPER: I was talking to the commissioner of the fire department, Nicholas Capetta (ph) and he was saying when he first heard about it, first experienced it, he thought instantly back to 9/11. What went through your mind when you first heard or how did you first hear about it?

KELLY: I was riding in my car. We saw that street lights were out. There were no lights in the building. We weren't able to transmit on our radio so obviously something was amiss. We got back to police headquarters and we found out, of course, that there was a total blackout. So, yes, our first reaction was certainly post 9/11 something of a terrorist nature may have happened.

COOPER: Obviously the city has learned a lot since 9/11. How was the reaction to this event informed by what happened on 9/11?

KELLY: Well, we've done a lot since 9/11. We drill all the time. We have a lot more mobility, we're a lot more flexible to move officers around. We have groups of heavily armed officers that you may see throughout the city, and we move them on unannounced basis.

So I think our mindset is such that we're much more able to react to any event these days.

COOPER: I'm curious to know what it's like, when you're riding in that-- in your vehicle, or in the-- you know, you get to your office, in those early moments, minutes, hours, how good is the flow of information? I mean, I was surprised that CNN, I mean, our computers were down. It's very hard as a reporter to get the proper information.

Now, you talk to generals in war, and those early reports that are coming in are often inaccurate. How tough is it to get your hands around the problem?

KELLY: It's very difficult, it's confusing. And you've heard the expression "the fog of war." Well, the fog of any major event, you simply don't know what's happened. The information, as you say, is confusing, it's contradictory. So that's the most crucial time in trying to get a sense of what's happened.

But again, we drill a lot now, so there are certain things that we're going to do irrespective of what-- of what happened. We're going to cover our sensitive locations, we're going to deploy people to key spots throughout the city.

COOPER: And were you pleased with the response of your police department?

KELLY: Yes, absolutely. The men and women of the department just did a terrific job. And we had some--

COOPER: How many officers did you have, I mean, deployed out, you know, at (UNINTELLIGIBLE)--

KELLY: Well, we had almost 10,000 officers. And again, we're a big organization. We have 52,000 employees, both uniformed and civilian. But, you know, they did exactly what we wanted them to do. There's some minor glitches that you're going to find in any major event, but by and large, it was just terrific.

We had minor looting incidents throughout the city. We made arrests and made arrests quickly. Officers were in the right location at the right time. It just worked out for us.

COOPER: Well, what is it that's changed? I mean, the last, you know, in 1977, there was, you know, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) a lot more instances of looting. There were problems in 1965. What has changed? I mean, has something changed in the city? Is it in the policing that has changed?

KELLY: Well, as far as the policing is concerned, the department is much bigger than it was in 1977. Again, we do an awful lot of drilling, as I say, post 9/11. We have mobility, we have vans and vehicles that enable us to move a fairly large number of officers quickly.

And again, the mindset has changed. We want to be able to move. In 1977, I was a member of the department then. It just wasn't the type of thing that we thought about very much.

COOPER: You were, you were here in blackout in '77?

KELLY: I was not in the city--

COOPER: Oh, OK, (UNINTELLIGIBLE)--

KELLY: --(UNINTELLIGIBLE) happened to be on vacation.

COOPER: (UNINTELLIGIBLE)--

KELLY: But I was in the department--

COOPER: --(UNINTELLIGIBLE)--

KELLY: --at the time.

COOPER: --(UNINTELLIGIBLE)--

KELLY: That's right, (UNINTELLIGIBLE), perfect timing.

COOPER: All right. Well, I appreciate all your efforts, and I appreciate you coming in to speak to us tonight.

KELLY: Great, good to be with you.

COOPER: (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Thank you very much. (UNINTELLIGIBLE), very busy man these last 30 hours or so.

Well, one thing you notice in a time like this is that electricity is a very important commodity, it is also very democratic. The folks in the fancy penthouses on Park Avenue were just as much in the dark as the people in the walkups in Hell's Kitchen.

Yet there is a lot of randomness as well. You could stand on the river's edge here in Manhattan and see plenty of lights shining just across the river in New Jersey. They seemed so very far away.

Our next story is about randomness, of two towns in Michigan, and the cards dealt each of them by power or the lack of it.

Here's Lisa Leiter.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

LEITER (voice-over): Chelsea, Michigan, is usually known for its historic clock tower and the Jiffy Mix plant. But on Friday, it was known as one of the only places where Detroit could find gas.

Cars lined up bumper-to-bumper at gas stations on Main Street in this town unaffected by the blackout.

JOHN MCKENZIE, GAS STATION MANAGER: People have been calling from all over southeast Michigan asking us still if we're open and have fuel. So they're coming.

LEITER: Those who came waited up to 40 minutes for gas, whether to fill their cars or their cans.

TODD LANDS, SALINE RESIDENT: The weekend's coming, so didn't know when power would be back on, so we might as well get gas now.

LEITER: Todd Lands lives in Saline, 25 miles down the road, where the lights went out at 4:00 Thursday afternoon. Businesses in Saline were forced to stay closed, except for a few grocery stores with their own generators. At this dimly lit store, a week's worth of bottled water sold in a day.

RICK LACK, MANAGER, BUSCH'S: I've never seen anything like this. I mean, big snowstorms come through every once in a while. But when you're without power for this long a time period, yes. And as hot as it's been too. So it's been nothing like I've seen.

LEITER: While the fear factor drove many to the stores, others were just restocking their pantries.

RUTH ANN ROHN, SALINE RESIDENT: I had to throw out a few things, yes, eggs, and a couple things I wasn't sure of, but better to be safe than sick.

LEITER: Ruth Ann Rohn arrived home from the store, and discovered she had more than just dinner.

ROHN: Power is back on. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: What are you thinking?

ROHN: Wow, wonderful.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

LEITER: Well, Anderson, we left Saline a short while ago, where all 8,000 residents there had their power restored.

And talk about randomness, on the drive northeast of here to where we're standing now in Utica, Michigan, there were periods of the highway where there were no lights at all, on the road or on the side, that with the homes there, or in the big office buildings to the side either. And then you'd go a few miles down the road, and there would be lights.

So we definitely experienced that here in Michigan.

And Detroit officials are reporting tonight that in the area 1.2 million customers have had their power restored, but that still leaves 900,000 customers without power tonight. And officials are telling those who do have power to only use what they need, so that everyone can get power sooner.

And Anderson, today, in traveling around to these towns, we really saw a sense of community. And though every town had its own story, the thread was that everyone was really patient, kind, and friendly, and really good-humored about all this.

Back to you.

COOPER: Well, that is certainly good to hear. And it is, it's so difficult, as soon as your power does go back on, not to immediately run to that air conditioner and turn it up full blast. Obviously, a lot of authorities are warning people and asking people not to do that, to try to conserve the power so that there is not some sort of secondary blackout.

Lisa Leiter reporting. Thank you very much, Lisa, appreciate it.

As we continue tonight live from Times Square, the crossroads of the world, we're going to meet some mayors from around the country and hear the stories of how they are coping and their cities are coping. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: Welcome back. A special two-hour edition of NEWSNIGHT, live from New York City's Times Square, where the lights are back on, as they are throughout the rest of this city and many of the other states throughout the nation.

No doubt that since September 11, every mayor in North America has worried a lot about disasters of one sort or another. We're not sure that this is exactly what was on their radar screen. So we've gathered a few mayors to find out how their cities responded. Joining us from Rochester, New York, is Mayor William Johnson. On the telephone from Ottawa, Canada, is Mayor Bob Chiarelli, and Mayor Donald Plusquellic also joins us tonight from Akron, Ohio.

Appreciate all of you joining us.

Mayor Plusquellic, let me start off with you in Akron. How did your city do? How are you doing right now?

MAYOR DONALD PLUSQUELLIC, AKRON, OHIO: Well, I think we reacted about the same as every other medium-sized city. We responded, opening up our emergency management center, because no one really could tell us how long this was going to last. We started to make certain that hospitals and our public utilities, our water, for instance, had backup service. Our safety forces had backup-- through generators, backup energy.

And so then we started to prepare for the worst, feeling that if this went through today, that we would have to respond to people who were on respirators and all the typical things that our emergency management agency here in the county has been established to do in emergency situations.

So we did many of the things, I think, that probably most cities did, preparing for this under other conditions, probably terrorism is the thing that most people think of, but also natural disasters. And the plan worked pretty well. The clear question for everyone was, how long was this going to last? And, of course, no one could answer that for us.

COOPER: Yes, that was the question everyone wanted to know as well here, as well. Mayor Johnson in Rochester, Rochester, you know, third-largest city in New York State. How good was the flow of information to you? When you at first experienced the blackout, how quickly did it take, or how long did it take, to try to figure out what was going on?

MAYOR WILLIAM JOHNSON, ROCHESTER, NEW YORK: Well, ironically, I had just left my office and headed out to the PGA tournament here. We have the major golf tournament being played. And I had promised my grandson I'd take him out. And as soon as I arrived on the grounds, I heard. My staff began to call and say that we were experiencing this major blackout, and there was no certain information whether or not it could be terrorists.

But pretty soon, information began flowing in. And I would say that many of us relied on CNN, because all of our major stations were off the air.

So-- but we moved rather quickly. The county executive declared a county-wide emergency, and all of our emergency systems went immediately into operation. And so things went rather well throughout the evening.

COOPER: We're also joined on the telephone by Mayor Bob Chiarelli of Ottawa, Canada. Mayor Chiarelli, I understand that Quebec, your next-door neighbor, had-- did not have any power outages. Are they doing something that, that, that your district is not? What, what lesson you do take from, from, from the, the difference in, in experience?

MAYOR BOB CHIARELLI, OTTAWA, CANADA: Well, eastern Canada and the eastern states share an industrial complex. And that's the power grid. We're really joined at the hip. And Quebec is not part of that grid. Quebec has been very independent in its generation and transmission of power.

In fact, the province of Quebec supplies a very large portion of the power, the electricity, that goes into that eastern Canada, eastern states grid. And so they've been fairly isolated from this problem.

So we've had the good fortune of having across the river, which separates two provinces and two twin cities here, some resources which we could access throughout this emergency. But the city of Ottawa is very well honed and well practiced in this type of emergency.

We survived the ice storm of the century, when our power went down for well over a week in the dead of winter. In the 9/11 crisis, the city of Ottawa is Canada's capital. We have a large diplomatic community. We have the U.S. embassy, for example, to protect. U.S. installations were under very severe stress, from a security point of view.

We've had to manage the emergency measures of G-8 demonstrations, because after 9/11 we took a couple of international conferences here.

So we get our team together very quickly, as soon as something occurs. And as quickly as possible, we call a media briefing, and we start communicating twice a day with all of our major emergency measures people at the table, getting a briefing and being available for media questions.

We have tremendous leadership in the community from our population. And together, we get through it. We get through it well.

COOPER: I'm interested to know the response, let's start with Mayor, Mayor Plusquellic in, in Akron. Obviously, so many people, I'm sure, have come up to you and said, you know, Who is to blame? What, what, what went wrong? As you look at this problem, who, who do you think is to blame? What needs to change?

PLUSQUELLIC: Well, I think several presidents have talked about the maybe archaic, certainly outdated system, the grid system, in trying to make efforts on a federal level here, and certainly, obviously, we know now that it should be in cooperation with our neighbors to the north in Canada.

But I think clearly the federal officials need to take this seriously. I would suggest that it's the same as a lot of other infrastructure problems in the United States that we can't overlook.

Everybody wants to find the culprit whenever something happens. But many of these problems have existed over the years. And I'm just going on what past presidents and the present President Bush has said about having, I think his reference was, I think Bill Richardson, actually the former energy secretary, said something about, you know, we have all this high-tech technology, and we have a third world grid system.

And so I think the federal government really needs to address that and figure out. We've deregulated on a national level many of these industries, a lot of things that have been taken away from any state or local control.

And so we really have to depend on our federal officials to look at this seriously, and say, you know, while New York City experienced much of the terrible problems with the subway system, we can't really say that this was a terrible situation for us. It was a concern.

But I think the possibility of this going out and lasting for days, in the middle of a hot summer, and having the problems with people dying of heat stroke and people needing the respirators, all those things, our hospitals running out of fuel for backup, our emergency services, I think it's an important issue that really our federal officials really need to be serious about and start to address.

COOPER: Mayor Johnson of Rochester, do you think change really will occur? I mean, you know, in '65, big blackout in New York, everyone said things need to change. In '77, is the same thing. This wasn't supposed to happen after '70-- what happened in '77. Do you really think anything's going to get changed?

JOHNSON: Well, we are a crisis-oriented society. But I think Don Plusquellic is absolutely right. Something has to give. In Rochester, this is the second blackout we've had this year. We had a major ice storm to take our power out. Most of the community lost power back in April. And it took many days for that to be fully restored.

We were lucky yesterday, given the time of the year and the weather wasn't too severe. But I think it does raise a real concern for many of us, whether or not, as a country, we are vulnerable. And with this archaic and obsolete system, can we afford any longer to ignore the need to update and modernize it?

COOPER: We are going to have to leave it there, gentlemen. William Johnson, Bob Chiarelli, and Donald Plusquellic, mayors all, I appreciate you joining us tonight for your perspective. Thank you very much.

JOHNSON: Thank you, thank you.

COOPER: We are going to continue in just a moment with a look at some of the other important stories making news today. There have been a lot of them. Stay with us.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK) COOPER: Hey, welcome to our special two-hour edition of NEWSNIGHT live from New York's Times Square. It is just a few minutes before 11:00 p.m. here in New York City. The Lights are on here in Times Square, as they are elsewhere throughout New York. Life is slowly getting back to normal, although frankly, on a Friday night in Times Square, nothing is all that normal.

We're going to have more on the blackout shortly. But first, let's check in with Erica Hill in Atlanta, who has some of the day's other top stories-- Erica.

ERICA HILL, CNN ANCHOR: Good evening, Anderson.

There's more information now about the capture of the al Qaeda leader known as Hambali.

CNN national security correspondent David Ensor has details.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

DAVID ENSOR, CNN NATIONAL SECURITY CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): He is under intense questioning now by the CIA in an undisclosed location. Officials around the world are saying Ridouan Isamudin (ph), known as Hambali, is the operational brains of the al Qaeda- linked group Jemaah Islamiyah, Asia's most-wanted man.

ALEXANDER DOWNER, AUSTRALIAN FOREIGN MINISTER: This is an enormous breakthrough not to be underestimated. Hambali is very much the Osama bin Laden of Southeast Asia.

ENSOR: Captured after a struggle in this Muslim neighborhood in Thailand, along with two of his top lieutenants, Hambali was a mastermind, say U.S. officials, of the Bali bombing that killed over 200. He's suspected of involvement in last week's bombing of the Marriott Hotel in Jakarta. He was also, officials say, an organizer of the January 2000 al Qaeda meeting in Kuala Lumpur, attended by two of the 9/11 hijackers.

GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Hambali was one of the world's most lethal terrorists.

ENSOR: And the president himself may have been on Hambali's target list. Some Thai officials suggest Hambali was plotting an attack against the planned gathering in Thailand of presidents and prime ministers, the APEC meeting, scheduled for October.

U.S. officials say, though, they have no evidence to date to confirm that.

Not since the capture five months ago of al Qaeda operations chief Khalid Sheikh Mohammed has such a senior figure been captured.

BRUCE HOFFMAN, RAND: Taking him Hambali from the scene deals a blow to al Qaeda. It weakens their ability to rely upon and call upon other terrorist groups throughout the world to do al Qaeda's bidding for them. ENSOR (on camera): President Bush is known to keep a terrorism scorecard in his desk, a list of senior al Qaeda figures still at large. He can now cross another important name off that list.

David Ensor, CNN, Washington.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

HILL: Take a look now at some of the day's other news.

Libya delivered a long-awaited letter to the U.N. Security Council today taking responsibility for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am flight 103. The airliner exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, killing 270 people. Libya is expected to pay each victim's family $10 million in return for the eventual lifting of U.N. sanctions.

Officials in Paris say it may take 10 to 15 days to get all the victims of the heat wave there buried. The hot weather is blamed for as many as 3,000 deaths across France.

And the Texas Gulf Coast may wake up to a hurricane tomorrow. Tropical storm Erica is gaining strength as it moves toward Brownsville near the Texas border with Mexico. Sustained winds are nearly 60 miles per hour. And forecasters say the storm could reach hurricane force by the time it comes ashore early tomorrow morning.

And that's a look at some of the other stories making news.

Anderson, back to you.

COOPER: Erica, thanks very much, appreciate it.

We have a lot ahead on this continuing edition of NEWSNIGHT. When we come back, a look at some of the stories of the people who experienced the blackout will no doubt be telling their grandkids.

We are live in Times Square when we return.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

COOPER: As I was walking down the streets of New York last night at the height of the blackout, about 10:00 at night, I walked by a woman who was pointing to the sky, pointing and showing her child, she said, Look, you can never see the stars in New York. And one of the good things about this blackout, you can actually see the stars.

New Yorkers may have been powerless during the blackout in a literal way, but they were powerful in a way that matters most. They got along by getting along. A spirit of cooperation that was forged in some uniquely New York events.

Here is CNN's Jeff Greenfield.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

JEFF GREENFIELD, CNN SENIOR ANALYST (voice-over): At times, it looked like the Big Apple's version of "Survivor," where you stumble in the dark trying to fight your way off the island.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Thirty-second Street, Sixth, go over here, make a right turn, two blocks down.

GREENFIELD: Or maybe a different reality show. Who wants to get something to eat? The streets were packed, the air was hot, the phones were dead, all in a city where the people speak 100 languages, and, by reputation, not one of them has a phrase that means "Excuse me."

(on camera): Then you might think when a massive power blackout cripples the biggest city in America on one of the hottest days of the year, this ought to be a cause for alarm. But as they say, Fuggedaboudit. After all that New York's been through this last generation, (UNINTELLIGIBLE) this was more like a walk in the park.

(voice-over): New York has paralyzed itself with transit strikes, when a million New Yorkers trudged across bridges on an hours-long journey home. Strikes have shut a million children out of public schools as parents and teachers battled for political power. Sanitation strikes have helped make the very act of breathing in the city's air a memorable experience.

In the mid 1970s, the city stood at the edge of bankruptcy, confronting its own mismanagement, and a president's apparent indifference. All through the '70s and into the 1980s, the endlessly escalating crime rate made the city a place to shun, a Big Apple gone rotten to the core, where the only menace more fearsome than street crime was a sudden explosion of racial hostility.

And two years ago, as New York was reveling in its prosperity, as the crime wave was steadily receding, came the worst assault ever on any American community.

The city held.

So perhaps it's no wonder that the city's citizens took this latest assault in stride.

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We'll get through it.

GREENFIELD: No wonder New Yorkers, on this morning after, were already finding new modes of transportation, and reviving themselves at some of New York's finest dining establishments.

(on camera): And as the power slowly came back to New York City, its citizens found themselves puzzling about a new, unfamiliar attribute. In addition to New York's intensity, its pressure, its size, its beauty, its ugliness, its wealth, its poverty, we now discover that the Big Apple has something else in its quiver-- civility.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: You're a nice New Yorker. Thank you very much.

GREENFIELD: Jeff Greenfield, CNN, New York. (END VIDEOTAPE)

COOPER: One more New York story to tell you about. Yesterday, as I was running about 3:00 in the afternoon, drenched in sweat in my suit, running to try to get to a broadcast point, a man was running next to me. And he turned to me, we'd been running together about a block, he turned to me and said, "I'll never make fun of the Amish again."

One more New York story.

We're going to continue in just a moment with an update on the day's news and some interesting stories of coping with the darkness. Stay with us.

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