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CNN Live Saturday
White House Connects With Canada To Investigate Power Outage
Aired August 16, 2003 - 12:01 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.
THOMAS ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Question No. 1: Why did this have to happen? Still no answer for everybody. Well, the White House, though, has announced a joint U.S.-Canadian investigation and Congress will also look into it. Meanwhile, an initial probe is focusing on a power line in Cleveland. With more on this we want to check in with CNN's Kathleen Koch, she joins us live from New York with more.
Hi, Kathleen.
KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Thomas. You know everyone here in the Big Apple, too, is looking for answers, but I tell you right now, there is just this enormous sense of relief. And, when you look around Manhattan, we have some scenes for you from this morning, it looks like any normal day in this city. People are going to Broadway shows, people are going out to lunch, people are walking the streets. So, it does certainly seem as though this calamity that befell this city and some eight other states and moved on into Canada, is more or less over.
Now, as you said Thomas, they are right now in the middle of the detective work trying to trace it back to see where this started and the first disruption the power officials have been able to pinpoint is in Cleveland, Ohio, at 3:06 p.m. on Thursday. At that point, a 345,000 volt transmission line went down. No, problems didn't start immediately, but within the next hour, about an hour later, the loop that that transmission line was a part of, that circles lake around Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, it's called the Erie Loop, it began having enormous surges around 4:10, 4:11 and the power started actually flowing back in the wrong direction. Well, that was enough to start tripping all the wires in the system, the transmission lines began going down, power utilities, generating plants. gas, coal, nuclear, electric went down -- 100 of them in eight states and on up into Canada. But, as you said earlier, the governor of New York has come out today, at least this one states does have some good news.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. GEORGE PATAKI, NEW YORK: At the present time, essentially, 100 percent power has been restored all across New York state and we're very proud of the tremendous effort that's been made by our energy professionals in government, by the utilities in the private sector, by everyone working together to make sure that every corner of this state now has power.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KOCH: Now, initially, the government, in figuring out really what happened here, is going to have to rely largely on the private sector, which does control most of the transmission lines in the United States and there's a real question now, as to whether or not there was actually a technological breakdown or whether or not this was human error, because there are certain rules that those who generate and transmit power in the U.S. are suppose to follow, however, they are purely voluntarily. There is no one who enforces them. So, there is some concern this may have been the case of someone letting a large quantity of power or not enough power to flow through at absolutely the wrong time and perhaps something like that triggered all that, but -- all the problems, but Thomas, it's going to take quite some time before they find out.
ROBERTS: Well, that's what I was going to ask you about, the joint investigation, that we talk about here, and the detective work that's taking place. There really is no timetable to say -- OK, this is what we figured out, so far. I guess, the information's pretty much going to trickle out as they get it.
KOCH: It certainly will. We're hoping, obviously, to hear more on Monday. Officials are working through the weekend trying to figure this out because the pressure is on. There -- no one wants to see this happen again, anytime soon. They're -- obviously, they want to find out what the vulnerability was, because this sort of thing was not supposed to happen. There were supposed to be breakers throughout the system that should have tripped it, should have stopped this cascading affect, so something definitely went wrong somewhere.
ROBERTS: And also, you mentioned the attitude there in New York, everybody seems to have gotten back to normal, as you say, as if this really never happened, although it was just a short while ago that everyone was having to live through this.
KOCH: Well, some people here have compared it to the, sort of, affect that a blizzard has, it disrupts your life for a day, your ability to get to work, your ability to get around the city, do what you want to do, but afterwards, you move on with life as normal. I mean obviously, people went through some pretty tough experience -- people trapped in elevators, people trapped in subways, people have to walk miles and miles to get home, but yes, they seem to have bounced back quite quickly. New Yorkers are, obviously, a very resilient bunch.
ROBERTS: That's exactly the word I was going to use, "resilient." Kathleen, thanks very much
Kathleen Koch, live for us, in New York.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Outage>
Aired August 16, 2003 - 12:01 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THOMAS ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: Question No. 1: Why did this have to happen? Still no answer for everybody. Well, the White House, though, has announced a joint U.S.-Canadian investigation and Congress will also look into it. Meanwhile, an initial probe is focusing on a power line in Cleveland. With more on this we want to check in with CNN's Kathleen Koch, she joins us live from New York with more.
Hi, Kathleen.
KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Thomas. You know everyone here in the Big Apple, too, is looking for answers, but I tell you right now, there is just this enormous sense of relief. And, when you look around Manhattan, we have some scenes for you from this morning, it looks like any normal day in this city. People are going to Broadway shows, people are going out to lunch, people are walking the streets. So, it does certainly seem as though this calamity that befell this city and some eight other states and moved on into Canada, is more or less over.
Now, as you said Thomas, they are right now in the middle of the detective work trying to trace it back to see where this started and the first disruption the power officials have been able to pinpoint is in Cleveland, Ohio, at 3:06 p.m. on Thursday. At that point, a 345,000 volt transmission line went down. No, problems didn't start immediately, but within the next hour, about an hour later, the loop that that transmission line was a part of, that circles lake around Lake Erie and Lake Ontario, it's called the Erie Loop, it began having enormous surges around 4:10, 4:11 and the power started actually flowing back in the wrong direction. Well, that was enough to start tripping all the wires in the system, the transmission lines began going down, power utilities, generating plants. gas, coal, nuclear, electric went down -- 100 of them in eight states and on up into Canada. But, as you said earlier, the governor of New York has come out today, at least this one states does have some good news.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. GEORGE PATAKI, NEW YORK: At the present time, essentially, 100 percent power has been restored all across New York state and we're very proud of the tremendous effort that's been made by our energy professionals in government, by the utilities in the private sector, by everyone working together to make sure that every corner of this state now has power.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KOCH: Now, initially, the government, in figuring out really what happened here, is going to have to rely largely on the private sector, which does control most of the transmission lines in the United States and there's a real question now, as to whether or not there was actually a technological breakdown or whether or not this was human error, because there are certain rules that those who generate and transmit power in the U.S. are suppose to follow, however, they are purely voluntarily. There is no one who enforces them. So, there is some concern this may have been the case of someone letting a large quantity of power or not enough power to flow through at absolutely the wrong time and perhaps something like that triggered all that, but -- all the problems, but Thomas, it's going to take quite some time before they find out.
ROBERTS: Well, that's what I was going to ask you about, the joint investigation, that we talk about here, and the detective work that's taking place. There really is no timetable to say -- OK, this is what we figured out, so far. I guess, the information's pretty much going to trickle out as they get it.
KOCH: It certainly will. We're hoping, obviously, to hear more on Monday. Officials are working through the weekend trying to figure this out because the pressure is on. There -- no one wants to see this happen again, anytime soon. They're -- obviously, they want to find out what the vulnerability was, because this sort of thing was not supposed to happen. There were supposed to be breakers throughout the system that should have tripped it, should have stopped this cascading affect, so something definitely went wrong somewhere.
ROBERTS: And also, you mentioned the attitude there in New York, everybody seems to have gotten back to normal, as you say, as if this really never happened, although it was just a short while ago that everyone was having to live through this.
KOCH: Well, some people here have compared it to the, sort of, affect that a blizzard has, it disrupts your life for a day, your ability to get to work, your ability to get around the city, do what you want to do, but afterwards, you move on with life as normal. I mean obviously, people went through some pretty tough experience -- people trapped in elevators, people trapped in subways, people have to walk miles and miles to get home, but yes, they seem to have bounced back quite quickly. New Yorkers are, obviously, a very resilient bunch.
ROBERTS: That's exactly the word I was going to use, "resilient." Kathleen, thanks very much
Kathleen Koch, live for us, in New York.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Outage>
