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Blackout Will Force Examinations Into Security Weaknesses at Power Plants
Aired August 15, 2003 - 14:00 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.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Turns out there may be a sliver lining in the blackout cloud, at least as far as Homeland Security experts are concerned. The massive failures pointed some security weaknesses that had not been noticed before. We're joined by CNN's Homeland Security correspondent Jeanne Meserve in Washington with more on this and the continuing investigation into what caused the blackout in the first place -- Jeanne.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, officials at the North American Electric Reliability Council say they can't yet say exactly what caused this, but they have focused their attention on what they call the Lake Erie Loop, that's a transmission line that takes power from plants on the U.S. and Canadian sides of Lake Erie and transmits it in a clockwise pattern that runs from Buffalo to Cleveland to Detroit up to the Toronto area, and then back down to Buffalo.
Sorry, we were expecting a piece of sound there that was going to talk a little bit about why that was suspect. According to these officials at the North American Electric Reliability Council about 300 megawatts of power was flowing west to east on that loop when something happened and the flow reversed and made it go east to west.
What was it? Well some power company say it could have violated rules or there could have been some sort of triggering event. A couple of things have been ruled out. There's been no sign of physical intrusion that's been found, there are no traces of any sort of cyber intrusion, and investigators don't think there was a demand factor here because temperatures just weren't that high and there was additional power was available.
We have an animation I hope to show you here that shows just how this blackout progressed. Watch those pulsing red circles. there' going to show you what happened. This is from Genscape. It's a company that tracks the output of power plants because it's selling power to energy brokers here.
And if you follow those pulsing circles you could see how in the very first minute four plants went down in Pennsylvania, Michigan and New York. It spread in the next minute to another two and the next minute another two and so forth and so on. It just cascaded on through the system.
And when it was over, 50 million people were in the dark over a 9,300 square-mile area. A team of investigators is being put together now. They may have more to tell us about what happened beginning next week. But right now the priority is to get the power restored to everybody who lost it. Back to you, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: All right, Jeanne, thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
at Power Plants>
Aired August 15, 2003 - 14:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Turns out there may be a sliver lining in the blackout cloud, at least as far as Homeland Security experts are concerned. The massive failures pointed some security weaknesses that had not been noticed before. We're joined by CNN's Homeland Security correspondent Jeanne Meserve in Washington with more on this and the continuing investigation into what caused the blackout in the first place -- Jeanne.
JEANNE MESERVE, CNN HOMELAND SECURITY CORRESPONDENT: Kyra, officials at the North American Electric Reliability Council say they can't yet say exactly what caused this, but they have focused their attention on what they call the Lake Erie Loop, that's a transmission line that takes power from plants on the U.S. and Canadian sides of Lake Erie and transmits it in a clockwise pattern that runs from Buffalo to Cleveland to Detroit up to the Toronto area, and then back down to Buffalo.
Sorry, we were expecting a piece of sound there that was going to talk a little bit about why that was suspect. According to these officials at the North American Electric Reliability Council about 300 megawatts of power was flowing west to east on that loop when something happened and the flow reversed and made it go east to west.
What was it? Well some power company say it could have violated rules or there could have been some sort of triggering event. A couple of things have been ruled out. There's been no sign of physical intrusion that's been found, there are no traces of any sort of cyber intrusion, and investigators don't think there was a demand factor here because temperatures just weren't that high and there was additional power was available.
We have an animation I hope to show you here that shows just how this blackout progressed. Watch those pulsing red circles. there' going to show you what happened. This is from Genscape. It's a company that tracks the output of power plants because it's selling power to energy brokers here.
And if you follow those pulsing circles you could see how in the very first minute four plants went down in Pennsylvania, Michigan and New York. It spread in the next minute to another two and the next minute another two and so forth and so on. It just cascaded on through the system.
And when it was over, 50 million people were in the dark over a 9,300 square-mile area. A team of investigators is being put together now. They may have more to tell us about what happened beginning next week. But right now the priority is to get the power restored to everybody who lost it. Back to you, Kyra.
PHILLIPS: All right, Jeanne, thank you.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
at Power Plants>
