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New York Mayor to Assemble Task Force on Emergency Operations

Aired August 18, 2003 - 13:14   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.


MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's shed some light on the power blackout. The Northeast is plugged again and ready for business. New Yorkers had a relatively normal Monday morning commute, as a New York commute goes. This is the first business day since the nation's largest power blackout ever.
But in Ontario, Canada, things are not quite back to normal just yet. Homes and businesses are being asked to cut energy use in half. Automaker DaimlerChrysler said it would shut down an assembly plant in order to comply.

And in parts of Michigan, contaminated water is still an issue. People in Detroit are being advised to boil water until Wednesday.

Back to New York City, Mayor Bloomberg wants to know what the city did right and what needs to be fixed. He's assembling a task force to study how well the city handled the blackout.

Our Jason Carroll joins me now live from Penn Station, conveniently located across the street from our bureau, so he had a nice, short walk to this one.

So far, so good -- Jason.

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So far, so good. And the mayor is going to be checking in to see what was not so good during the power outage. That's why he's put together that task force that will be looking at particularly the city's emergency response system. Apparently, there was some sort of a limited breakdown in communications between 911 dispatchers and emergency crews out in the field, some sort of a telephone disruption.

So, that task force is going to be looking into the system, see if there are ways of improving it.

But generally, New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the system worked well.

Also working well is New York City's transit system. Here at Penn Station, things are looking just like any other Monday. The trains are running on time, the city's subways are running on time -- certainly good news for the thousands of commuters who rely on those modes of transportation every single day.

New York City is trying to put a price tag on all of this, Miles. A New York City transit official is saying it could add up to about $7 million. But when you include all factors, it could end up costing the city several hundred million dollars.

New York City's health officials are putting out a warning on this Monday, warning consumers about the food that they're eating. They say that over the weekend, they saw a spike in the number of food-related illnesses at hospital emergency rooms. And so, what they're theorizing is that people are really not checking their food. So, they want people to check that food. Their motto is, "When in doubt, throw it out."

One final note from Mayor Bloomberg, he is also saying that on this busy Monday, when businesses are open and really everyone is using all the power that they can out there, he says you might want to conserve a little bit. He says there is not an unlimited amount of power out there, so he's urging people to conserve when they can -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: I think we know what a house of cards this grid is by now. Jason, I'm curious, there's a lot of difficulty just coming up with a good number as to how many people were in the dark. How can they really come up with an idea of how much this hurt the economy?

CARROLL: Well, they're going to be looking at all of the different factors. They're going to be polling various emergency response teams, finding out what it cost in terms of overtime, for example. Then they're going to be reaching out to the business community, talking to those people, finding out what businesses, how much revenue was lost over the past few days because of the outage.

So, they're going to be, you know, fanning out, looking at various parts of the city. But they also say up front that it's going to take at least several days before they are going to be able to come up with an exact number.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Jason Carroll at Penn Station, thank you very much.

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




Operations>


Aired August 18, 2003 - 13:14   ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
MILES O'BRIEN, CNN ANCHOR: Let's shed some light on the power blackout. The Northeast is plugged again and ready for business. New Yorkers had a relatively normal Monday morning commute, as a New York commute goes. This is the first business day since the nation's largest power blackout ever.
But in Ontario, Canada, things are not quite back to normal just yet. Homes and businesses are being asked to cut energy use in half. Automaker DaimlerChrysler said it would shut down an assembly plant in order to comply.

And in parts of Michigan, contaminated water is still an issue. People in Detroit are being advised to boil water until Wednesday.

Back to New York City, Mayor Bloomberg wants to know what the city did right and what needs to be fixed. He's assembling a task force to study how well the city handled the blackout.

Our Jason Carroll joins me now live from Penn Station, conveniently located across the street from our bureau, so he had a nice, short walk to this one.

So far, so good -- Jason.

JASON CARROLL, CNN CORRESPONDENT: So far, so good. And the mayor is going to be checking in to see what was not so good during the power outage. That's why he's put together that task force that will be looking at particularly the city's emergency response system. Apparently, there was some sort of a limited breakdown in communications between 911 dispatchers and emergency crews out in the field, some sort of a telephone disruption.

So, that task force is going to be looking into the system, see if there are ways of improving it.

But generally, New York City's Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the system worked well.

Also working well is New York City's transit system. Here at Penn Station, things are looking just like any other Monday. The trains are running on time, the city's subways are running on time -- certainly good news for the thousands of commuters who rely on those modes of transportation every single day.

New York City is trying to put a price tag on all of this, Miles. A New York City transit official is saying it could add up to about $7 million. But when you include all factors, it could end up costing the city several hundred million dollars.

New York City's health officials are putting out a warning on this Monday, warning consumers about the food that they're eating. They say that over the weekend, they saw a spike in the number of food-related illnesses at hospital emergency rooms. And so, what they're theorizing is that people are really not checking their food. So, they want people to check that food. Their motto is, "When in doubt, throw it out."

One final note from Mayor Bloomberg, he is also saying that on this busy Monday, when businesses are open and really everyone is using all the power that they can out there, he says you might want to conserve a little bit. He says there is not an unlimited amount of power out there, so he's urging people to conserve when they can -- Miles.

O'BRIEN: I think we know what a house of cards this grid is by now. Jason, I'm curious, there's a lot of difficulty just coming up with a good number as to how many people were in the dark. How can they really come up with an idea of how much this hurt the economy?

CARROLL: Well, they're going to be looking at all of the different factors. They're going to be polling various emergency response teams, finding out what it cost in terms of overtime, for example. Then they're going to be reaching out to the business community, talking to those people, finding out what businesses, how much revenue was lost over the past few days because of the outage.

So, they're going to be, you know, fanning out, looking at various parts of the city. But they also say up front that it's going to take at least several days before they are going to be able to come up with an exact number.

O'BRIEN: CNN's Jason Carroll at Penn Station, thank you very much.

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




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