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American Morning
Why Were Warnings About Power Grid Not Addressed by Washington?
Aired August 18, 2003 - 07:36 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.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Back to the energy now, why were warnings from scientists and engineers about the nation's fragile power grid not addressed by Washington?
Larry Papay contributed last year to a National Research Council report on making the nation safer.
He's the vice president of Science Applications International, live with us today in San Diego.
Good to have you here, sir, and good morning to you.
We're going to try and put this in plain speak as best we can today.
In your report delivered last fall -- I want to pull a small portion of what you wrote there. And to quote your writing, "The electrical system warrants special attention. Outage of an entire regional transmission grid might occur if the damage or destruction of important components of that were followed by a cascading failure of interconnected components."
If we translate that into English, it sounds like that's what we saw last Thursday afternoon.
LARRY PAPAY, SCIENCE APPLICATIONS INTERNATIONAL: Yes, that certainly is, and the scary fact is it happened without a terrorist intervention, if you want to call it that, and, in fact, could have been much worse than what we saw, not worse in terms of number of people being taken out, necessarily, but certainly worse in the sense of being able to come back.
HEMMER: So your report goes out last fall, nothing's done, we all live through a couple days of misery here in the Northeast. Why was nothing done after your report was issued several months ago?
PAPAY: Our report was looking to the future and really focused on the terrorist, the possibility for a terrorist attack. I think the assumption is, or has been, that the systems that were in place today are certainly capable of handling the normal outages. What we saw was a surprise to everyone, that with an outage occurring on a hot, warm day, the cascading effect certainly happened even without terrorist intervention.
HEMMER: You say the Department of Homeland Security has given this a measure of attention. I'm not quite sure how deep the attention has been. But you are contending with more dramatic events, things like smallpox or anthrax attacks, events like plane hijackings.
Does that interfere, do you believe, with what you're trying to get done for the power grid?
PAPAY: I think there's a lot more publicity and a lot more attention on the direct physical attack on people, whether it's chemical or biological. What we're talking about is really more of an economic attack in that you would lay the country open, if you like, to only partial power for extended periods of time, such as weeks or months, if, in fact, you were not able to do some things over the next period of time.
HEMMER: A couple of seconds left here. I want to get your thoughts on this. You believe this issue now is on the front burner. Let me take the opposite viewpoint here. The last major blackout was 26 years ago.
Don't people tend to forget that which they don't have to worry about?
PAPAY: I think there is a tendency -- when there was a gasoline shortage, everybody complained about it. But once gasoline became available again, it went to the back burner.
I think from a national point of view, it's going to cost us money to be able to accomplish all of this -- the aging infrastructure, the need to do a variety of things from a prevention point of view, mitigation and restoration, the three main legs on the stool.
HEMMER: Thanks for keeping it simple for us.
PAPAY: You're welcome.
HEMMER: Larry Papay in San Diego.
PAPAY: All right.
HEMMER: And thanks for getting up early.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Washington?>
Aired August 18, 2003 - 07:36 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: Back to the energy now, why were warnings from scientists and engineers about the nation's fragile power grid not addressed by Washington?
Larry Papay contributed last year to a National Research Council report on making the nation safer.
He's the vice president of Science Applications International, live with us today in San Diego.
Good to have you here, sir, and good morning to you.
We're going to try and put this in plain speak as best we can today.
In your report delivered last fall -- I want to pull a small portion of what you wrote there. And to quote your writing, "The electrical system warrants special attention. Outage of an entire regional transmission grid might occur if the damage or destruction of important components of that were followed by a cascading failure of interconnected components."
If we translate that into English, it sounds like that's what we saw last Thursday afternoon.
LARRY PAPAY, SCIENCE APPLICATIONS INTERNATIONAL: Yes, that certainly is, and the scary fact is it happened without a terrorist intervention, if you want to call it that, and, in fact, could have been much worse than what we saw, not worse in terms of number of people being taken out, necessarily, but certainly worse in the sense of being able to come back.
HEMMER: So your report goes out last fall, nothing's done, we all live through a couple days of misery here in the Northeast. Why was nothing done after your report was issued several months ago?
PAPAY: Our report was looking to the future and really focused on the terrorist, the possibility for a terrorist attack. I think the assumption is, or has been, that the systems that were in place today are certainly capable of handling the normal outages. What we saw was a surprise to everyone, that with an outage occurring on a hot, warm day, the cascading effect certainly happened even without terrorist intervention.
HEMMER: You say the Department of Homeland Security has given this a measure of attention. I'm not quite sure how deep the attention has been. But you are contending with more dramatic events, things like smallpox or anthrax attacks, events like plane hijackings.
Does that interfere, do you believe, with what you're trying to get done for the power grid?
PAPAY: I think there's a lot more publicity and a lot more attention on the direct physical attack on people, whether it's chemical or biological. What we're talking about is really more of an economic attack in that you would lay the country open, if you like, to only partial power for extended periods of time, such as weeks or months, if, in fact, you were not able to do some things over the next period of time.
HEMMER: A couple of seconds left here. I want to get your thoughts on this. You believe this issue now is on the front burner. Let me take the opposite viewpoint here. The last major blackout was 26 years ago.
Don't people tend to forget that which they don't have to worry about?
PAPAY: I think there is a tendency -- when there was a gasoline shortage, everybody complained about it. But once gasoline became available again, it went to the back burner.
I think from a national point of view, it's going to cost us money to be able to accomplish all of this -- the aging infrastructure, the need to do a variety of things from a prevention point of view, mitigation and restoration, the three main legs on the stool.
HEMMER: Thanks for keeping it simple for us.
PAPAY: You're welcome.
HEMMER: Larry Papay in San Diego.
PAPAY: All right.
HEMMER: And thanks for getting up early.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
Washington?>
