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CNN Sunday Morning
What Caused Blackout?
Aired August 17, 2003 - 08:00 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.
SEAN CALLEBS, CNN ANCHOR: Although the power is back on, the system is still fragile and the failures that sparked the cascading blackout remain a mystery. CNN's Kathleen Koch is lighting up the great white way for us this morning in the heart of Manhattan.
Good morning, Kathleen. I can see all the lights are on behind you, but something tells me all the anxiety has not gone away.
KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You said it, Sean. There is big relief here in the Big Apple because we are heading into another day of what appears to be total normalcy, power up and running. People, as you can see, are already out and about here in New York City getting breakfast, starting shopping early. I'm sure soon we will have tourists lining up here right next us to buy tickets for Broadway shows.
But other than a minor outage in the Bronx last night, things are getting back to normal. Folks, still some of them dealing with that unpleasant task of tossing out all that food that spoiled during the outage. And we are hearing that New Yorkers are heeding the call to use energy sparingly.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. GEORGE PATAKI (R), NEW YORK: We saw enormous conversation yesterday in New York. New York consumers conserved more than 2,500 megawatts that otherwise would have resulted in rolling blackouts, but we need that continuing willingness to conserve today, tomorrow, and until the generating capacity gets back up to where we hope it will be very soon.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KOCH: Now, on the investigation, power officials have found that the first failures that may have set off the nation's largest blackout ever apparently came in Ohio, and that was when three separate transmission lines between the hours of 3:00 and 4:00 p.m. went out one after the other. Now, First Energy Corporation, which controls those lines, says that its system for monitoring and controlling the transmission and generation of power was up and running just fine. However -- and this could be a crucial point -- an alarm system to spot problem was not working. And after those lines went out there were enormous power fluctuations on the grid in the region. And so one after another, transmission lines were tripped, generators were tripped, power utility stations went out, and then hence the cascading blackout. Now that blackout went all the way through eight U.S. States up into Canada. And so both the U.S. and Canada are joining in the investigation into just what happened.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SPENCER ABRAHAM, ENERGY SECRETARY: President Bush and Prime Minister Chretien spoke. They have designated my counterpart, Herb Dhaliwal, and I to jointly head an international task force that will have as its responsibility the full and comprehensive investigation of the reasons for the outages, the reasons that the problem cascaded, as well as recommendations as to how to make sure it does not happen again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KOCH: Now, few warnings from officials. They are expecting to see come Monday morning, when everyone heads back to work, a major surge in power demand. So they are warning that there could be some sets of rolling scattered outages in places, a few blackouts.
Officials say that they are going to be very careful. They're doing that to sort of ration the power because they don't want to overstress what's still a very fragile system -- Sean.
CALLEBS: Yes, Kathleen. You talked about the tourists who are in the heart of Manhattan right now. You've got to think once the commuters start hitting the trains first thing in the morning the anxiety is going to go up. Anything special being done tomorrow morning to try and ease that?
KOCH: Well, officials, again, are just still urging everyone to do what they can to conserve energy. We haven't heard of any special steps that are being taken to ease anxiety. But they're telling people to go about their daily activities normally. But again, whenever you can, shut off the lights, don't use things that -- utilities -- I mean, don't use appliances that you don't need to. Do everything you can to save every little bit of energy possible because that will help avoid any blackouts -- Sean.
CALLEBS: OK, Kathleen. Let's hope it is a non-story tomorrow morning. Kathleen Koch in Times Square, thanks 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
Aired August 17, 2003 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
SEAN CALLEBS, CNN ANCHOR: Although the power is back on, the system is still fragile and the failures that sparked the cascading blackout remain a mystery. CNN's Kathleen Koch is lighting up the great white way for us this morning in the heart of Manhattan.
Good morning, Kathleen. I can see all the lights are on behind you, but something tells me all the anxiety has not gone away.
KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: You said it, Sean. There is big relief here in the Big Apple because we are heading into another day of what appears to be total normalcy, power up and running. People, as you can see, are already out and about here in New York City getting breakfast, starting shopping early. I'm sure soon we will have tourists lining up here right next us to buy tickets for Broadway shows.
But other than a minor outage in the Bronx last night, things are getting back to normal. Folks, still some of them dealing with that unpleasant task of tossing out all that food that spoiled during the outage. And we are hearing that New Yorkers are heeding the call to use energy sparingly.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. GEORGE PATAKI (R), NEW YORK: We saw enormous conversation yesterday in New York. New York consumers conserved more than 2,500 megawatts that otherwise would have resulted in rolling blackouts, but we need that continuing willingness to conserve today, tomorrow, and until the generating capacity gets back up to where we hope it will be very soon.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KOCH: Now, on the investigation, power officials have found that the first failures that may have set off the nation's largest blackout ever apparently came in Ohio, and that was when three separate transmission lines between the hours of 3:00 and 4:00 p.m. went out one after the other. Now, First Energy Corporation, which controls those lines, says that its system for monitoring and controlling the transmission and generation of power was up and running just fine. However -- and this could be a crucial point -- an alarm system to spot problem was not working. And after those lines went out there were enormous power fluctuations on the grid in the region. And so one after another, transmission lines were tripped, generators were tripped, power utility stations went out, and then hence the cascading blackout. Now that blackout went all the way through eight U.S. States up into Canada. And so both the U.S. and Canada are joining in the investigation into just what happened.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SPENCER ABRAHAM, ENERGY SECRETARY: President Bush and Prime Minister Chretien spoke. They have designated my counterpart, Herb Dhaliwal, and I to jointly head an international task force that will have as its responsibility the full and comprehensive investigation of the reasons for the outages, the reasons that the problem cascaded, as well as recommendations as to how to make sure it does not happen again.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KOCH: Now, few warnings from officials. They are expecting to see come Monday morning, when everyone heads back to work, a major surge in power demand. So they are warning that there could be some sets of rolling scattered outages in places, a few blackouts.
Officials say that they are going to be very careful. They're doing that to sort of ration the power because they don't want to overstress what's still a very fragile system -- Sean.
CALLEBS: Yes, Kathleen. You talked about the tourists who are in the heart of Manhattan right now. You've got to think once the commuters start hitting the trains first thing in the morning the anxiety is going to go up. Anything special being done tomorrow morning to try and ease that?
KOCH: Well, officials, again, are just still urging everyone to do what they can to conserve energy. We haven't heard of any special steps that are being taken to ease anxiety. But they're telling people to go about their daily activities normally. But again, whenever you can, shut off the lights, don't use things that -- utilities -- I mean, don't use appliances that you don't need to. Do everything you can to save every little bit of energy possible because that will help avoid any blackouts -- Sean.
CALLEBS: OK, Kathleen. Let's hope it is a non-story tomorrow morning. Kathleen Koch in Times Square, thanks 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
