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CNN Saturday Morning News
Interview with Dexter Ingram
Aired August 16, 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.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: We begin this hour with the latest on the historic blackout. First, the Big Apple is shining again. The power is back on in all five boroughs of New York City and in Westchester County. The MTA says most of the New York subway lines began running again early today.
But other regions sent to the dark aren't as lucky. More than 10 million homes are still without power, mainly in the Midwest and in Canada -- Thomas.
THOMAS ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: You know, although the lights are back on in most places, we're still in the dark about exactly what happened and why.
Our Kathleen Koch is live in Times Square, where it is bright once again, to fill us in this morning -- hi, Kathleen.
KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Thomas.
Well, at this point this morning, officials can only say with certainty what did not cause the largest U.S. power outage in its history. Not terrorism, not weather and not excess demand, because power company officials say at this point they believe that there was plenty of extra power capacity when all this started.
Now, they have been able to trace backwards to the point where they believe this all may have started. And this was in Cleveland, Ohio about 3:06 p.m. on Thursday. A 345,000 volt line went down. Now, within the hour after that, there were some very strange, a bizarre change of direction in the power surge in this power loop that this Cleveland line was a part of. It's called the Lake Erie loop. It circles Lake Erie and Ontario.
So the power went one way and then dramatically surged and went the other. And basically this, from there, outages cascaded in a matter of nine or 10 seconds through eight states into Canada, leading to these massive blackouts.
The energy secretary in the Bush administration is saying that they have been worried about the stability of the U.S. power grid for some time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SPENCER ABRAHAM, SECRETARY OF ENERGY: The grid we have is old. It was, in many places, built years and years ago, and the demand for electricity continues to grow. We expect it to increase by 40 to 50 percent over the next 15 to 20 years. From our first year in office, we've been calling on Congress to pass energy legislation that would include modernization of our electricity laws.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KOCH: Now, initially, the federal government, though, will have to rely on private industry to find out just what happened because private companies do own and control most of the nation's power lines. Some industry experts worry that actually it was a company that may have been responsible by in some way violating these voluntary rules that they have in place for transferring power all around the country.
But clearly it's going to take not days, but perhaps weeks or more to find out what happened. And if, indeed, it was a break down, a technical break down in the aging power grid, then that could take years and billions of dollars to fix -- back to you.
ROBERTS: Kathleen Koch live for us in Times Square.
Kathleen, thanks very much.
WHITFIELD: Well, elsewhere in the blackout region, the water pumps are running again in Cleveland, but the water isn't safe. And Motor City is not doing a lot of motoring.
Our John Zarrella is live in Cleveland and Lisa Leiter is in Detroit.
John, let's begin with you.
While they're glad that there is running water, nobody wants to use it, do they?
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Fredricka. I got up this morning in our hotel. The first thing I did was go to the coffee maker and then went oops, I really can't put water in that pot to make coffee. So those are the kinds of very minor hardships, if you can call it, inconveniences that the people here are beginning to emerge from and deal with. They have to boil water here until at least Sunday at noon. The mayor has requested that they do that. It's a precaution because the four pumps that pump water out of Lake Erie to supply the water for the Cleveland area went down after the blackout began.
Although they're all back up and running again, just as a precaution against any contamination, they want people to go ahead and boil that water, again, until at least on Sunday.
And as Kathleen was saying, it does appear that Ohio may end up to be the focal point of where this all began. And as you can see in this morning's "Plain Dealer," the headline, "Did It Start Here?"
The chairman of the public service commission, the Ohio Public Utilities Commission, has said that they are going to begin an investigation into if, in fact, Ohio was the focal point and where in Ohio. There's a power plant that's being looked into in a town called East Lake, where there may have been an explosion at that power plant. The public utilities chairman saying well, again, we think it's Ohio, but we're not sure yet.
So that, again, could take some time. The first priority for the utility companies, of course, was to get the power back on, to get the water back on and now they're going to began to look into exactly what happened and where it happened and if, indeed, it did happen here in this particular part of Cleveland or somewhere else along the Erie Loop.
Now, Lisa Leiter is in Utica, Michigan and Lisa has been up there working the story from that angle -- Lisa.
LISA LEITER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, John.
Well, it's the same story here in terms of water. The Detroit area boiling its water this morning, same story. The pumping stations went down when the blackout occurred. They're back up and running again, but it's going to take some time to fill those pipes. As you said, the same story in Cleveland, before people are going to have their water service fully restored, and as a precaution, as well, the mayor of Detroit telling people here to boil their water, as well, and there is no word yet on when that boiled water advisory will be lifted.
Now, let's take a look at some live pictures of the Detroit area here where, this morning, as of 6:30 a.m., virtually all of Detroit Edison's 2.1 million customers can turn their lights on once again.
Now, there may be some spotty outages this morning here and there, but the governor is saying this morning that it looks like power has been restored 100 percent. And this is what she called the worst power outage in Michigan's history. But she remarked last night on CNN and praised how well the emergency response team did in this crisis.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. JENNIFER GRANHOLM, MICHIGAN: The good news is that people have really come together and the local units of government and the first responders have coordinated in a way that we have never before seen. So we've been able to get, for example, from the private sector, 750,000 bottles of water donated because our water supply system in Detroit was down. We've had gasoline supplies shipped across as a demonstration of good will. We've had food donated and brought in. Obviously, citizen action has taken place and has been remarkable.
So, despite the bad news, there's an awful lot of good news.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEITER: And we witnessed that sense of community firsthand yesterday afternoon. We spent most of the day canvassing some small towns in the area, where, despite people's hardships and the heat, they were incredibly patient, friendly and kind, even as they waited on long lines for gasoline or fought over those last remaining bottles of water on the grocery store shelves -- Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: All right, thanks a lot, Lisa Leiter in Utica, Michigan and John Zarrella from Cleveland.
Thanks to both of you this morning -- Thomas.
ROBERTS: Well, you know, President Bush is calling for the nation's electrical grid system to be upgraded.
Our White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux joins us now live from Crawford, Texas -- and, Suzanne, we're learning that political power has a whole new meaning now, doesn't it?
SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Thomas.
President Bush is back in the Crawford ranch after his two day swing in California. He was there to do some fundraising, also to talk about the agenda, the importance of protecting the national parks. But the president made it very clear over the last 48 hours that he's been on top of the blackout situation. It was late yesterday that he and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien had a 10 minute conversation over the phone to talk about the impact of the blackout, also, the necessity of modernizing the power grid system as well as this joint task force that is going to be headed by the top energy officials of both countries to talk about how to prevent this from happening in the future.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I view it as a wake up call. Now, I've been concerned that our infrastructure, the delivery system is old and antiquated. And I think this is an indication of the fact that we need to modernize the electricity grid.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MALVEAUX: And as you had mentioned, of course, this has become a very political issue. President Bush again calling on Congress to pass his comprehensive energy bill that does include some broad provisions for modernizing that grid system. But Democrats, however, particularly Congressman Dick Gephardt, a presidential hopeful, criticizing the Bush administration, saying that that legislation would only make the situation worse. Well, you can bet, Thomas, that when Congress comes back from recess, President Bush, as well as the energy secretary, are going to make this priority number one -- Thomas.
ROBERTS: Well, Suzanne, as we're hearing, the president say that this is a wake up call, but some critics in the past are saying that this just wasn't sexy enough of an issue and now the president is pushing to get through a comprehensive energy bill.
Can that actually get done, though?
MALVEAUX: Well, in all fairness, the whole debate over this comprehensive energy bill really didn't focus at all on this grid situation, but rather the other controversial issues, as terms of oil and drilling, the environment and finding alternative sources of power, how the economy, the U.S. economy can become less dependent on Middle East oil.
This has become a sexier issue as many people realize, because of this incident, because of the blackout, many people making this a much higher priority.
ROBERTS: As we're all learning, that's for sure.
Suzanne Malveaux live for us in Crawford, Texas.
Suzanne, thanks very much.
WHITFIELD: The snowballing power shutdown has raised concerns about security threats at power plants.
Dexter Ingram is a threat analyst at the Heritage Foundation specializing in first responder issues as well as security at nuclear and water plants.
Good to see you, Dexter.
DEXTER INGRAM, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Hi.
WHITFIELD: Well, the investigation is ongoing. There has been criticism before. What is it about this incident that has perhaps highlighted the security or lack thereof this grid system?
INGRAM: It seems like a prime scenario, honestly. This is a wake up call, like the president said. And what you're going to see is you're going to see an investigation into the cause of the power failure, but you're also testing the first responders out there. They're going to look at the various aspects of critical infrastructure that are related to power -- everything from transportation to banking, various communication nodes. You see people with lack of water. Obviously, this happened on Thursday afternoon and the banking systems were shut down at the time, so it really didn't affect too much. But it was a nice dry run. And it seems like the first responders rose to the occasion.
But when it comes to force protection, actually protecting various aspects of our critical infrastructure, you're going to see a lot changing in the next few months.
WHITFIELD: Like what kind of changes? You talk about the comparisons already being made to this grid system compared to transportation, communications, etc.
How might these resolving the security issue be approached?
INGRAM: Well, it's threefold, actually. The first thing you want to do is go in and find out what happened, right? What was the cause of this? Now you want to say to yourself, OK, if somebody out there wants to do harm to the U.S. and our critical infrastructure, how will they go about doing it? Can they actually duplicate what happened? And, if so, how would they?
Then you want to look at the actual force protection, meaning, how can we protect our power stations, our power plants, our communication nodes, our cyberspace? Do we need higher fences? Do we need better firewalls? Do we need more monitors, whatever it may be?
And those are going to be lessons learned.
And then, finally, you want to actually have the people that are involved in this in New York, in Toronto, in Detroit, the fire, the police, the hospitals, whatever it may be, the local governments get involved and have other local governments go there and find out, you know, how it was handled. Because the situation seems to be handled pretty nicely and smoothly when it comes to getting cops out there.
WHITFIELD: Well, this sounds like a pretty lengthy -- it sounds like a pretty lengthy roster that you're talking about, all these checks and balances that would need to go in place.
President Bush admitted, you just heard it a moment ago, where he says the system needs to be modernized because it is, indeed, antiquated and it's outdated.
INGRAM: Yes.
WHITFIELD: So what kind of time line are we talking about here? Not weeks, not months, but maybe even years, according to what -- all those long list of things you're talking about.
INGRAM: Right. Well, the first thing you want to do is find out what happened. Once you find out what happened, then you can deal with it accordingly. It's something that hopefully we can make some short-term fixes, patch up some systems in the next few months or so. We'll see how that happens. Looking at bipartisan politics, hopefully it'll go a little quicker than we expect, but I don't know.
It is a wake up call, definitely, and in the next couple of years, maybe we can be re-emphasized and hopefully not get so surprised when this happens again. Because this is something that, you know, we always have to be ready for. Yes, we can fix it. Yes, we can say OK, let's try not to let it happen again. But we have to be ready if it does happen again, and that's really important.
WHITFIELD: And thankfully in this case, an awful lot of residents are applauding that it only took a couple days, for the most part, to restore some power.
Dexter Ingram of the Heritage Foundation, thanks so much for joining us this morning.
INGRAM: Thanks for having me.
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 16, 2003 - 08:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN ANCHOR: We begin this hour with the latest on the historic blackout. First, the Big Apple is shining again. The power is back on in all five boroughs of New York City and in Westchester County. The MTA says most of the New York subway lines began running again early today.
But other regions sent to the dark aren't as lucky. More than 10 million homes are still without power, mainly in the Midwest and in Canada -- Thomas.
THOMAS ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: You know, although the lights are back on in most places, we're still in the dark about exactly what happened and why.
Our Kathleen Koch is live in Times Square, where it is bright once again, to fill us in this morning -- hi, Kathleen.
KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Hi, Thomas.
Well, at this point this morning, officials can only say with certainty what did not cause the largest U.S. power outage in its history. Not terrorism, not weather and not excess demand, because power company officials say at this point they believe that there was plenty of extra power capacity when all this started.
Now, they have been able to trace backwards to the point where they believe this all may have started. And this was in Cleveland, Ohio about 3:06 p.m. on Thursday. A 345,000 volt line went down. Now, within the hour after that, there were some very strange, a bizarre change of direction in the power surge in this power loop that this Cleveland line was a part of. It's called the Lake Erie loop. It circles Lake Erie and Ontario.
So the power went one way and then dramatically surged and went the other. And basically this, from there, outages cascaded in a matter of nine or 10 seconds through eight states into Canada, leading to these massive blackouts.
The energy secretary in the Bush administration is saying that they have been worried about the stability of the U.S. power grid for some time.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
SPENCER ABRAHAM, SECRETARY OF ENERGY: The grid we have is old. It was, in many places, built years and years ago, and the demand for electricity continues to grow. We expect it to increase by 40 to 50 percent over the next 15 to 20 years. From our first year in office, we've been calling on Congress to pass energy legislation that would include modernization of our electricity laws.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
KOCH: Now, initially, the federal government, though, will have to rely on private industry to find out just what happened because private companies do own and control most of the nation's power lines. Some industry experts worry that actually it was a company that may have been responsible by in some way violating these voluntary rules that they have in place for transferring power all around the country.
But clearly it's going to take not days, but perhaps weeks or more to find out what happened. And if, indeed, it was a break down, a technical break down in the aging power grid, then that could take years and billions of dollars to fix -- back to you.
ROBERTS: Kathleen Koch live for us in Times Square.
Kathleen, thanks very much.
WHITFIELD: Well, elsewhere in the blackout region, the water pumps are running again in Cleveland, but the water isn't safe. And Motor City is not doing a lot of motoring.
Our John Zarrella is live in Cleveland and Lisa Leiter is in Detroit.
John, let's begin with you.
While they're glad that there is running water, nobody wants to use it, do they?
JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: That's right, Fredricka. I got up this morning in our hotel. The first thing I did was go to the coffee maker and then went oops, I really can't put water in that pot to make coffee. So those are the kinds of very minor hardships, if you can call it, inconveniences that the people here are beginning to emerge from and deal with. They have to boil water here until at least Sunday at noon. The mayor has requested that they do that. It's a precaution because the four pumps that pump water out of Lake Erie to supply the water for the Cleveland area went down after the blackout began.
Although they're all back up and running again, just as a precaution against any contamination, they want people to go ahead and boil that water, again, until at least on Sunday.
And as Kathleen was saying, it does appear that Ohio may end up to be the focal point of where this all began. And as you can see in this morning's "Plain Dealer," the headline, "Did It Start Here?"
The chairman of the public service commission, the Ohio Public Utilities Commission, has said that they are going to begin an investigation into if, in fact, Ohio was the focal point and where in Ohio. There's a power plant that's being looked into in a town called East Lake, where there may have been an explosion at that power plant. The public utilities chairman saying well, again, we think it's Ohio, but we're not sure yet.
So that, again, could take some time. The first priority for the utility companies, of course, was to get the power back on, to get the water back on and now they're going to began to look into exactly what happened and where it happened and if, indeed, it did happen here in this particular part of Cleveland or somewhere else along the Erie Loop.
Now, Lisa Leiter is in Utica, Michigan and Lisa has been up there working the story from that angle -- Lisa.
LISA LEITER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Thanks, John.
Well, it's the same story here in terms of water. The Detroit area boiling its water this morning, same story. The pumping stations went down when the blackout occurred. They're back up and running again, but it's going to take some time to fill those pipes. As you said, the same story in Cleveland, before people are going to have their water service fully restored, and as a precaution, as well, the mayor of Detroit telling people here to boil their water, as well, and there is no word yet on when that boiled water advisory will be lifted.
Now, let's take a look at some live pictures of the Detroit area here where, this morning, as of 6:30 a.m., virtually all of Detroit Edison's 2.1 million customers can turn their lights on once again.
Now, there may be some spotty outages this morning here and there, but the governor is saying this morning that it looks like power has been restored 100 percent. And this is what she called the worst power outage in Michigan's history. But she remarked last night on CNN and praised how well the emergency response team did in this crisis.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GOV. JENNIFER GRANHOLM, MICHIGAN: The good news is that people have really come together and the local units of government and the first responders have coordinated in a way that we have never before seen. So we've been able to get, for example, from the private sector, 750,000 bottles of water donated because our water supply system in Detroit was down. We've had gasoline supplies shipped across as a demonstration of good will. We've had food donated and brought in. Obviously, citizen action has taken place and has been remarkable.
So, despite the bad news, there's an awful lot of good news.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEITER: And we witnessed that sense of community firsthand yesterday afternoon. We spent most of the day canvassing some small towns in the area, where, despite people's hardships and the heat, they were incredibly patient, friendly and kind, even as they waited on long lines for gasoline or fought over those last remaining bottles of water on the grocery store shelves -- Fredricka.
WHITFIELD: All right, thanks a lot, Lisa Leiter in Utica, Michigan and John Zarrella from Cleveland.
Thanks to both of you this morning -- Thomas.
ROBERTS: Well, you know, President Bush is calling for the nation's electrical grid system to be upgraded.
Our White House correspondent Suzanne Malveaux joins us now live from Crawford, Texas -- and, Suzanne, we're learning that political power has a whole new meaning now, doesn't it?
SUZANNE MALVEAUX, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Absolutely, Thomas.
President Bush is back in the Crawford ranch after his two day swing in California. He was there to do some fundraising, also to talk about the agenda, the importance of protecting the national parks. But the president made it very clear over the last 48 hours that he's been on top of the blackout situation. It was late yesterday that he and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien had a 10 minute conversation over the phone to talk about the impact of the blackout, also, the necessity of modernizing the power grid system as well as this joint task force that is going to be headed by the top energy officials of both countries to talk about how to prevent this from happening in the future.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
GEORGE W. BUSH, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: I view it as a wake up call. Now, I've been concerned that our infrastructure, the delivery system is old and antiquated. And I think this is an indication of the fact that we need to modernize the electricity grid.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
MALVEAUX: And as you had mentioned, of course, this has become a very political issue. President Bush again calling on Congress to pass his comprehensive energy bill that does include some broad provisions for modernizing that grid system. But Democrats, however, particularly Congressman Dick Gephardt, a presidential hopeful, criticizing the Bush administration, saying that that legislation would only make the situation worse. Well, you can bet, Thomas, that when Congress comes back from recess, President Bush, as well as the energy secretary, are going to make this priority number one -- Thomas.
ROBERTS: Well, Suzanne, as we're hearing, the president say that this is a wake up call, but some critics in the past are saying that this just wasn't sexy enough of an issue and now the president is pushing to get through a comprehensive energy bill.
Can that actually get done, though?
MALVEAUX: Well, in all fairness, the whole debate over this comprehensive energy bill really didn't focus at all on this grid situation, but rather the other controversial issues, as terms of oil and drilling, the environment and finding alternative sources of power, how the economy, the U.S. economy can become less dependent on Middle East oil.
This has become a sexier issue as many people realize, because of this incident, because of the blackout, many people making this a much higher priority.
ROBERTS: As we're all learning, that's for sure.
Suzanne Malveaux live for us in Crawford, Texas.
Suzanne, thanks very much.
WHITFIELD: The snowballing power shutdown has raised concerns about security threats at power plants.
Dexter Ingram is a threat analyst at the Heritage Foundation specializing in first responder issues as well as security at nuclear and water plants.
Good to see you, Dexter.
DEXTER INGRAM, HERITAGE FOUNDATION: Hi.
WHITFIELD: Well, the investigation is ongoing. There has been criticism before. What is it about this incident that has perhaps highlighted the security or lack thereof this grid system?
INGRAM: It seems like a prime scenario, honestly. This is a wake up call, like the president said. And what you're going to see is you're going to see an investigation into the cause of the power failure, but you're also testing the first responders out there. They're going to look at the various aspects of critical infrastructure that are related to power -- everything from transportation to banking, various communication nodes. You see people with lack of water. Obviously, this happened on Thursday afternoon and the banking systems were shut down at the time, so it really didn't affect too much. But it was a nice dry run. And it seems like the first responders rose to the occasion.
But when it comes to force protection, actually protecting various aspects of our critical infrastructure, you're going to see a lot changing in the next few months.
WHITFIELD: Like what kind of changes? You talk about the comparisons already being made to this grid system compared to transportation, communications, etc.
How might these resolving the security issue be approached?
INGRAM: Well, it's threefold, actually. The first thing you want to do is go in and find out what happened, right? What was the cause of this? Now you want to say to yourself, OK, if somebody out there wants to do harm to the U.S. and our critical infrastructure, how will they go about doing it? Can they actually duplicate what happened? And, if so, how would they?
Then you want to look at the actual force protection, meaning, how can we protect our power stations, our power plants, our communication nodes, our cyberspace? Do we need higher fences? Do we need better firewalls? Do we need more monitors, whatever it may be?
And those are going to be lessons learned.
And then, finally, you want to actually have the people that are involved in this in New York, in Toronto, in Detroit, the fire, the police, the hospitals, whatever it may be, the local governments get involved and have other local governments go there and find out, you know, how it was handled. Because the situation seems to be handled pretty nicely and smoothly when it comes to getting cops out there.
WHITFIELD: Well, this sounds like a pretty lengthy -- it sounds like a pretty lengthy roster that you're talking about, all these checks and balances that would need to go in place.
President Bush admitted, you just heard it a moment ago, where he says the system needs to be modernized because it is, indeed, antiquated and it's outdated.
INGRAM: Yes.
WHITFIELD: So what kind of time line are we talking about here? Not weeks, not months, but maybe even years, according to what -- all those long list of things you're talking about.
INGRAM: Right. Well, the first thing you want to do is find out what happened. Once you find out what happened, then you can deal with it accordingly. It's something that hopefully we can make some short-term fixes, patch up some systems in the next few months or so. We'll see how that happens. Looking at bipartisan politics, hopefully it'll go a little quicker than we expect, but I don't know.
It is a wake up call, definitely, and in the next couple of years, maybe we can be re-emphasized and hopefully not get so surprised when this happens again. Because this is something that, you know, we always have to be ready for. Yes, we can fix it. Yes, we can say OK, let's try not to let it happen again. But we have to be ready if it does happen again, and that's really important.
WHITFIELD: And thankfully in this case, an awful lot of residents are applauding that it only took a couple days, for the most part, to restore some power.
Dexter Ingram of the Heritage Foundation, thanks so much for joining us this morning.
INGRAM: Thanks for having me.
TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com
