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CNN Saturday Morning News
Cleveland Power Line is Suspected of Causing Massive Black-Out
Aired August 16, 2003 - 07:00 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.
THOMAS ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: We'll bring you now the latest developments on the blackout.
In New York this morning, things mostly back to normal. Power was 100 percent restored about 9:00 p.m. Eastern last night. And just a few hours ago, the New York subway system reopened, 31 hours after being stopped by the blackout. And at midnight Eastern time, the Long Island Railroad resumed its normal weekend schedule.
Now the bigger picture for you. In metro Detroit, about 80 percent of residents have electricity this morning. The rest should have it by about Sunday evening.
Now, in Cleveland, the power is on, but residents must still boil their water before they can drink it. And in Canada, the city of Toronto is experiencing rolling blackouts. And in Ottawa, power has been restored to only about half of the homes and businesses.
Big question still being asked today, why did the blackout even happen? Investigators looking for the cause are focusing on the loss of a power line in Cleveland shortly after about 3:00 Thursday afternoon.
For more on this, we go to CNN's Katherine Koch. She's live in New York to join us.
So Kathleen, Cleveland is where they're pinpointing this, correct?
KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: At this point, that's where they think it all started, but they don't know what caused this problem. We're talking about a very powerful power line in Cleveland, a 345,000-volt power line that, for some reason, about 3:06 p.m. on Thursday, went out.
Now, this part of power line obviously is very critical, because if this was it, this is what led to this cascading outage that started there and then flowed across the United States and up into Canada, taking out power for some 50 million people, in eight states, again, in Canada.
Now, what they say happened is, this is part -- this power line was part of something called the Lake Erie loop. Now, it's a relatively problem-plagued and troublesome loop of transmission lines that circles around Lake Erie. It starts in Niagara Falls near Buffalo. It flows clockwise down into New York, into Cleveland, Detroit, into Canada, and back into the U.S.
And then basically, officials say that the power was flowing as it normally does, from east to west along this power line, when there was this sudden -- a sudden change in the flow. And it was, again, 300 megawatts was flowing east to west, and all of a sudden, it started flowing west to east -- or, excuse me, west to east, and then went back east to west, some 500 megawatts.
That started systems tripping up and down the line. They don't know why there was this sudden reversal of power. They think that there may have been perhaps some sort of a reduction in line somewhere along the loop.
I know it's all very complicated, all very complex, but as you said earlier, there is going to be an intense investigation into just why this happened. U.S. and Canadian officials are planning on getting together, conducting this joint investigation.
And already members of Congress are stepping forward, saying that lawmakers need to look into why this happened, because there are breakers that are built into this very complex power grid that we have in the United States that should have stopped this cascading effect that occurred.
So we're not going to know tomorrow, we're not going to know Monday. It's going to take some time. But eventually, they'll figure this out, and obviously there will be plenty of proposals on how to stop it from happening again.
Back to you.
ROBERTS: Kathleen, as you point out, very, very complicated. Our Kathleen Koch live for us in New York. 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
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Aired August 16, 2003 - 07:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
THOMAS ROBERTS, CNN ANCHOR: We'll bring you now the latest developments on the blackout.
In New York this morning, things mostly back to normal. Power was 100 percent restored about 9:00 p.m. Eastern last night. And just a few hours ago, the New York subway system reopened, 31 hours after being stopped by the blackout. And at midnight Eastern time, the Long Island Railroad resumed its normal weekend schedule.
Now the bigger picture for you. In metro Detroit, about 80 percent of residents have electricity this morning. The rest should have it by about Sunday evening.
Now, in Cleveland, the power is on, but residents must still boil their water before they can drink it. And in Canada, the city of Toronto is experiencing rolling blackouts. And in Ottawa, power has been restored to only about half of the homes and businesses.
Big question still being asked today, why did the blackout even happen? Investigators looking for the cause are focusing on the loss of a power line in Cleveland shortly after about 3:00 Thursday afternoon.
For more on this, we go to CNN's Katherine Koch. She's live in New York to join us.
So Kathleen, Cleveland is where they're pinpointing this, correct?
KATHLEEN KOCH, CNN CORRESPONDENT: At this point, that's where they think it all started, but they don't know what caused this problem. We're talking about a very powerful power line in Cleveland, a 345,000-volt power line that, for some reason, about 3:06 p.m. on Thursday, went out.
Now, this part of power line obviously is very critical, because if this was it, this is what led to this cascading outage that started there and then flowed across the United States and up into Canada, taking out power for some 50 million people, in eight states, again, in Canada.
Now, what they say happened is, this is part -- this power line was part of something called the Lake Erie loop. Now, it's a relatively problem-plagued and troublesome loop of transmission lines that circles around Lake Erie. It starts in Niagara Falls near Buffalo. It flows clockwise down into New York, into Cleveland, Detroit, into Canada, and back into the U.S.
And then basically, officials say that the power was flowing as it normally does, from east to west along this power line, when there was this sudden -- a sudden change in the flow. And it was, again, 300 megawatts was flowing east to west, and all of a sudden, it started flowing west to east -- or, excuse me, west to east, and then went back east to west, some 500 megawatts.
That started systems tripping up and down the line. They don't know why there was this sudden reversal of power. They think that there may have been perhaps some sort of a reduction in line somewhere along the loop.
I know it's all very complicated, all very complex, but as you said earlier, there is going to be an intense investigation into just why this happened. U.S. and Canadian officials are planning on getting together, conducting this joint investigation.
And already members of Congress are stepping forward, saying that lawmakers need to look into why this happened, because there are breakers that are built into this very complex power grid that we have in the United States that should have stopped this cascading effect that occurred.
So we're not going to know tomorrow, we're not going to know Monday. It's going to take some time. But eventually, they'll figure this out, and obviously there will be plenty of proposals on how to stop it from happening again.
Back to you.
ROBERTS: Kathleen, as you point out, very, very complicated. Our Kathleen Koch live for us in New York. 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
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