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University maryland power outage

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   http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-08-14-states-blackout_x.htm

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2003-08-14-states-blackout_x.htm

State-by-state blackout reports
CONNECTICUT. Power flickered across Connecticut and some areas of the state lost electric service completely Thursday afternoon.
According to the Web site for Northeast Utilities some 182,000 customers were without power at 6 p.m. Fairfield County and Connecticut shoreline towns appeared to be the hardest-hit.

Witnesses said power was out in parts of Waterbury and Stamford. In the latter city people were lining up at pay telephones and looking for alternate transportation.

Power flickered at office state government buildings in Hartford and at Bradley International Airport in Windsor Locks.

Officials said no New York-bound planes had been rerouted to Bradley, but said such detours remained a possibility Thursday afternoon. There were no reports of delays for arriving or departing flights.

Officials from ISO-New England, which runs the regional power grid, said they were aware of the problems but had no immediate details.

The blackout closed nuclear power plants in Ohio and New York state. Peter Hyde, a spokesman for the Millstone nuclear power plant in Watertown, said the facility was online but had not been asked to generate additional power.

Gov. John G. Rowland, who was out of the state, was monitoring the situation by phone, and state emergency management officials were meeting at the Capitol, authorities said.

The state Office of Emergency Management was working with power companies to manage the situation, spokesman John Wiltse said.

Metro-North Railroad service was out, with some trains stopped between stations.

Heavily populated Fairfield County, home of the state's New York City suburbs, was a concern for electric supply even before the blackouts. The aging distribution system in the region can be overloaded in periods of peak demand, but proposals to replace or expand the system have been opposed by residents and environmentalists.

Power flickered at the Indian-run Mohegan Sun casino in Montville but the sprawling gambling palace has backup generators, a spokesman said.

Kim Hicks, of Baltic, Conn., was at the Six Flags over New England amusement park in Agawam, Mass.

"We were on the Cyclone roller coaster when the power went out," she said. "Luckily it was where it was flat, thank God, not up on top. We sat there about 20 minutes and they finally came to walk us off."

The park regained power a short time later.

MARYLAND. Maryland was largely unaffected by the massive power blackout hit U.S. and Canadian cities Thursday afternoon, officials said.

The University of Maryland, College Park campus lost power for about 15 minutes.

The outage started around 4:15 p.m. and darkened all buildings on the campus. Power was restored about 20 minutes later.

Spokesmen for BGE and Pepco said there were no other outages in Maryland or Delaware related to the blackout further north.

MASSACHUSETTS. The massive blackout touched off sporadic outages in Massachusetts, state officials and power suppliers said.

The Boston area appeared to have escaped altogether, a spokesman for power provider NStar said, while the western part of the state saw scattered blackouts.

Gov. Mitt Romney said the state was largely spared because the regional power grid operates independently from New York.

"We're asking our citizens to continue using power as they normally would," Romney said.

Massachusetts Emergency Management Agency spokesman Peter Judge said there were reports of problems in Pittsfield, but the agency did not immediately activate its emergency center but was monitoring the situation, Judge said.

There were reports of sporadic, brief outages in other parts of the Berkshires around 4:15 p.m.

In Springfield, Western New England College and the Eastfield Mall were evacuated when both lost power. Power was quickly restored at the mall, officials said.

A message left at Massachusetts Electric, which covers central and western portions of the state, was not immediately returned. The company's Web site said 241 customers, mostly in Springfield, were without power.

MICHIGAN. The national power outage spread into Michigan Thursday, darkening buildings and traffic lights from downtown Detroit to the state Capitol.

There was gridlock in Detroit as workers left their offices after the power went out around 4 p.m. ET. The Federal Aviation Administration said Detroit Metropolitan Airport was still open, but a woman answering the phone at the facility said air traffic had slowed.

Gov. Jennifer Granholm was meeting with emergency officials at state police headquarters in Lansing, which also lost power.

Employees were evacuated from the state Capitol building shortly after the outage began, state Senate employee Melissa Bourke said. Sirens could be heard around the city as fire engines helped evacuate hundreds of workers who streamed from state buildings.

After the evacuation, Bourke and friend Mike Byrne sat outside a downtown Lansing bar trying to figure out what happened.

NEW JERSEY. A huge power blackout hit northern New Jersey.

Train service was canceled and the Port Authority terminal in New York was closed and the building evacuated, according to Ken Miller, a spokesman for New Jersey Transit.

New Jersey officials activated the state emergency management office at 4:35 p.m., and state and local police were contacting utility companies to determine the cause and the extent of the outages.

There were no reported power problems in the eight southern New Jersey counties served by Conectiv, according to Bill Yingling, a spokesman for that company.

Gov. James E. McGreevey is flying back from vacation in Cape May to meet with officials, spokesman Micah Rasmussen said.

"Other than the fact that it's widespread, we don't know at this point," Rasmussen said.

NEW YORK. The power outage that struck the northeast blacked out much of upstate New York Thursday afternoon, forcing prisons, airports and hospitals to rely on emergency backup power.

Outages from New York City to Lake George to Buffalo began shortly after 4 p.m. Power began to be restored to parts of upstate around 4:30 p.m., but large swaths of the state remained without power.

Shortly before 5:30 p.m., New York Gov. George Pataki declared a state of emergency according to Pataki spokeswoman Lisa Dewald Stoll.

"Preliminarily we're looking at this as a possible transmission problem from Canada to the U.S.," Dewald Stoll said.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said it was likely the blackout started in the Niagara Falls area and quickly spread.

Niagara Mohawk spokeswoman Kerry Burns said the cause of the outages was not yet known.

Utilities recorded a real-time electricity load of 24,811 megawatts shortly after 4 p.m., about 6,000 megawatts below New York's recorded peak usages, which typically fall in late afternoon on hot summer days.

About a half-hour later, a utility web site showed usage of only 5,750 megawatts.

Every prison except one in New York State reported a loss of power and switched over to backup generators, said state Department of Correctional Services spokesman James Flateau.

Several people were trapped in elevators in the Empire State Plaza in Albany, but most had been freed by 5 p.m. Thursday, Albany fire officials said.

Stoll said state troopers and National Guard personnel had been dispatched to key locations across the state. The Pataki aide said she did not know how many officers were involved.

Pataki was returning to Albany from a vacation on a farm he owns on the shores of Lake Champlain, not far south of the Canadian border, Stoll said.

St. Joseph's Hospital and University Hospital in Syracuse switched to backup generators.

Onondaga County 911 Commissioner Steve Wisely said his office was bombarded with more than 800 calls in the first 45 minutes.

At Albany Medical Center, a spokeswoman said power went out for about five minutes but emergency generators kicked on and there was no disruption before power returned shortly before 6 p.m. Doug Myers, a spokesman at the Albany International Airport, said no flights were delayed as of 5:30 p.m. but that the airport and the Federal Aviation Administration tower was operating on emergency power.

Power outages briefly delayed afternoon races at Saratoga Race Course.

OHIO. Thursday's power outage darkened homes and businesses from Toledo to Cleveland, sending police officers to the streets to direct traffic and kickstarting generators in prisons and hospitals.

Ohio cities reporting power outages included Akron, Elyria, Mansfield, Sandusky and Tiffin.

In Stark County, the city of Canton had electricity, but its neighbor seven miles west, Massillon, was dark.

FirstEnergy spokesman Matt Slagle said the company is getting reports of outages from customers throughout its coverage area in northeast Ohio. The company has 700,000 customers.

Nuclear power plants and other electricity plants on the First Energy power grid in Ohio have shut down as a precaution, said Matt Butler, a spokesman for the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.

The company reported the outage to the state at 4:22 p.m., said Matt Butler, a spokesman for the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.

The outage hit during rush hour in Cleveland, leaving intersections with no traffic lights jammed with cars. The city's commuter rails came to a stop in the middle of their routes, and passengers had to walk to the nearest depots.

In Mansfield, which lost power, police officers hit the streets to keep traffic flowing, said jail officers Randi Allen.

"A lot of officers are out there trying to make sure nobody gets hurt, to try to cut down on the accidents," Allen said.

A police dispatcher in Medina said the entire city has no power.

In Cleveland, Olga Kropko, University Hospitals labor and delivery nurse, said the hospital was using its back-up generators and had power. She said the hospital was operating under disaster mode, meaning no staff could leave and additional personnel might be called in.

"Everyone is very hot because the air conditioning is off. Our laboring moms are suffering," she said.

Cuyahoga Community College in Cleveland said it was closing its campus until power was restored, said spokeswoman Clarie Rosacco.

"People seem pretty calm right now," she said.

MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland lost power but was using backup generators to provide electricity to patient floors, said Nicole Burke, a hospital spokeswoman.

The generators, able to run for three to five days, allow the 728-bed hospital to maintain patient care at normal levels, Burke said. However, the administrative offices were without power she said.

Five Ohio prisons in Conneaut, Grafton, Lorain and Toledo, housing about 5,100 inmates, lost power and were using backup generators, said prison system spokeswoman Jo Ellen Culp. Power was out at the Lima Correctional Institution but the outage was not believed to be part of the bigger problem, she said.

PENNSYLVANIA. Some parts of Pennsylvania, all in the northwestern corner of the state, were hit by the huge power blackout.

Power went out to much or all of Erie, Forest and Venango counties, according to emergency management officials. Outages were reported starting at about 4:10 p.m.

"It's going up and down, and we've had some brownouts," said Erie 911 supervisor Liz Schultz. "I've heard there are people at the hospital (stuck) in elevators, but they are getting them out."

Much of Pennsylvania was unaffected; the lights remained on in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. PJM Interconnection, the company that manages the power grid in much of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio and Delaware, said it had not received any reports of major power outages on its network.

Sporadic outages were reported Blair, Crawford, Warren, Cambria, Clarion and Mercer counties.

Mary Beth White, a 911 supervisor for Venango County, said power went out to the entire county shortly after 4 p.m. The county is served by Penelec. She did not know how many people were affected.

A Blair County 911 supervisor said power went out to a small section of Altoona and Juniata shortly after 4 p.m. He did not know how many people were affected.

VERMONT. A handful of northern Vermont towns lost power briefly Thursday.

A portion of the Northeast Kingdom near Sheldon lost power for about an hour, said Steve Costello, a spokesman for Central Vermont Public Service, which covers about three-fourths of the state.

Some customers in Franklin County, including Highgate and Swanton, also went without electricity briefly, Costello said.

"Vermont Yankee and our own generators along with Hydro Quebec are what's keeping the lights on right now," he said Thursday evening. "We don't really have any ties to anyone else at the moment."

Green Mountain Power customers did not appear to be affected, said spokeswoman Dorothy Schnure. The company covers most of Chittenden County, and parts of Addison and Washington counties.

"Our customers are fine; our voltage seems to be stable," she said.

Schnure said the transmissionline coming into Vermont from New York was out late Thursday afternoon, but the company was relying on power from other areas.

"The system is set up with redundancies so if you lose one line coming in, you have other lines that take up the slack," Schnure said.


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Copyright 2003 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.



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