Scott Hiaasen
Saturday, August 17, 2003
After an anxious night of darkness and sweat, Greater Cleveland emerged yesterday from the nation’s worst power blackout with electricity and water service restored to almost all of the more than 1.4 million people affected by the crisis.
Thursday’s massive power outage, which snaked through 100 power plants in eight states and two Canadian provinces over just nine seconds, gridlocked the Upper Midwest and Northeast, casting as many as 50 million people into darkness.
For most of those people, the lights flicked back on yesterday, albeit sporadically in some areas. And problems persisted.
In New York City, the bright lights returned to Times Square, but the subway trains remained idle. About 2 million people in the New York area were without electricity a full day after the power shut down at 4:11 p.m. Thursday. Gas was scarce around Detroit, and more than a million people in Michigan may be without power through tomorrow, the Associated Press reported.
And though air travel resumed at the major airports, it remained chaotic. During a tour of a California national park, President Bush called the collapse “a wake- up call” demonstrating that the nation’s power system “needs to be modernized,” according to the Associated Press.
Energy regulators and industry officials said yesterday they suspect that the blackout was caused by problems in power transmission lines along Lake Erie — most likely in Ohio. Some officials had earlier speculated that the problem began in New York or Canada.
Canada and the United States formed a joint task force yesterday to determine the precise cause of the blackout and prevent it from happening again.
About 1.4 million people in Northeast Ohio lost electricity in Thursday’s blackout. Parts of downtown Cleveland began to see power resume shortly after midnight, followed by the neighborhoods and suburbs. By 6:15 p.m. yesterday, power had returned to all but 12,000 customers, FirstEnergy Corp. officials said.
Power also was restored by late afternoon to all 80,000 households and busi´ nesses that use Cleveland Public Power.
Of greater concern for city officials was the city water system, which collapsed when the blackout shut down all four of the water department’s pumping stations, cutting off the pumps serving most of the system’s 1.5 million users.
Workers got the pumping stations going again by 9 a.m. yesterday, though two of them shut down briefly when they were caught in a rolling blackout.
Those residents in low-lying areas along Lake Erie, north of Detroit Avenue on the West Side and Euclid Avenue on the East Side, lost water pressure but did not lose water entirely. All other residents should boil their water for three to four minutes before drinking it through tomorrow to ensure its safety.
Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell also ordered more than a dozen tanker trucks to distribute water around Cuyahoga County on the hot afternoon.
The area remains in a state of emergency today. However, Gov. Bob Taft de´ cided not to cut short his vacation in Quebec and return to Ohio before next week, the Associated Press reported.
The power failure also shut down the city’s sewage plants, allowing roughly 60 million gallons of untreated waste to flow into Lake Erie and the Cuyahoga River over more than eight hours before the first treatment plant resumed operation early yesterday. All the Greater Cleveland beaches were closed yesterday because of health concerns, though some may reopen today, officials said.
Officials across the affected region reported few problems over the warm night. New York City saw crime go down. Four deaths, two in New York and two in Canada, were blamed on the blackout, the New York Times reported, but instances of violence and looting were few.
Cleveland police made just 19 arrests over Thursday night and early yesterday, Campbell said — far fewer than on a typical summer night. About 10 of those arrested were suspected looters, police said.
A police officer fired shots at a suspected looter in the southeast section of the city, but no one was injured, and the suspect was arrested.
In addition, Cleveland firefighters responded to about a dozen fires over´ night, some of which were probably caused by candles being used for light, Fire Chief Kevin Gerrity said.
As the sun rose yesterday morning, Cleveland seemed to march gradually toward normalcy.
Downtown was quiet and deserted: Many workers stayed home, and the Justice Center was closed. Campbell told city employees to stay home until noon. Planes began flying out of Cleveland Hopkins International Airport at 10:15 a.m.
As quickly as the power returned, it flickered off again in many areas, as FirstEnergy used rolling blackouts throughout the day to conserve power.
But by late afternoon, the blackouts had ceased. RTA trains were working in time for afternoon rush hour, such as it was.
Then people returned to downtown to watch the Browns play the Green Bay Packers and the Indians play the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. As the sun went down, the skyline glowed with light from Cleveland Browns Stadium on one end and Jacobs Field on the other.
Though some questioned the wisdom of playing the games while some residents still were without power — Campbell said the stadiums did not have a significant impact on electric capacity — others were happy for the diversion.
Standing in line at an automated teller machine at Browns Stadium, Laura Hook of Amherst said she wouldn’t have missed the football game for a water shortage, a historic blackout or anything else.
“I was scared they wouldn’t have it,” she said.
Plain Dealer reporters Mark Naymik, Mike Tobin, John Funk, Teresa Dixon Murray, Rich Exner, Janet Okoben and John Kuehner contributed to this story.
To reach this Plain Dealer reporter: shiaasen@plaind.com, 216-999-4927