Free Republic

<p>Five years after the worst blackout in North American history, the country's largest power providers say the problems that turned out the lights on 50 million people have largely been resolved, but they fear that larger, systemic issues could soon lead to even bigger and more damaging outages.</p>

Utility asks Brooklyn residents to avoid air-conditioning use despite heat wave Consolidated Edison Inc. urged thousands of customers to stop all non-essential electricity use as parts of Brooklyn, N.Y., suffered a power outage Sunday in the midst of heat wave. Con Ed said the outage had affected about 2,100 customers but that it had restored power to approximately 600 of those as of 11 a.m. Eastern time. As a result, it issued an appeal to those in the New York City borough's Sunset Park, Bay Ridge, Borough Park, and Park Slope neighborhoods "to discontinue their use of non-essential electrical appliances,...

What happens when you don't build more power plants? Get ready for spiking electricity rates, brownouts and even blackouts as demand soarsIf you think runaway oil prices are upsetting, just wait for what's in store for electricity. Similar forces are in play. Demand is rising fast; supply is not. The cost to get coal and natural gas out of the ground is going up, and to that expense must be added the cost of the carbon permits that Congress and the presidential candidates are contemplating. Environmentalists are getting power plants scotched. China is sucking up energy. Leave such dynamics in...

WASHINGTON -- Thousands homes and businesses are without power and Dupont Circle and Metro Center Metrorail stations are closed after a major outage in northwest D.C. on Friday. Officials said the outage was due to a failure at a substation on 10th Street. About 12,000 customers were without power at 10:30 a.m. Pepco said the outages stretches from as far north as U Street N.W. to F Street N.W., the Dupont Circle area to the west and Third Street N.W. to the east. Many downtown workers have been waiting outside on city streets because their offices are dark. Power is...

Commuters should expect major delays on Metro's Red Line this morning after a fire on the tracks near the Dupont Circle station, officials said. At the same time, a power outage in downtown Washington is affecting thousands of homes and offices, as well as traffic signals and Metro elevators and lighting.

Florida Power & Light is reporting massive power outages throughout South Florida, including Miami, Doral, Westchester, and Pembroke Pines. Reports of outages extended into Palm Beach, an FPL spokeswoman said. The company said it was investigating the problem.

NEW YORK (AP) -- An outage has disconnected BlackBerry smart phones across North America. AT&T Inc. says the disruption Monday is affecting all wireless carriers. AT&T first learned about the problem at about 3:30 p.m. EST. There's no word on the cause or when the problem might be fixed. BlackBerry maker Research in Motion did not immediately return a phone call.

Internet services have been disrupted in parts of the Middle East following damage to an undersea cable in the Mediterranean, according to reports. There was disruption to 70% of the nationwide network in Egypt, a government official told Reuters. There was also disruption in the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, reported the Associated Press. India also suffered up to 60% disruption, a national industry body told Reuters news agency. Egypt's Telecommunications Ministry said it would probably take several days for internet services to return to normal following the disruption on Wednesday. In Dubai, one of the two...

Code Pink recently put up footage of Jes Richardson of San Francisco getting arrested at the Judiciary Committee hearing on the Mukasey nomination for attorney general. The footage shows an outraged Jes Richardson, but his outrage is clearly phony.

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Parts of Southern California sweltered in triple-digit temperatures Monday as a heat wave stretched into the seventh day and contributed to power outages that left thousands without air conditioning. Temperatures soared in the San Fernando Valley with Woodland Hills reporting 102 degrees and Van Nuys at 99, according to the National Weather Service. Downtown Los Angeles also was expected to see temperatures climb above 100. Southern California Edison said 20,000 customers in Los Angeles, Orange, Ventura, Riverside and San Bernardino counties had no electricity, spokesman Steve Conroy said. San Diego Gas and Electric Co., which serves...

Breaking on CNN right now: NYC Subway system suffers major outage. More details when available...

JUNEAU, Alaska - About 10,000 Juneau residents briefly lost power after a bald eagle lugging a deer head crashed into transmission lines. "You have to live in Alaska to have this kind of outage scenario," said Gayle Wood, an Alaska Electric Light & Power spokeswoman. "This is the story of the overly ambitious eagle who evidently found a deer head in the landfill." The bird, weighed down by the deer head, apparently failed to clear the transmission lines, she said. A repair crew found the eagle dead, the deer head nearby. The power was out for less than 45 minutes...

News on local Fox News Channel 11 reports a power outtage affecting LAX. More as announced.

TOKYO - A power outage hit wide swaths of Tokyo and nearby Chiba early Monday, halting train service in some areas, news reports said. DEVELOPING...

Push to declare Queens blackout a disaster Almost a full week of no power (Astoria-WABC, July 23, 2006) - A group of Queens political leaders urged Gov. George Pataki on Sunday to designate a section of the borough suffering from a massive power outage a disaster area, making it eligible for federal aid. "Anywhere else it would be," said Rep. Joe Crowley, D-N.Y., at a news conference in Sunnyside. "If this were an area of 100,000 people in upstate New York, the governor would have declared it a disaster area." A spokeswoman for Pataki, Joanna Rose, said the governor has...

LOS ANGELES - A power outage at a major air traffic control center in Palmdale delayed flights in and out of Southern California for more than an hour Tuesday, a disruption that quickly backed up flights across parts of the western United States and Canada. The outage was reported shortly after 5:30 p.m., shutting down all telephone, electrical and radar functions. Power was restored about 80 minutes later when the center's backup generator kicked in, said Allen Kenitzer, a regional spokesman for the Federal Aviation Administration. Air traffic began to flow back into the Los Angeles area by 8 p.m.,...

ROCHESTER, N.Y. (AP) - More than a quarter-million homes and businesses still lacked power across the Northeast on Saturday as temperatures plummeted following a storm with hurricane-force wind gusts that was blamed for four deaths. Wind was still blowing at about 30 mph through the region Saturday. On Friday, wind of more than 60 mph buffeted the Rochester area and a 77-mph gust was recorded at the city's airport, the weather service said. The storm swept out of the Midwest on Friday, carrying a wave of bitterly cold air. Temperatures in some parts of western New York plunged from 60...

(Hartford-WTNH, Jan. 18, 2006 Updated 5:00 PM ) _High winds and heavy rain are to blame for a real mess across the state. Downed trees and power lines have left thousands without power. Right now, 97,500 Connecticut Light and Power customers are in the dark as well as more than 4,100 United Illuminating customers. Many of these customers are in Fairfield County. "Just as long as the big one don't come down," says John Marinelli. It is just branches and brush for John Marinelli, but his neighbor in Wethersfield is not so lucky. One of his neighbor's trees fell. "It...

LOS ANGELES -- Los Angeles Department of Water and Power officials said an outage Monday afternoon was linked to human error at a receiving station. Power officials reported outages from the San Fernando Valley to downtown Los Angeles. Workers connected the wrong wires, causing a surge of power that led to shutdowns at three power generating stations, according to officials. Receiving stations take high-voltage power from generating stations and convert it to lower voltage. It can then be used throughout the city. Ron Deaton, general manager of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, said the system is designed...

LOS ANGELES — A major portion of Los Angeles lost power Monday afternoon and officials said early indications were that a power line was accidentally cut. Outages were reported from downtown to the coast and north into the San Fernando Valley according to the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power. A Los Angeles Fire Department official said it appeared a line somehow had been cut. Terrorism was not suspected, according to police Sgt. Catherine Plows, though the Los Angeles Police Department went on "full tactical alert," meaning no officers were allowed to leave duty. Traffic was snarled at intersections...

Just heard a news flash that a major portion of Los ANgeles has lost electrical power, from downtown to the San Fernando Valley. Los Angeles Department of Water and Power has no explanation yet.

LOS ANGELES (AP) -- A large portion of Los Angeles has lost electrical power.

Sean Hannity just stated that large part of L.A. are without power....

Ezboard Inc. Victim Of Vicious Internet Attack By D.L. McCracken Jun 1, 2005, 11:30 Ezboard systems touted as the "largest online community network site on the planet", was virtually brought to its knees Tuesday as the result of "a very precise and malicious internet attack resulting in the loss of a significant amount of current and historical board postings and interrupted services across all systems", according to Ezboards' CEO, Robert Labatt's message to Ezboard members. Tuesday's attack caused denial of service errors throughout the system and affected millions of users across approximately 9,000 message boards. The attack resulted in massive...

I have been talking to a tech at bellsouth.net, and he says there is an internet backbone crash in California that is affecting eBay, MSN, and a lot of other stuff. Yes, I seem to be logged into FR, but many other sites are unavailable, including google.

Bush and GOP Web Sites Suffer Outages Thu Oct 21,12:54 AM ET By ANICK JESDANUN, AP Internet Writer NEW YORK - Web sites for President Bush (news - web sites)'s campaign and the Republican National Committee (news - web sites) suffered outages for several hours on Wednesday. It was not immediately clear whether a systems failure or a hacking attack was to blame. Campaign and committee officials would only say they were investigating. The sites began experiencing problems about 11 a.m., according to two companies that monitor Internet performance. AlertSite.com, which had monitors probing the sites every 15 minutes from...

(Hartford-AP/WTNH, July 21, 2004 6:07 AM) _ Most of downtown Hartford now has power after an outage caused by an underground fire and explosion. The area was plunged into darkness just before eleven last night. Buildings, street lights and traffic signals in some parts of the downtown area went dark after an underground fire caused an explosion. Firefighters reported seeing flames shooting 20 to 30 feet into the air out of manholes. There were 145 locations affected, seven-thousand customers, most of them business and commercial customers. Crews from Connecticut Light & Power were able to bring back power about three...

My husband is supposed to be traveling tonight. He called me 20 minutes ago to announce that Miami's Airport has lost all power...at least in the B Concourse. An update from him a few minutes ago is that the PA announcement stated that power will be out for at least the next half hour. Attempts to restore power have so far failed. All computers are down. Backup generators have some emergency lighting, but that is all at this time.

Power grids and blackouts Yep, the lights went out for 50 million people yesterday, and we still don't really know why it happened. Canada blames a fault in our system; we blame a fault in Canada's system, or a bad transmission line in the Midwest, but we're all sure it wasn't a terrorist. Why? Just because nothing blew up? Let's try a little experiment, change the word terror to sabotage. Sound any more likely now? The leading theory on the root cause of the failure, at least, the leading theory as I rode in to work this morning, was the...

WASHINGTON — Though the power returned within a day to many areas darkened by the historical blackout of 2003 (search), politicians are unlikely to forget the energy issue during the 2004 election. Less than 24 hours after a power failure set off a cascading effect that left 50 million Northeastern U.S. residents in the dark, at least two presidential candidates accused the Bush administration of failing in its energy policy. "The unfortunate events on the East Coast, parts of the Midwest and in Canada yesterday are further evidence that the Bush administration is inexorably tied to Persian Gulf oil and...

Yesterday's widespread blackouts stretching from New York to the Great Lakes and parts of Canada originated in a power system owned by Westborough-based National Grid USA. Niagara Mohawk Power Corp., based in Syracuse, N.Y., was one of several energy providers knocked out of service yesterday after a massive power surge crippled power grids around New York City, Detroit, Cleveland, Toronto and Ottawa and parts of Massachusetts. Preliminary reports from affected areas tied the blackout's origins to the Mohawk-Niagara line. In January 2002, National Grid USA acquired Niagara Mohawk, which provides electricity to nearly 1.5 million customers in upstate New York,...

(Baghdad, Iraq-AP, Aug. 15, 2003 Updated 9:54 AM) _ Iraqis who have suffered for months with little electricity gloated Friday over a blackout in the northeastern United States and southern Canada and offered some tips to help Americans beat the heat. From frequent showers to rooftop slumber parties, Iraqis have developed advanced techniques to adapt to life without electricity. Daily highs have soared above 120 degrees recently as Iraq's U.S. administrators have been unable to get power back to prewar levels. Some said it was poetic justice that some Americans should suffer the same fate, if only briefly. "Let them...

NORTH AMERICAN ELECTRIC RELIABILITY COUNCILPrinceton Forrestal Village116-390 Village BoulevardPrinceton, New Jersey 08540-5731 August 14, 2003 Power Outages – Announcement Starting at about 4:15 PM EDT, major losses of electric load occurred in the northeastern U.S. and Canada in the Eastern Interconnection.No cause is known at present, but the outages do not appear to be the result of a terrorist attack.The areas most affected center around the Great Lakes plus New York City, northern New Jersey and parts of New England. We do not know if these blackouts are related for sure, but it is likely.Con Edison in New York lost...

Hannity station went dead for about 20 seconds. Said he had never seen anything like it.

<p>Felipe Baca tries to cool off after a racket ball game in San Jose's Backesto Park on a hot Monday afternoon.</p> <p>When warmer-than-expected temperatures prompted California's energy grid operators to declare a power alert last week, they quickly stressed that the warning was not a harbinger of things to come.</p>