Power Outages Strike East Coast

fordp writes "CNN, CNBC and others are reporting that major power outages are happening just after 4:00PM EDT in New York, New Jersey, Detroit, Ottawa and Toronto, Toledo." There are reports of a Con Edison transformer on fire on 14th Street in NYC, and lots of people stuck in trains and elevators. CNN is reporting that it is, according to power officials, most likely not related to terrorism, because you know you were wondering. The Niagra Mohawk power grid is overloaded, which feeds electricity throughout the northeast U.S. and into Canada. Update: 08/14 21:06 GMT by P : The mayor said there was no fire, that it was black smoke brought on by an automatic shutdown because of the power grid failure.

Comments

First Question. Is it terrorism?

[HanzoSan]

Is this a terrorist attack? I understand that doing something like this would completely shut down the US economy.

The east

[ucblockhead]

I gather they didn't learn from the problems California had a couple years back.

Re:Manhattan

[HanzoSan]

That sucks, hopefully something is done about this before night time. I would HATE to be in Manhattan at night in pitch blackness.

SO you think its sabatoge? When you get power again tell us exactly what hapepend, maybe Slashdot will do an interview.

Re:Parts of Rochester are On

[Alan Partridge]

Hello Rochester!

Here in London, I'm getting 236 Volts of quality power here as per usual. You know, I haven't had a power outage here since I was a child - at least 15 years I reckon.

To all those people who say that HEP never runs out I say ha!

That's it!

[Daetrin]

The mayor said there was no fire, that it was black smoke brought on by an automatic shutdown because of the power grid failure.

That's the problem, they let the magic smoke out. Don't they know it stops working when you let the magic smoke out?