Massive blackout hits cities from New York to Detroit and into Canada

The biggest power blackout in history hit steamy U.S. and Canadian cities today, stranding people in subways, closing nuclear power plants in Ohio and New York state and choking streets with workers driven from stifling offices.

Canadian officials said the apparent cause was a lightning strike at a power facility on the United States side of Niagara Falls. There was no sign of terrorism, officials in New York and Washington agreed.

The blackouts robbed power for roughly 50 million people in a broad swath of the U.S. Northeast — stretching west to Ohio and Michigan — and in southern Canadian cities, starting shortly after 4 p.m. Eastern time. In Toronto, Canada's largest city, workers fled their buildings when the power went off. There also were widespread outages in Ottawa, the capital.

Power began to come back in some cities as afternoon turned to evening, but officials said full restoration would take hours longer. President Bush said today that people affected by the huge power blackout may not see their lives return to normal right away but "slowly but surely we're coping with this massive, national problem."

"I have been working with federal officials to make sure the response to this situation was quick and thorough and I believe it has been," Bush said in San Diego during a two-day California trip.

But, the president said, state and local officials have not asked the federal government for much help as of yet.

Traffic lights were out throughout downtown Cleveland and other major cities, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour.

New York state lost 80 percent of its power, said Matthew Melewski, speaking for the New York Independent System Operator, which manages the state power grid. Both New York and New Jersey declared states of emergency.

In New York City, subways, elevators and airports, including John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports, lost electricity or resorted to limited backup power. Thousands of people streamed into the streets of lower Manhattan in 90-degree heat; some subway commuters were still stuck underground two hours after the blackout hit.

Nadja Haldimann, 31, a Seattle software designer visiting New York City for a conference, described the scene in Times Square moments after the power went out.

"It's just chaos on the streets," she said. "People are walking around, everyone is on their cell phones, some are crying and nobody really knows what to do."

There were outages in northern New Jersey and in several Vermont towns. In Connecticut, Metro-North Railroad service was knocked out. Lights flickered at state government buildings in Hartford.

In Albany, N.Y., several people were trapped in elevators in Empire State Plaza, but most had been freed by 5 p.m. People in New York City lined up 10 deep or more at pay phones, with cell phone service disrupted in some areas.

In Cleveland, Olga Kropko, a University Hospitals labor and delivery nurse, said the hospital was using its back-up generators and had limited power. "Everyone is very hot because the air conditioning is off," she said. "Our laboring moms are suffering."

Police in Mansfield, Ohio, spread into the streets to keep traffic flowing. "A lot of officers are out there trying to make sure nobody gets hurt, to try to cut down on the accidents," said jail officer Randi Allen.

The blackouts rivaled those in the West on Aug. 11, 1996, when heat, sagging power lines and unusually high demand for electricity caused an outage that affected 4 million customers in nine states, one of the most severe outages in U.S. history.

A blackout in New York City in 1977 left some 9 million people without electricity for up to 25 hours.

Today, Amtrak suspended passenger rail service between New Haven, Conn., and Newark. Some northbound trains from Washington — a city that did not lose power — turned around at Newark.

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg asked the city's more than 8 million people to be calm, go home, open windows and drink water.

"Be sure you don't make an inconvenience into a tragedy," he said.

As for the cause, he said: "It was probably a natural occurrence which disrupted the power system up there and it apparently for reasons we don't know cascaded down through New York state over into Connecticut, as far south as New Jersey and as far west as Ohio."

The FBI and Homeland Security Department both said the outages appeared to be a natural occurrence and not the result of terrorism.

For police, the focus was on the ramifications of the blackout rather than its cause.

"We're more concerned about getting the traffic lights running and making sure the city is OK than what caused it," said a spokesman at the department's operations center downtown.

"The good news is that in New York City, while we have lost all the power, Con Ed's facilities have shut down properly, which we have programmed them to do," said Bloomberg.

Four nuclear power reactors — two in New York and two in Ohio — reported they were shut down because of the loss of off-site power, according to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission in Bethesda, Md. They were the two Indian Point reactors in New York state, and the Perry and Fermi nuclear power plants in Ohio.

The North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry group responsible for monitoring the integrity of the system, said the power outages were "widespread and appear to be centered around Lake Erie, although they are affecting the entire eastern interconnection."

No problems were reported by power companies in the Puget Sound area.

The Bonneville Power Administration grid is not connected to the East Coast system, said spokesman Bill Murlin, preventing problems in the Pacific Northwest and California.

"But that also means we can't help them out," he said.

Flights at six airports — Kennedy, LaGuardia, Newark, Cleveland, Toronto and Ottawa — were grounded, according to the U.S. Transportation Department.

At Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, officials were advising travelers heading to the eastern U.S. to call their individual airlines. Most, but not all, nonstop flights from Sea-Tac to the eastern cities affected by the blackout depart in the morning, said spokeswoman Rachel Garson.

Bob Parker, spokesman for Sea-Tac, said there were three more from arrivals coming in today from Newark and three from JFK, but the New York flights "are late enough in the evening they might not be affected."

"It's not a lot of flights, and we wouldn't expect the impacts to be too visible in this airport," he said. "It's obviously a huge impact for the people in the planes, but it's probably not going to have people sleeping in the airport in large numbers."

At the Homeland Security Department, spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said federal officials were still gathering information and had not determined a cause of the outage. The department "is working with state and local officials and the energy sector to determine the cause of the outage as well as what response measures may be needed to be taken," he said. He said everyone should "listen and heed the advice of the local authorities."