By Patrick Rizzo
New York - One of the largest power outages in North American history blacked out New York and other major American and Canadian cities overnight, disrupting life for millions of people and trapping thousands in lifts and on crowded subways.
As the lights went out on Broadway, officials ruled out sabotage, but could not agree on the cause.
"The one thing I can say for certain is that this was not a terrorist act," United States President George Bush told reporters.
| 'Suddenly you start thinking about 9/11' |
Amid initial fears that New York could once more be the target of a terror attack, the power grid failure spread as far as Detroit and Cleveland, and across the Canadian border to Toronto and Ottawa.
In New York, the blackout trapped thousands in crowded subways, forced millions of evacuated office workers onto the streets, darkened Broadway and hit late trading on US financial markets.
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It also jangled nerves among many New Yorkers whose memories of the airliner hijacking attacks of September 11, 2001, are still raw. People could be seen running through the streets of the city's downtown financial district.
"Everybody just flipped out," said nurse Mary Horan, stranded, with hordes of others, outside Grand Central Station. "Suddenly you start thinking about 9/11."
In Ottawa, the darkness brought criminals and vandals out onto the streets. "There is serious looting going on," said city police chief Vince Bevan, reporting break-ins, smashed windows and theft in the Canadian capital.
The office of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien said that a severe outage at a Pennsylvania nuclear power plant may have caused the massive power blackout that cascaded over an area of 9 300 square kilometres in the US north-east and Ontario.
Earlier, US and Canadian officials said a fire or perhaps lightning had hit a power plant near Niagara Falls in New York state.
Power grid operators said there appeared to have been a failure on the high-voltage transmission lines connecting the United States and Canada.
They estimated it was the biggest outage to strike the North American grid, although exact numbers are not yet available.
Nine nuclear reactors in four US states were shut down, officials said.
Bush vowed that the government would investigate what caused the outage and promised to prevent a recurrence.
"This was not a terrorist act," Bush told reporters during a visit to California. "We're slowly but surely coping with this massive national problem," he added, saying that he was "confident we can get things up and running".
Declaring a state of emergency, New York Governor George Pataki said about half of the state's 19 million people were affected. Officials in Canada said as many as 10 million people were affected by the cuts, which brought most of southern Ontario to a halt.
Ontario declared a state of emergency.
Air traffic into New York's three major airports was affected for several hours. Flights began to trickle back into New York area airports, however, and the Federal Aviation Administration lifted flight bans into New York and Canadian airports.
Office workers crowded onto the streets in heat of more than 33°C, facing a long walk home as buses and trains came to a halt. Streets became gridlocked when traffic signals failed.
Thousands of New Yorkers were trapped underground in the dark when rush hour subway trains stopped in their tunnels after the power went out shortly after 4pm EDT (20h00 GMT).
Cellular phone services were disrupted as anxious New Yorkers clogged the network with calls.
New York's mayor, Michael Bloomberg, later told a news conference power had returned to various parts of the city but said: "We're still not out of the woods yet."
In a City Hall lit by emergency lighting, Bloomberg said that parts of Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island had power but Manhattan and Staten Island were still largely dark.
"We think that it should be a normal day in terms of being able to go about your business tomorrow," he said. "Our expectation is that traffic will be flowing normally and that the subways will be working."
"Treat it like a snow day," he suggested. "Look out the window and listen to the radio. It wouldn't be the worst thing to take a day off."
Late trading on US financial markets was hit by the outages, with dealing rooms shut down across the region.
But the New York Stock Exchange and Nasdaq are set to open on Friday morning as usual, and most major Wall Street firms said contingency plans were working well and emergency power generators were running smoothly.
In New York, Citibank and JP Morgan Chase and Co said their automatic teller machine networks had been shut down in areas affected by the blackout.
In Toronto, Canada's largest city, the transit system ground to a halt and thousands were stranded as temperatures hit 30°C. Subway stations were closed to prevent overcrowding.
Both the Toronto Stock Exchange, the country's main bourse, and Pearson International Airport operated on back-up power supplies.
Power was still on in Montreal, Quebec City and most of Quebec. A spokesman for Montreal's Dorval airport said all flights to blackout cities have been cancelled, including Toronto.
In Detroit, headquarters of the largest US automakers, many workers decided to go home after the lights went out, creating traffic gridlock in the city. General Motors said several of its auto plants were closed by the outages.
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