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.
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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.
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.
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