Of course ignorant Americans have to blame Canada for it.

Are you aware Canada has blamed America three different ways? All of which proved to be false. So is the ignorant American comment really appropriate.

sorry double post.
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Of course ignorant Americans have to blame Canada for it.

Now that was totally uncalled for. We don't truthfully know whos fault it is yet and all you've done here is open things up for a flame war.

Besides that, you're facts are wrong.

Please don't start playing the silly 'blame-game'. It will do absolutely no good.

The best thing we can do on an individual basis is urge our respective representitives to find ways to work together to arrive at constuctive solutions to the outdated power infrastructure.

Too much time and energy (excuse the pun) is wasted standing around blaming others. Use that time and energy to fix the problems long-range, and this doesn't need to happen again.

The longer polititians can keep the general population pointing fingers at the 'other side', the longer they can go without having to actually do their jobs and find the solutions.

Now, back to our regular scheduled programming....skinning.

Our little ray of sunshine at it again, eh?

The first news reports said an incident in Manhattan may have been the trigger. Canadian gov't reps started talking about lightning strikes and fires in the US and later retracted the statements. NERC (an industry sponsored group) suggested the initial event may have begun in Ohio, then backed off stating the cause was undetermined. Another outfit said Michigan. Lots of speculation, but analysis for such a huge outage takes time.

The grid is (rather obviously) interconnected. What the various operators in the areas affected did or didn't do to contribute to the spread of the outage no doubt will be reviewed. An outage or incident in one area shouldn't (if the systems and all the operations are doing what they are supposed to do) result in such a massive outage. Likely there will be blame enough to go around and a number of factors that contributed to such a massive outage.

It was reported on the National news that the Software the power company in Canada was using is the culprit.Somehow it failed to prevent the power outage cascade when a generating station there went off..

personally, I believe it was UFO's

Sorry guy's. I put 2 new bats. in my flash light and all the power went out. So it wasn't Canada nor USA nor UFO's. No more blameing each other let's work togather

#23 by Oil2003 - 8/15/2003 11:23:03 AM Of course ignorant Americans have to blame Canada for it.

Actually, we blame Canada for everything (I'm hoping somebody besides me knows what that was in reference to)

I don't think anyone can say at this point where it started or *what* started it, so we all need to chill out.

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!! Do any of you know what it's like trying to go to sleep in the dead heat of summer with no A/C???? My power just came back at about 5:30pm EST. Last night was rough! I live on the northern jersey coast, I took some pictures of NYC while it was black. One good thing, it was a massive block party outside. Everywhere you went there was people just partying outside. I'll upload the pics when I get the film developed.

Double post.
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Love to see the pics Hus.

Apparently Detroit is still idiot central without power....

I'll let Karma et al fill in the fun details of gas getting and whatnot right now

I finally got my mail back!

"Do any of you know what it's like trying to go to sleep in the dead heat of summer with no A/C????"

Yeah. Grew up that way. Not even fans for some reason I don't understand. I used to go and soak in the tub to cool off. Lived in various places for years with no AC. With temps occasionally reaching 110+. And while it may be dry during the day time it's relatively more humid at night. High humidity's what makes the heat rather unbearable.

Lying in a kiddie pool with some water is OK as long as you don't manage to drown yourself in your sleep. (One potential draw back to one of my handy "keep cool hints." )

Hope this site is all the way up when I get off work today. I'am starting to go crazy.

I can't connect to news.stardock.com even though I can see www.stardock.com...

Is the news server still down?

#37 by Doomgaze - 8/15/2003 4:13:28 PM Apparently Detroit is still idiot central without power.... I'll let Karma et al fill in the fun details of gas getting and whatnot right now

Detroit has many issues: the biggest of which right now is router gridlock.  It appears that the power surges may have taken a toll on some local routers, and that is why Stardock is not completely up.  Stardock has power, but no internet connectivity

As for the "stupid" Detroit (and as West in Michigan as I live which is 55 miles from Detroit), people *freaked* over this.  They all decided at once that there will be no more gas and all had to go to the gas station at once.  it was impossible to drive because people would stay in line for hours waiting to get into the gas station and blocking the road.  They were also savaging for ice, water, and were generally acting like there was a nuclear holocaust about to happen.  It was just insane. 

I live in a town of 3,000 people.  We have 3 gas stations.  Now, it is quite obvious that the people at the gas stations were not from our town.  Why do I say this?  1) the people from this town know that the gas stations are always open because the all have generator backups.  2) the town is filled with farmers who either a) have their own gas supply or really don't need to go anywhere.  3) the town already had power

People were just acting really stupid.  I went grocery shopping in Chelsea (which is a close, bigger city) and it was gridlock.  (I used the knowledge that I had and used back streets which allowed me to get around the main drag which was hardly moving).  Chelsea is right off the expressway and the city has it's own backup power so they never go down (and that is why there were so many people there).  Well, this guy asks me were he can get gas.  I told him where the gas stations were and that Manchester wasn't quite as bad.  he said "but, I only have about 3 miles tops left in my tank".  I told him where the local hotels were..... 

when these things happen it makes ppl appreciate all the things we tend to take for granted every day in our busy lives and if ppl would shut off a switch or two in the summer that they really don't need maybe a few power outages could be avoided?

"Of course ignorant Americans have to blame Canada for it"

Actually, I was just joking... The power went out again just as I hit the submit button and I was going to add that I was just joking but it was too late. I hope I didn't make too many ememies over this. I am surprised that it even got posted.
I was upset when New York's major blamed Canada, but our idiot Prime Minister had to open up his big mouth and so did the defence minister. They both said some stupid things blaming our neighbours to the south. I don't think it was anybody's fault. I don't think there should have been any finger pointing to begin with. Between the Canadians not supporting the US in the war and the Americans not accepting Canadian beef across the border, it was typical for both sides to blame each other. I think it's stupid and childish.

Anyway, I live just outside of Toronto and we finally got power Friday at 1:30pm. Power went out again at exactly 6:30pm and came on at 8:00pm. It's been on since then and I have my fingers crossed it will stay on especially with this heat. I heard that there is still some people in Toronto that still don't have power. It's in the poor section with a bunch of older people. I feel very sorry for them. They have had to sleep out side since they can't get up to their apartment. I also feel sorry for the people that were trapped in subways and elevators in both Toronto and NY when the power went out. I thank god I was safe at home when it all happened.

Thanks for clarifying, Oil2003, and you are right about people in high places mouthing off before they were in possession of actual facts. Especially at that point, it made no practial difference where it may have started to people without power who needed actual help and not politicians grandstanding for the media.

I guess thousands of people sleeping on the street in NYC worked out ok, that is without incidents, but I was wondering why NYC didn't arrange for buses to take at least some to various spots as shelters? They had to know from previous experience that a massive power outage would not be restored in a matter of a few hours and that stranded folks (and visitors kicked out of their hotels due to the outage) would need a place to stay for the night. There are two big pro sports stadiums (I saw one nice empty stadium on TV with its lights on) and other local venues that (presumably) must have had emergency generators for back up that might have helped. Yeah, the number of people was huge, but still NYC's gov't has been patting itself on the back for its emergency preparedness and yet for the most part it seemed like everyone was on his own with civilians directing traffic and people making do on their own for the most part. Of course, I don't know first hand just from what I saw on TV, but I wondered about it.

Starts singing "Blame Canada".

Seriously, the whole blame game achieves nothing. Not only do we have the US and Canada playing the blame game with each other, but we have seen Democrats publicly bashing Bush three hours after the power was cut off. Shame on the Democrats for trying to use this power failure for political gain. The power outage is a technical problem. Nothing is perfect. Fact of life.



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Ah yes, south park. maybe I need to watch that movie again!