On Thursday August 14 th 2003 at approximately 4: 10 p. m. a massive power outage occurred in Ontario, Canada and northeastern United States. Nearly fifty million people were affected by this huge regional blackout. Ten million Canadians (about one third total Canadians) and forty million Americans (approximately one eight the population) were in the dark. 22 power plants was shutdown during the outage spanning 24, 000 square kilometers.
Communication by cell phone and means of transportation via railways were down leaving thousands of people stranded at their workplaces having to walk home or catch a ride. In 1965 when the first blackout occurred, an independent non-profit company named N. E. R. C. (North American Energy Reliability Council) was formed to prevent this from happening again but in 1977, 1996 and now in 2003 it happened again.
Questions arose about N. E. R. C. and why something of this importance is in trusted to a non-profit organization instead to a company runner and funded by the government. Conflicts arose between the Canadian and American government about who caused the blackout.
According to the Canadian department of national defense lightening struck in the Niagara region on the U. S. side. They also said it could have been a fire at the N. Y.
plant or the plant in Pennsylvania but all theories were false. Blackouts shouldn’t happen in our technological advanced world caused by aged power plants. There shouldn’t be chain reactions plant to plant when one or two plants are infected. The government should really try to avoid this in the future because there may not be such great response a second time around.
The Essay on United States Government Power Americans
A new age of thought and reason emerged from Europe and America in the 18 th century. This new age would be known as the Enlightenment, where people believed they were entering an age of reason, science, and a respect for humanity. During the Enlightenment, thinkers thought that the Roman Catholic Church had caused the human mind to be closed from reason. Instead of strictly following Christian ...
It was a big party the first time around because it was a new experience to most people, but when the aftermath hit people started to realize how big a deal the blackout really was from a financial standpoint. Society literally cant afford to fund another blackout.
