Talk:Northeast blackout of 2003

Inadequate situational awareness at FirstEnergy

The fault alarm The primary cause of the loss of situational awareness was failure of the fault alarm part of a computer system. The operators noticed and switched to another system but that also failed a few minutes later. Attempts to restore service failed until the main system, its backup and all connected systems were restarted after the blackout.

Loss awareness of the state of their network First Energy operators, in part due to failure of the computer system which should have alerted them to failures in their transmission system and failure to sufficiently trim trees under its power lines in part of its Ohio service area, which led to normal heat-caused sagging of power lines operating within their capacity limits to touch the trees and go out of service. These problems were compounded, but not caused, by the Eastlake 5 power plant near Cleveland, Ohio going offline and causing an increase in the need to transfer power over the lines. It also found that FirstEnergy did not warn other control centers until it was too late because of faulty monitoring equipment and inadequate staff. The cascading effect that resulted ultimately forced the shutdown of more than 100 power plants.

— Preceding unsigned comment added by Jamesday (talk | contribs) 02:24, 17 December 2003 (UTC)

Citations for Affected Infrastructure section

Here are some sources that could possibly fill in some details for the "Affected Infrastructure" subsection. I wanted to record these here in case someone has some time to figure out where they could be inserted, otherwise, I will try to do so myself when I have some time.

1. Water supply:

• https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/15/national/blackout-brings-water-shortages-to-cleveland-and-detroit.html
• https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/politics/2003/08/16/rolling-power-outages-shut-off-water-supply/745f7128-16ec-4a49-8e7e-49bfdcef3141/

2. Transportation:

• https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/15/us/blackout-2003-transportation-thousands-stranded-foot-crippled-trains-crawling.html

3. Communication:

• https://www.nytimes.com/2003/08/15/business/blackout-2003-communications-when-wireless-phones-failed-because-heavy-use.html

4. These sources look like they may cover multiple aspects of the blackout:

• https://highways.dot.gov/public-roads/septemberoctober-2004/learning-2003-blackout
• https://www.ima.umn.edu/2003-2004/W2.9-13.04/20256 Magnanimous-meekrat (talk) 17:46, 2 July 2022 (UTC)

Cultural depictions (Proposed section)

The similar article New York City blackout of 1977 contains a section "Legacy" which lists media depictions of that blackout. I'm not 100% sure it's interesting to anyone else, but the are several cultural depictions of the 2003 blackout that I know of:

• City on Fire (TV series), when adapted from the novel of the same name, substituted the key plot point of the 1977 blackout with the 2003 blackout. Here are relevant references:
  • https://screenrant.com/city-on-fire-true-story-wrong-book-change-blackout/
  • https://www.elitedaily.com/entertainment/is-city-on-fire-true-story-blackout-real

• The Dua Lipa music video Electricity is also set during the 2003 blackout. Reference:
  • https://www.lofficielbaltic.com/culture/watch-dua-lipa-and-silk-city-s-steamy-video-for-electricity

• The novel Moon of the Crusted Snow was inspired by the 2003 blackout. Reference:
  • https://www.tbnewswatch.com/wisdom/blackout-of-2003-inspires-post-apocalyptic-indigenous-tale-2452604

2806:2F0:91A1:8106:39A0:D349:3DEA:4455 (talk) 05:46, 25 July 2023 (UTC)

That sounds crazy 2600:1702:3231:4450:1DF:9A1E:E804:5F61 (talk) 12:02, 8 May 2024 (UTC)