3 - Islands of Heat
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 June 2012
Summary
At 4:10 p.m. on August 14, 2003, engineers in the control room for the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO), the organization charged with operating the state's electrical transmission grid, were alerted to a sudden and massive surge of power to the western region of the state. Within seconds, the surge had increased in intensity and pulsed back into the New York system, activating a series of automated breakers that would sever the state's grid into two divisions in an attempt to forestall a complete shutdown. Gaping at the NYISO's wall-sized control screen, system operators watched powerlessly as the hundreds of lights representing core components of the state's electrical grid turned red in sequence and started flashing. By 4:14 p.m., the economic capital of the world had disappeared from computer screens across the planet, and no one knew why.
The NYISO operators were witnessing in real time the beginnings of the most massive power outage in American history. Within a few minutes on an otherwise unremarkable day, 55 million residents of Midwestern and Northeastern cities, as well as portions of Canada, had lost all power. Assuming the interruption to be localized and likely of brief duration, many New Yorkers sat quietly in front of blank computer screens in their darkened offices, while others tried to remain calm on stranded subway cars under the city's streets and in the arrested elevator shafts of the city's buildings. As the magnitude of the event soon became apparent, workers started filing out of buildings onto the city's hot streets to make their way home – on foot (Figure 3.1).
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- The City and the Coming ClimateClimate Change in the Places We Live, pp. 68 - 96Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2012