Question

: develop a case study (as a paper, not as a PPT) that will focus on some natural, technological, or societal disaster that has occurred There are ample topics that are acceptable, from Hurricane Katrina, to the Blackout of 2003(?), to Earthquake response domestically or overseas The goal is to develop a document that critically exams what it is that went well and what went poorly during the response to a Crisis/Disaster.Paper should be 5 to 7 pages.

Answer 1

The Northeast blackout of 2003 was a widespread power outage throughout parts of the Northeastern and Midwestern United States and the Canadian province of Ontarioon Thursday, August 14, 2003, just after 4:10 p.m. EDT.[1]

Some power was restored by 11 p.m. Most did not get their power back until two days later. In other areas it took nearly a week or two for power to be restored.[2] At the time, it was the world's second most widespread blackout in history, after the 1999 Southern Brazil blackout.[3][4] The outage, which was much more widespread than the Northeast Blackout of 1965, affected an estimated 10 million people in Ontario and 45 million people in eight U.S. states.

The blackout's primary cause was a software bug in the alarm system at the control room of FirstEnergy Corporation, an Akron, Ohio-based company, causing operators to remain unaware of the need to re-distribute load after overloaded transmission lines drooped into foliage. What should have been a manageable local blackout cascaded into collapse of the entire electric grid.

Immediate impactEdit

According to the New York Independent System Operator (NYISO) – the ISOresponsible for managing the New York state power grid – a 3,500 megawatt power surge (towards Ontario) affected the transmission grid at 4:10:39 p.m. EDT.[5]

For the next 30 minutes, to 4:40 p.m. EDT, outages were reported in parts of Ohio, New York, Michigan, and New Jersey: Cleveland, Akron, Toledo, New York City, Westchester, Orange and Rockland counties, Baltimore, Rochester, Syracuse, Binghamton, Albany, Detroit, and parts of New Jersey, including the city of Newark.

This was followed by outages in other areas initially unaffected, including all of New York City, portions of southern New York state, New Jersey, Vermont, Connecticut, and Toronto, as well as most of the province of Ontario.[2] Eventually, a large, somewhat triangular area bounded by Lansing, Michigan, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, the shore of James Bay, Ottawa, New York, and Toledo was left without power.

According to the official analysis of the blackout prepared by the US and Canadian governments, more than 508 generating units at 265 power plants shut down during the outage. In the minutes before the event, the NYISO-managed power system was carrying 28,700 MW of load. At the height of the outage, the load had dropped to 5,716 MW, a loss of 80%.[5]

Essential services remained in operation in some of these areas. In others, backup generation systems failed. Telephone networks generally remained operational, but the increased demand triggered by the blackout left many circuits overloaded. Water systems in several cities lost pressure, forcing boil-water advisories to be put into effect. Cellular service was interrupted as mobile networks were overloaded with the increase in volume of calls. Major cellular providers continued to operate on standby generator power.[citation needed] Television and radio stations remained on the air, with the help of backup generators, although some stations were knocked off the air for periods ranging from several hours to the length of the entire blackout.

It was a hot day (over 31 °C, or 88 °F) in much of the affected region, and the heat played a role in the initial event that triggered the wider power outage. The high ambient temperature increased energy demand, as people across the region turned on fans and air conditioning. This caused the power lines to sag as higher currents heated the lines.

In areas where power remained off after nightfall, the Milky Way and orbiting artificial satellites became visible to the naked eye in metropolitan areas where they cannot ordinarily be seen due to the effects of particulate air pollution and light pollution.[6]

Most of the Amtrak Northeast Corridorservice was interrupted, as it uses electric locomotives; electrified commuter railways also shut down.[2] Via Rail in Canada was able to continue most of its service. The power outage's effects on international air transport and financial markets were widespread.[vague]The reliability of the electrical grid was called into question.

Unaffected regionsEdit

Within the area affected, about 200,000 people continued to have power – in the Niagara Peninsula of Ontario; the easternmost corner of Ontario (centered on Cornwall); the Buffalo, NY area, excluding southern Erie county, along the shore of Lake Huron via a feeder line to Owen Sound from Bruce Nuclear Generating Station. Three of the four Bruce B units were able to throttle back their output without a complete shutdown, then reconnect to the grid within five hours; the portion of New York state including parts of Albany and north and west of Albany; a small pocket of mid-east Michigan; the Upper Peninsula of Michigan; and small pockets in New Jersey. The unaffected area was protected by transmission circuit devices at the Sir Adam Beck Hydroelectric Generating Stations in Niagara Falls, (coincidentally, the starting point of the Northeast blackout of 1965) at a switching station of the hydroelectric power station in Cornwall, as well as central New York state. Philadelphia and the surrounding mid-Atlantic areas were also completely unaffected because PJM disconnected them.[5] The power plant[which?] in East China Township, Michigan, remained online for about 36 hours, and residents were informed that the plant would have to shut down in order to facilitate the reboot of the whole system.