Pennsylvania and Ohio residents found themselves stuck in traffic jams, elevators and the dark yesterday as relatively unharmed -- but very much affected -- victims of a historic blackout.
(Matt Freed, Post-Gazette)In Akron, Ohio, Kris Michaels and his mother, Mary Michaels, hold onto each other in the living room, which is being illuminated by a headlight from a 1984 Oldsmobile that Kris hooked up to a car battery using speaker wire.
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Most of the outages in Pennsylvania were concentrated in the northwestern corner of the state. Emergency officials in Erie, Crawford, Venango, Clarion, Bradford, Forest and Warren counties said outages lasted into the night in many communities, but none resulted in serious injuries or problems.
Power returned within several hours to some parts of northwestern Pennsylvania that lost electrical service shortly after 4 p.m. In less fortunate parts of the region, residents had no idea how long they would be without air conditioning, fans, television, refrigeration and other modern conveniences.
"Nobody has been able to tell us that at all," said Tom Lawson, the city of Erie's emergency management director. "It's all dependent on the grid."
Erie and Akron, Ohio, residents were among those affected by the cascade of outages that robbed millions of people of power in the Midwest and Northeast, and in some parts of Canada. The mid-sized cities didn't have New York City-sized subway and skyscraper evacuation problems, but traffic and safety concerns arose.
The normal rush hour coincided with the time when traffic signals lost power, and more people than usual let out of downtown offices simultaneously.
Erie city police responded to about a dozen late-afternoon traffic accidents.
"Some people can't drive and chew gum at the same time, but in most of these cases, we think the blackout was to blame," said police Lt. Bob Johns Jr.
Power was restored to southern Erie and most of its downtown by 6:30 p.m., by borrowing an electricity supply from Indiana, Pa., to replace power from the downed Niagara grid. The city's major hospitals regained normal power after operating on backup service for a few hours.
(Matt Freed, Post-Gazette)Kris Michaels burns cardboard in a grill to illuminate the back yard at his mother's hone in Akron.
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Akron Mayor Don Plusquellic pleaded for people to just go home or stay home, and most did. Neighbors brought out drinks and torch lamps after dark to socialize and discuss the day's unusual events, such as amusement park rides halting at Cedar Point and people streaming out of multiplex cinemas, where all of the films stopped prematurely.
Akron police added 40 officers to the usual complement to help direct traffic and head off serious problems.
"Better safe than sorry," said deputy police chief Craig Gilbride, just before the lights came back on Downtown at 8:44 p.m.
Pennsylvania Emergency Management Agency officials said the blackouts seemed to be causing minimal disruption by nightfall.
"We are monitoring the situation ... but there's really nothing to do right now. There are no unmet needs out there," said PEMA spokeswoman Maria Smith in Harrisburg.
"If a county called us and reported that it had a problem because of outages, we would help. If a hospital needed a backup generator, [it] could call us and say, 'Get us one.' But all the 911 centers [in affected counties] are operating on backup generators. The hospitals all are on backup [generators]. No one has called. Everything is operating perfectly."
Emergency officials in some of the affected areas said their biggest concern was residents dependent on oxygen, because they needed an outlet to plug in their portable tanks.
"We're setting up a couple of shelters and we'll let people know where they can go," said Richard Graff, emergency service director for Venango County, which had a list of at least 130 residents on home oxygen. About 90 percent of the county lacked power as of 8 p.m., he estimated.
Referring to severe storms that walloped the area last month, Graff said, "The only difference this time is we don't have to move any trees out of the way."
Some of the areas hit were so rural that a power outage could be hard for an outsider to discern.
When asked if any disruptions occurred from the loss of traffic signals in Forest County, state police communications officer James Tripp was quick to point out: "We don't have any of those in Forest County -- not a single one."
(V.W.H. Campbell Jr., Post-Gazette)Dani Bennjett, Jackie Hayden and Jenn Ward try to stay cool outside the Sagertown Dairy Inn while waiting for the power to retun. The ice cream was kept in locked freezers so it wouldn't melt. Power went out in the area at about 4 p.m. and didn't return for several hours.
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Consumers of all types found out, however, how dependent their everyday needs are for electricity.
Stephanie Bennett, trying to drive from Russell, Pa., to West Virginia University, found out in Meadville that gas pumps weren't pumping when she stopped to fill up. She called AAA to have a few gallons of gas delivered.
She cursed the hot day and fumed about the potential cause of the blackout: "All those yuppies running their air conditioning."
Other travelers, by air, had their own frustrations. US Airways canceled or delayed flights on many of its East Coast routes because the Federal Aviation Administration closed the key New York area airports. Evening flights out of Pittsburgh International Airport to New York's LaGuardia were among those canceled.
Local residents who did arrive at destinations in the Northeast found themselves ensnared in the complications and uncertainties created by the blackout.
Mallory Lichwa and Jennie Cochenour, two 16-year-olds from Pittsburgh, were in New York with Lichwa's mom to see a WNBA game. They found themselves stuck in Manhattan with no game to see, no hotel room to stay in and no way to get off the island.
"We might have to sleep here," Cochenour said, pointing to the Times Square pavement.
She was wearing a New York Liberty jersey and clutching a poster of her favorite player, Becky Hammond.
"I waited all summer for this," Cochenour said.
First Published: August 15, 2003, 4:00 a.m.
