US/Canada Power Outage Task Force Event Timeline

bofus writes "The U.S./Canada Power Outage Task Force issued the Aug. 14, 2003 Sequence of Events at noon today. While no conclusions are drawn at this point, it does paint a pretty good picture of what happened and when it happened."

It's not the end of the world

[Brahmastra]

A taskforce to survive power outages.... Lets show the world that we are stronger than ice-cream.

I CAN'T READ IT. MY SCREEN IS ALL BLACK.

[Anonymous Coward]

n/t

Re:text version (aka karma whoring)

[K_J_Raine]

Ah, so the Canadians weren't responsible for the blackout... as the nice mayor of New York originally contended.
Think he must have watched a bit too much South Park!

Hey they forgot...

[Cytlid]

... 5pm EST, Sept 12, 2003, the website goes down for some reason...

Re:text version (aka karma whoring)

[connsmythe96]

You left out:
Friday September 12, @03:58PM: Server goes down due to unusually high traffic.

The last entry:

[Faust7]

5:08 PM - U.S./Canada Power Outage Task Force web server goes out.

Timeline

[Prince Cyph0r]

"12:05:44 - 1:31:34 PM - Four Generator trips

2:02:00 - 2:02:00 PM - Transmission line disconnects in southwestern Ohio

3:05:41 - 3:41:33 PM - Transmission lines disconnect between eastern Ohio and northern Ohio

3:45:33 - 4:08:58 PM - Remaining transmission lines disconnect from eastern into northern Ohio

4:08:58 - 4:10:27 PM - Transmission lines into northwestern Ohio disconnect, and generation trips in central Michigan

4:10:00 - 4:10:38 PM - Transmission lines disconnect across Michigan and northern Ohio, generation trips off line in northern Michigan and northern Ohio, and northern Ohio separates from Pennsylvania

4:10:40 - 4:10:44 PM - Four transmission lines disconnect between Pennsylvania and New York

4:10:41 - 4:10:41 PM - Transmission line disconnects and generation trips in northern Ohio

4:10:42 - 4:10:45 PM - Transmission paths disconnect in northern Ontario and New Jersey, isolating the northeast portion of the Eastern Interconnection

4:10:46 - 4:10:55 PM - New York splits east-to-west. New England (except Southwestern Connecticut) and the Maritimes separate from New York and remain intact.

4:10:50 - 4:11:57 PM - Ontario separates from New York west of Niagara Falls and west of St. Lawrence. Southwestern Connecticut separates from New York and blacks out."

4:12:30 PM - ??? - Millions of random people from the northeast US yelling "OH SHIT!!!"

Re:Future Prevention

[the_2nd_coming]

here is the solution:

Build more power plants!!!!

the timeline...

[fuckfuck101]

12.04 - power on
14.11 - power off

What they *are* confident of...

[Not_Wiggins]

"We're can't say for certain what happened and when, but we can say with almost 90% certainty that when the power went out, people went without power. We think it might be related to some electrical do-hickey thingy that someone was supposed to be watching carefully in case it broke, but we're not confident enough to make that bold a statement... nor to claim that anything actually 'broke'.

"But what we *can* say is that we feel strongly that we feel something different should have happened. An appropriate amount of blame will be laid... oh yes... and we'll make the bad people pay."

I know what really happened...

[Stingr]

"it does paint a pretty good picture of what happened and when it happened."

4:10:50 - 4:11:57 PM
Technician 1: "Hey I wonder what this big red button does?" {Click}

Technician 2: "NOOOOOO!!!!"

Re:Bloomberg

[Anonymous Coward]

Blame Canada!

Blame Canada!
Shame on Canada!

The smut we must stop
The trash we must smash
Laughter and fun
must all be undone
We must blame them and cause a fuss
Before someone thinks of blaming us!

Matt and Trey -- America's Imported Wisdom

Timeline of today's slashdotting...

[Ikeya]

12:05:44 - 1:31:34 PM - energy.gov publishes timeline

2:02:00 - 4:50 PM - Business as usual. Interested parties are viewing the published timeline.

04:58:00PM - Existence of timeline is revealed to slashdot.org

05:00:03PM - energy.gov? what's that?

I wonder if it's bad when we slashdot effect gov't sites...

What really happened

[segment]

12:05:44 - 1:31:34 PM - script kiddiot downloads SoBig source code and opens up a jolt

2:02:00 - 2:02:00 PM - sciprt kiddiot gets frustrated cuz he cant gcc -o sobig sobig.c "Fuck how do I do this shit" drinks more jolt

3:05:41 - 3:41:33 PM -sends message to securityfocus.com `echo "3y3 j4m th3 k1ng 0f th3 w0rld"|mail -s help [e-mail]

3:45:33 - 4:08:58 PM - script kiddiot finds out he can't gcc a damn virus so he jumps on his leet Windows98 machine

4:08:58 - 4:10:27 PM - virus makes its way through insecure machines on the internet

4:10:00 - 4:10:38 PM - script kiddiot jerks off to jenna jameson while looking at news on television

4:10:40 - 4:10:44 PM - power goes *boom*

4:10:41 - 4:10:41 PM - script kiddiot wonders why he can no longer watch porn

4:10:42 - 4:10:45 PM - script kiddiot jumps off the bed gets dressed because mom is knocking on the door

4:10:46 - 4:10:55 PM - mom "I wonder what happened to the power"

4:10:50 - 4:11:57 PM - drinks another jolt

First Energy the real problem

[glassesmonkey]

First Energy gets informal SEC request for data
Fri September 12, 2003 08:17 AM ET
WASHINGTON, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Ohio utility First Energy Corp. FE.N on Friday said the Securities and Exchange Commission had sent it a voluntary, informal request for data regarding its recent 2002 financial restatements. "First Energy intends to fully comply with the request and does not anticipate any adverse consequences," the Akron, Ohio, company said in an SEC filing.

The SEC request was made on Thursday, First Energy said, when the Ohio utility revised three regulatory filings, citing tens of millions of dollars in "typographical and minor computational errors."

The company's transmission lines have been cited as a possible source of the massive Aug. 14 blackouts.

Oh yeah, these guys run a nUUclear powerplant that um.. is like a college landlord of mine. Cheap and dirty as possible.

Re:The blame game

[4of12]

what exactly causes frequency deviation? I'm not terribly familiar with it

Glad you asked.

It's a highly technical term that refers to the frequency of the AC sine wave of electric power that is delivered over your lines.

This frequency is related to the 60 Hz rate of revolution maintained by most generators.

Occassionally, something will happen to upset this steady rate of revolution of the generators.

In particular, Homer, a donut that falls into the space between the stator and armature will cause this problem.

Lubrication from jelly-filling in the donut can help stave off the inevitable disaster of frequency deviation, but it is simply an old-wive's tale to believe that pouring coffee into the space will ungunk the works in time.

Re:text version (aka karma whoring)

[PD]

It's not just us. The English used to have a saying: "Poor Canada: so far from God, so close to the United States."

Re:text version (aka karma whoring)

[Anonymous Coward]

9/12/2003 5:10:05 PM EST all the posts about the server getting /.ed except the first one are modded redundant.

Next on slashdot.org

[phorm]

East coast switches to linux powered servers

All east coast power generating stations, from nuclear reactors to hydroelectric dams, have suddenly decided to switch to Linux. When asked for the reason behind this decision, the response was:
"Well, erm, it was because of bl*cough* erm, I mean just a financial decision from the boys upstairs, I don't know anything about it"

Re:Canada topic/icon?

[SEE]

The USA topic/icon. Canada's a protectorate allowed to play at having its own foreign and defense policies, not a soverign country of its own.

Re:text version (aka karma whoring)

[yeti-graf]

The tragedy of Canada is that they had the opportunity to have British culture, French cuisine, and American technology. Instead they ended up with American culture, British cuisine, and French technology.

So long for a timeline?

[kosibar]

It took this long to get an official timeline? Hmm. Makes me think that maybe there's some of this [dilbert.com] going on.

Re:Canada topic/icon?

[quacking duck]

A USA flag preceded by a "!" symbol.

As in "NOT USA" ;-)

Re:The blame game

[Dr Caleb]

Tit for Tat.

Sometimes our elected officials act like school children. "I'm telling MOMMYYYYY"!!! I'm glad they aren't representative of those of us here on slash. . . oh . . .wait.

the twelve oclock effect

[Jack Schitt]

i wonder what would happen if you called Time in New York right after the power came back on... "At the tone, Eastern standard time will be, 12:00 Exactly... BEEP "At the tone, Eastern standard time will be, 12:00 Exactly... BEEP "At the tone, Eastern standard time will be, 12:00 Exactly... BEEP" Click

Re: The Blame Game

[shoemakc]

"It's a highly technical term that refers to the frequency of the AC sine wave of electric power that is delivered over your lines."

Wait a minute, could that be the problem? I hear in Canada they use cosine waves. ;-)

-Chris

Re:Timeline of today's slashdotting...

[zurab]

In related news, attorney general John Ashcroft is expected to announce tonight that justice department has successfully identified and are in the process of bringing to justice yet another terrorist organization. Online community known as "slash/dot" has been widely recognized as an organization with differing views from current White House administration. Most recently members of this organization have been responsible for hacking and bringing down the U.S./Canada Power Outage Task Force website containing the report on timeline of events during recent blackout in Northeastern United States.

"This investigation and compromized information is crucial to the security of our power supply and and our country," - said justice department spokesperson - "we are currently working with the FBI and various local law enforcemnet officials to identify and bring to justice responsible members of the underground organization." Attorney general is expected to give out more details in his address.

The "slash/dot" organization has been identified in the past as a source of criticism towards America's entertainment companies, the U.S. PATRIOT Act, Digital Millenium Copyright Act, and other laws of the land. This un-American behavior coupled with anti-White House sentiment and now, recent terrorist actions holding the joint task force website hostage has landed "slash/dot" on government's terrorist organizations list.

"That's fine," - said one Florida resident who wished to remain anonymous - "everybody has the right to free speech but if you go against the government and are accused of terrorism, then, as they say - you do the crime, you do the time, right?"

Attorney general John Ashcroft is expected to speak during primetime tonight to reach wider audience. Some skeptics argue that this address and timing is related to justice department's push to pass PATRIOT ACT II that will give law enforcement even more tools to combat terrorism. But justice department has hinted in the past that anyone expressing skepticism on the battle against terrorism may be classified as a terrorist as well.