August 15,2003 the whole entire northeastern of north america including the GTA were in the dark for several days. Do you remember anything on that day? I walked home along Yonge St. from the financial district to steeles ave.! It was fun,though.
10 years anniversary of the historic Blackout in 2003
- Thread starter mynameisearl11
- Start date
I remember that day vividly, Thursday if I recall correctly? The lights went out at my place of work around 4:00 pm, sent home early. On my way home I needed to stop at the bank, the bank was in darkness, only allowed 3 people in at a time for security reasons. My transaction was completed old school, a hand written withdrawal slip. I guess I was lucky, the hydro came back on around 8:00 pm that evening, other people weren’t quite so fortunate.
Was on my boat when the blackout hit. I didn't even know what had happened for several hours when I returned to the marina to fill up on gas. I remember heading home and seeing lines at the pump stretch around the block and the gasoline price gouging (I mean, $0.99/litre? What the hell, right?). When power didn't return by late that evening, I went back out on the water for the night. Power was back the next day.
I remember it like yesterday too. I work for a courier company and at the time was on road. As soon as I started hearing reports on the radio how widespread this thing was, I knew we were in for traffic nightmare any time, so I got back to the depot and headed home as soon as I could. We were fortunate in our part of town that we got power back by about 830pm, but there were still large parts out the next day. I remember the next day was pretty light at work because not much freight had been able to get sorted and shipped out overnight Thursday. It was one of the few times that we actually saw a lot of the neighbours out and about, mixing and mingling.
i remember it well..i got off from work early..when i got home i phoned Jenn Angel[ the veterans here know who she is] to see if she was okay at her in call,,she was..anyway we ended up having a meal in Yorkville..and i had a wonderful time...but for the life of me i cant remember if we had some play time...how ironic i can remember eating but cant remember if i had sex lol..
Heading home towards Brampton got to Bovaird and Airport Rd. was about half tank full for and some reason decided to fill-up on gas. Got home relaxing, watching TV then poof. Power is out. Waited, waited and then turned a battery radio on to hear most of the east coast was out. Not good I thought. Night fell and everyone in the neighborhood was outside sitting in chairs on lawns and drive ways with flash lights and enjoying the stars and night sky talking. Was a good night to chat with the neighbor's which we never do except hello, goodby. I think mostly we were just keeping watch around the neighbourhood. Glad I got the car filled as none of the gas pumps were working so if needed in an emergency had gas.
Was driving along Queensway at Islington and saw the traffic lights all go out and then noticed the stores were dark, went home and got the gear out and sat through the early hours just reading and chilling before bed.
I was blacked out for 3 days. Whole city was, one gas station, one Timmies open. They were doing gangbusters.
I was living in Halifax and the power never went out.I was here along with maybe 5-10 other people........and that was it
Me too. I walked from Bay & Queen up Yonge st to Lawrence.. I didn't find it fun walking that far of a distance in the heat wearing a suit and dress shoes.
I was at work...our computers flickered, then main lights went out but the backup generator kicked in. Since I was on the trading floor we immediately got on our Bloomberg terminals to find out what was going on, much like we did on 9-11. We learned pretty quickly it was the whole northeast, so we closed our positions (it was after the exchanges closed but my securities are traded over the counter) so that if it was some sort of attack the bank would not be exposed, I called my wife on her cell and made arrangements for her to walk part way to meet me and I picked her up in the car and we drove home. Unfortunately we lived in a condo at the time and it really sucked walking up all those flights of stairs!
I was out camping at turkey point. It was an entirely different grid that never lost power. Didn't know much about the situation in Toronto, didn't care really since we were all enjoying the provincial park and campfires at night 
Maybe this will help .... from the U.S.-Canada Power System Outage Task Force report.
"A fault causes a high current and low voltage on the line containing the fault - in this case the fault was caused by a transmission line in Ohio that sagged into vegetation growing under the transmission lines. A protective relay for that line detects the high current and low voltage and quickly trips the circuit breakers to isolate that line from the rest of the power system. A cascading blackout is a dynamic phenomenon that cannot be stopped by human intervention once started. It occurs when there is a sequential tripping of numerous transmission lines and generators in a widening geographical area. A cascade can be triggered by just a few initiating events as happened on August 14, 2003. Power swings and voltage fluctuations caused by these initial events can cause other lines to detect high currents and low voltages that appear to be faults, even if faults do not actually exist on those other lines. Generators are tripped off during a cascade to protect them from severe power and voltage swings. Protective relay systems work well to protect lines and generators from damage and to isolate them from the system under normal and abnormal system conditions. But when power system operating and design criteria are violated because several outages occur simultaneously, commonly used protective relays that measure low voltage and high current cannot distinguish between the currents and voltages seen in a system cascade from those caused by a fault. This leads to more and more lines and generators being tripped, widening the blackout area."
Not an "entirely different grid". You were on the same interconnected grid as the rest but were lucky enough to get "islanded", which means a small part of the grid separates from the rest of the grid and remains stable. If you were at Turkey Point on Lake Erie you may have been in an area that separated from Ontario and remained electrically connected to New York supported by the hydroelectric generation at Niagara Falls. There were a few "islands" in Ontario that survived. I recall the neighbour's kid bring out his telescope and we all marvelled at the sight of the stars with no light pollution.
I was on a westbound subway when the power went out. We were at Pape, took the bus north to Eglinton. Two eastbound 34 buses went by(we decided to go back home) .... absolutely packed so my firend and I walked from Don Mills along Eglinton to West Hill in Scarborough.
We had fun. Alot of other people walking.
When we were still on the northbound bus I called the wife, that is when we found out how large the blackout was.
Wife and I were part of the lucky ones who got the power back on late that evening. If I remember correctly some parts of Toronto were without power for more then 24hrs.
We had fun. Alot of other people walking.
When we were still on the northbound bus I called the wife, that is when we found out how large the blackout was.
Wife and I were part of the lucky ones who got the power back on late that evening. If I remember correctly some parts of Toronto were without power for more then 24hrs.
