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Northeast Blackout of 2003
Known as the Northeast Blackout of 2003, it was a massive widespread power outage that occurred throughout parts of the Northeastern and Midwestern United States, and Ontario on Thursday, August 14. Although not affecting as many people as the later 2003 Italy blackout, it was the largest blackout in North American history and lasted roughly 4-5 days. It affected an estimated 10 million people in the province of Ontario (about one-third of the population of Canada) and 40 million people in eight U.S. states (about one-seventh of the population of the U.S.). Outage-related financial losses were estimated at $6 billion USD.
Obviously, this event disrupted power generation but it also influenced our clean water supply, transportation, communication, industry (factories) and there were reports of vandalism and looting in the USA and Canada.
Business Impact
Businesses without their own means of power generation were not able to operate. Those that did experienced a large amount of absenteeism due to transportation and communication issues. Significant amounts of data were lost due to the sudden loss of power for businesses without unassisted power supplies. Some businesses experienced customer and business loss due to not being able to meet their supply obligations. Overall financial losses were estimated at $6 billion USD.
An estimated 2.4 million workers in Ontario and Gatineau, Quebec, lost 26.4 million hours of work time in the second half of August because of the Ontario-US power outage and subsequent conservation period. This amounted to over one in three workers. At the same time, an estimated 713,000 people, or 11.0% of workers, put in a total of 7.5 million overtime hours. The net effect was a loss of 18.9 million hours.
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