ABSTRACT
On Thursday, August 14, 2003, the worst and most widespread loss of electricity during a blackout in U.S. history occurred at 10 minutes and 48 seconds after 4:00 p.m., knocking out electrical power in eight states as well as large areas of Ontario and Quebec in Canada. The outage happened almost simultaneously. At fi rst, it was thought to be the result of a terrorist attack, because of horrendous destruction so recently experienced in New York and Washington, DC on 9/11. Soon, however, this electricity network failure was discovered to have been merely an accident, although it was not known for weeks exactly how, where, or why the accident happened. Former Secretary of Energy in the Clinton Administration, Governor Bill Richardson of New Mexico, was reported the next day on the front page of The New York Times as observing that “We are a major superpower with a third-world electrical grid. Our grid is antiquated. It needs serious modernization.”237
