Vast Blackout Hits Northeastern U.S.

August 14,2003

A blackout struck eight Northeastern states and Ontario, Canada. People as far north as Toronto, as far west as Detroit, and as far south as Baltimore lost power for hours. Some were in the dark for days.

According to a subsequent investigation, the power outage was triggered when overgrown trees near Cleveland came into contact with a power line. An alarm system failed, so the local power company was unable to discern the cause of the problem. Fifty million people lost power around 4:10 p.m. Eastern Time. 

The power outage caused at least 11 deaths and financial losses totaled $6 billion. Click here to see a time-lapse image of the New York City skyline completely darkened by the outage.