Blackout Probe Focuses on Phone System

Monday, August 18, 2003

(10:23 PM ET) (02:23 GMT)

The Associated Press

"We will be looking at hardware, software and people."

NEW YORK -- AP
Warnings of trouble in the sprawling electric power grid ahead of the nation's worst blackout came too late, or not at all, over a telephone hot line network created to prevent widespread breakdowns, power officials and politicians said Monday.

Investigators were probing the role of the low-tech system of phones put in place to disseminate information between regional power groups to avert just such a crisis.

Failures in Ohio transmission lines prompted at least three conversations last Thursday between FirstEnergy Corp., the utility that owns them, and the industry group that manages transmission across much of the Midwest, said Mary Lynn Webster, a spokeswoman for the Midwest Independent Transmission System Operator.

Webster said the Midwest group initiated the first contact with FirstEnergy. The group is reviewing recordings of those conversations and computer logs and other data.

Those electricity transmission line failures, which began around 3:06 p.m. EDT, are a focus of the investigation and suspected in the blackout's possible starting point.

The failures were snowballing into system-wide disturbances by the time the Midwest group spoke with its counterpart in Pennsylvania, said Bob Hinkel, general manager of PJM Interconnection, which manages power across much of seven states and the District of Columbia.
(More: CNN.com)
2003 © The Associated Press.

Dan