Five years after a massive blackout left 50 million North Americans here and south of the border in the dark, have we learned any lessons about energy conservation?
Some experts say no. Jeff Walker of Harris-Decima minimizes any connection between the events of August 14, 2003 and subsequent lifestyle changes by citizens here in Canada.
"We never found in much of the research we had done that there was a direct connection between the big blackout and issues around using too much or too little energy," the pollster VP suggests, pointing to the effects of hurricane Katrina and Al Gore's documentary An Inconvenient Truth as bigger factors in influencing people's views on the environment and climate change.
And Kim Warren of Ontario's Independent Electricity System Operator, which monitors electricity consumption, says though conservation efforts have improved over the past five years the blackout wasn't necessarily the trigger.
"I think people are creatures of habit to some degree ... and I don't think there's any lingering effects in reduced consumption from the blackout," he said.
"The individual customers out there I believe want to help."
The Aug. 14 blackout saw Torontonians and millions more on the eastern seaboard, from Ohio and Michigan to Pennsylvania, New York, and Massachusetts, living without power for days. It was four days before power was restored in the U.S., while brownouts and rolling blackouts occurred for more than a week in Ontario.
Lawyer Peter Carayiannis became a mini-celebrity that day when he stepped out into the middle of a busy downtown Toronto street to direct traffic.
"I sort of remember looking at it and thinking, 'Someone's got to do something about this,"' he recalled of the beginning of his blackout experience, which would last about four hours until he was finally relieved from duty.
"To my complete surprise and shock, people were obeying my traffic signals."
Carayiannis says the event sparked a sense of working together and camaraderie not often seen.
"There were all kinds of impromptu block parties that happened all over the city, restaurants did their best to accommodate their customers, when something like a blackout occurs, people generally are going to pitch together and help out everyone else -- it sounds kind of hokey, but it's the truth," he said.
In Mississauga, residents launched a website,
http://www.blackoutday.ca/, as a way of organizing annual parties to mark the event.
They also call on Ontarians to conserve power and three dozen municipalities have signed on to do so on the anniversary. Site spokesperson Sheryl Saing says she remembers the day as being "awesome," sparking friendships with neighbours she hadn't talked to much before.
"To me it was the blackout day that got me thinking more and more about the environment and everything I've been doing, it was just amazing how much we could get done without electricity and we actually enjoyed having no power," she said.
Some local events will also mark the day the lights went out. See details below.
To see a portion of the
Citytv newscast you couldn't watch that day because of the power failure, click here.
Blackout Anniversary
Three Parties - One Celebration
Thursday, August 14, 8pm - 10pm.
PARTY OPTION #1 - PARADE
8pm - assemble Central Tech bleachers, (Harbord just east of Bathurst)
BRING - horns, drums, instruments of all kinds, noise makers, lanterns, costumes (anything silly)
9pm we depart
PARTY OPTION #2 - CRITICAL MASS BIKE RIDE
8pm - assemble at Bloor and Spadina
BRING - the usual fun
8:15pm depart
9pm return to Bloor and Spadina
PARTY OPTION #3 - SILENT STREET RAVE
8pm - assemble - 666 Spadina (at Sussex Ave.)
BRING - music player, glo-sticks, costumes, the usual fun
9:30pm - Don't miss the secret grand finale when three parties become one.
The sequence of events leading up to North America's largest blackout in August 2003, which left 50 million people without power.
Aug. 14, 2003
Generators shut down:
12:05pm EDT - American Electric Power's Conesville power plant in central Ohio.
1:14pm - DTE Energy's Greenwood power plant north of Detroit.
1:31pm - FirstEnergy's Eastlake power plant in northern Ohio.
2:02pm - Transmission line disconnects in southwestern Ohio due to brush fire under a portion of the line.
Transmission lines disconnect between eastern and northern Ohio:
3:05pm - FirstEnergy's Harding-Chamberlain line goes out of service, reason unknown.
3:32pm - FirstEnergy's Hanna-Juniper line disconnects after contact with a tree.
3:41pm - Star-South Canton line, shared by AEP and FirstEnergy, disconnects.
Remaining transmission lines disconnect from eastern into northern Ohio:
3:45pm - AEP's Canton Central-Tidd line disconnects; reconnects 58 seconds later.
4:06pm - FirstEnergy's Sammis-Star line disconnects.
Transmission lines into northwestern Ohio disconnect; generation interrupted in central Michigan:
4:08-4:09pm - AEP's Galion-Ohio Central-Muskingum and East Lima-Fostoria Central transmission lines disconnect.
4:09pm - Kinder Morgan's generating unit in Central Michigan.
Transmission lines disconnect across Michigan and northern Ohio; generation interrupted in northern Michigan and northern Ohio; northern Ohio separates from Pennsylvania:
4:10pm - Twenty generators along Lake Erie.
4:10pm - West-east Michigan lines.
4:10pm - Midland Cogeneration Venture.
4:10pm - Transmission system separates northwest of Detroit.
4:10pm - Perry-Ashtabula-Erie line.
Four transmission lines disconnect between Pennsylvania and New York:
4:10pm - Homer City-Watercure Road, Homer City-Stolle Road, South Ripley Dunkirk and East Towanda-Hillside lines disconnect within four seconds of each other.
4:10pm - Fostoria Central-Galion line disconnects.
4:10pm - FirstEnergy's Perry nuclear unit 1 on southern shore of Lake Erie and Avon Lake 9 unit near Cleveland.
4:10pm - Beaver-Davis Besse line disconnects.
Transmission paths disconnect in northern Ontario and New Jersey, isolating the northeast portion of the Eastern Interconnection:
4:10pm - Campbell unit 3.
4:10pm - Keith-Waterman line disconnects.
4:10pm - Ontario system separates when Wawa-Marathon line disconnects along northern shore of Lake Superior.
4:10pm - Branchburg-Ramapo line disconnects.
4:10pm - Over nine seconds, New York-New England transmission lines disconnect. New England (except southwestern Connecticut) and Canada's Maritime provinces - Nova Scotia, New Brunswick and Prince Edward Island - separate from New York and remain intact.
Ontario separates from New York west of Niagara Falls and west of St. Lawrence. Southwestern Connecticut separates from New York and blacks out:
4:10pm - Ontario system west of Niagara Falls and St. Lawrence separates from New York.
4:11pm - Most of Ontario blacks out.
4:11pm - Long Mountain-Plum Tree disconnects.
4:11pm - Remaining transmission lines between Ontario and eastern Michigan separate.
4:13pm - Cascading sequence essentially complete, with blackout stretching from eastern Michigan and southeast Canada to New York state, New Jersey and parts of New England.\
Timeline courtesy Associated Press