DETROIT -- The heat is stifling. The humidity is even worse. The air is filled with stench in the candle-lit bathrooms. The place is a mess with wires and cable strewn all over, and bags of junk food litter a long table usually used to sort news scripts.
People are sweaty and testy, munching on chips and stumbling around looking for water bottles in the dark. We're the lucky ones. We, at least, have a little light and a little water. Many others don't. It is Day Two of the Great Blackout of 2003.
The show must go on, even though most of our viewers can't watch. An emergency oil-fueled generator keeps our station on the air, and we broadcast continuously throughout the crisis, although with limited power in the newsroom.
At first, I thought it was a temporary blackout caused by too much demand on a sultry summer afternoon. I got on the phone with DTE Energy, the parent company of Detroit Edison, the major power supplier for southeastern Michigan. They don't have a clue other than noting the power outage is widespread and may be tied to a problem with the grid system.
My friend and colleague Murray Feldman, who's the best "by the seat of his pants" anchor I've ever seen, is on the air using grains of information to explain the dramatic story. He's cool and unflappable and tosses to me in the newsroom. Since I'm from Niagara Falls, and know these things, I explain the North American grid system and remind viewers that in the big blackout of 1965, which put New York City in the dark, the problem was eventually traced to a failure at the Sir Adam Beck Plant in Queenston, Ont., just north of Niagara Falls. I mention the importance of Niagara with its vast generation and transmission facilities.
An hour later, reports are everywhere that the problem originated when lightning struck the Robert Moses hydroelectric plant in Lewiston, N.Y. I immediately think of Bill Evans, a friend and recently retired New York State Power Authority employee. Bill had worked at the plant for 30-plus years.
I get hold of Bill on his cell phone as he's driving back from a day at the PGA golf tournament in Rochester. Bill is very knowledgeable and articulate, and he can explain technical issues so average people can understand. (Full disclosure: Bill's wife, Marie, and my wife, Elizabeth, are first cousins.)
Our station does a phone interview with Bill and he correctly debunks the lightning myth that both President Bush and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien initially bought. He also talks about long-deferred maintenance and capital investments at energy plants across the nation. Bill raises the question about the effects of deregulation and how energy brokers are making new demands on the system.
Bill is much more honest and candid than the greedy corporate types who run energy companies for short-term profits and the co-opted politicians who are supposed to oversee their conduct in the public interest.
New Mexico governor and former secretary of energy Bill Richardson has long worried that demand for electricity has increased while our infrastructure, especially the electric grid that connects us all to energy plants across North America, has simply not kept pace.
In a New York Times op-ed column, Richardson says investments by utility companies have been woefully inadequate and that they have not built nearly enough transmission lines.
The companies in pursuit of more customers have stretched the grid to its limits to gain competitive advantage. Richardson says mandated reliability rules are imperative. He reminds us, "In 1998, President Bill Clinton proposed legislation that would have required utility companies to protect and promote grid reliability. Utilities now operate under voluntary guidelines developed by the (North American Electric) reliability council, which in practice means no one has to comply."
That proposal still is not law, stalled in a House-Senate conference committee in the Republican Congress.
Deregulation of utilities was supposed to provide Americans with all the electricity we need and, driven by the forces of free markets, at better prices. Maybe that theory has gone haywire.
Since electric energy is not like other commodities and cannot be stored in huge quantities, for the system to work additional generation and transmission must be available, planned and coordinated to meet peak demand periods like the sultry days of mid-August.
The unbridled forces of deregulation, unleashing wild speculators and trading companies (think: Enron), may not serve the vital public interest to have reliable power.
President Bush had a slow and puzzling reaction to the worst blackout in our nation's history. On a brief break from his month-long Texas vacation, he slipped off to California for a mission of supreme importance -- a fundraiser.
It took 4 1/2 hours before the president and his staff emerged from their own blackout to address the unprecedented crisis. Between a rah-rah speech to the Marines and the $1 million fundraiser, the president had scheduled "private time." That means, in White House code, video games, sports on television and a nap.
Finally speaking of the suffering, powerless people living where Bush calls "up East," he did underline the need to improve the nation's electrical grid, noting that he viewed the blackout as a "wake-up call for the need to modernize our electric delivery system."
When it comes to energy, the Bush administration consistently supports corporate over public interests.
Remember, Vice President Dick Cheney shaped our national energy policy with the help of the thieves from Enron and other corporate moguls. Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham is a career politician whose singular qualification for the job was that he needed one. He was defeated in his re-election bid for the Senate in 2000 and deflected the embarrassing fact that he once voted to eliminate the energy department.
The president did call for investment in infrastructure. Now that's a real bolt of lightning.
Here's an idea. Take the money from the president's $1 trillion-plus tax cuts that largely benefit the rich with borrowed money and spend it on investments in the nation's power and other infrastructure needs.
The blow to the economy was enormous, but it was poor people who suffered the most in the blackout that for most of us was just some interesting trials in our usual daily routines. We lost a lot of food, but I can afford it.
Losing a couple pounds of hamburger, a chicken and a half gallon of milk for people living on the margins is a terrible injustice.
After working 16 hours and a drive on a dark freeway, I made it home. I took a midnight dip in my swimming pool and sat on the deck to wolf down some pasta salad and have a tall spritzer, my preferred summer drink. Tired as I was, I needed to unwind and found I could read with a battery-powered lamp. I wasn't suffering at all. But the lamp reminded me of someone who was -- Hannan Shibiba.
Earlier in the week, I had done a story about her. She's a 15-year-old Iraqi who's being treated at the University of Michigan Trauma and Burn Center in Ann Arbor. Hannan was in her home outside Baghdad during an American bombing raid when the concussion caused an oil lamp to fall on her and ignite. She suffered horrific burns to her face, arms and hands.
We didn't see many of those images on American television, but a British report on Hannan's plight caught the eye of a Michigan man who arranged for her to come here for treatment. I met her when she arrived at the airport in May. She was heavily bandaged, but you could still see her dark, beautiful eyes. She's very much your typical teen-ager, full of life and fun, and she's now making great progress, but a crazy war and a fallen lamp have scarred her forever. Her mother's with her but the rest of her family is still in Iraq trying to cope with no power, gas and little water, and no one knows how long they must endure.
American troops are working in 120 degree temperatures, carrying 80 pounds of equipment.
They have no idea how long they'll be there, when their misery will end and they'll be able to go home.
Last week 50 million Americans had a little taste of Iraq and we didn't like it one bit.
| Niagara Falls Reporter | www.niagarafallsreporter.com | August 19 2003 |