Home Programs Emergency management Critical infrastructure protection Situational awareness Ontario-U.S. Power Outage -- Impacts on Critical Infrastructure

Ontario-U.S. Power Outage -- Impacts on Critical Infrastructure

Incident analysis IA06-002
30 August 2006

Complete report in PDF (325 KB)

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to describe the Northeastern Interconnection power outage of August 14, 2003 and to identify how critical infrastructure was directly and interdependently impacted in Canada.

Audience

This paper is intended to assist critical infrastructure protection and emergency management professionals in assessing the potential impacts of large-scale critical infrastructure disruptions and to encourage the private and public sectors to review their critical infrastructure protection and emergency management plans.

Sources

This paper is based primarily on Canadian and American media reports and cross-sectoral information sharing with the federal and provincial governments as well as the private sector.

Executive Summary

• On August 14, 2003 at 16:11 EDT, a massive power outage caused blackouts throughout most of Ontario, along with New York State, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Vermont, Michigan, Connecticut and Massachusetts.  This power failure was the largest in North American history, spanning 24,086 square kilometres and affecting approximately 50 million people.
• The Canada–U.S. Power Outage Task Force convened on August 15 to begin an investigation into the causes of the blackout.
• Ontario Premier Ernie Eves called on residents and commercial entities to conserve energy until the electrical grid could return to full operability.
• The power failure impacted, to varying degrees, a wide range of critical infrastructure and emergency management sectors in both Canada and the U.S. 

Electricity

• The August 14 power outage significantly impacted most of the sources and means of generating, transmitting and distributing power within the Eastern Interconnect portion of the North American electrical grid. 
• Hydroelectric, fossil-fuel and nuclear generating plants took varying amounts of time to resume electricity production.
• The availability of backup generators and fuel supplies became critical in maintaining essential services.
• The pleas for reduced consumption were largely successful; major industrial and commercial users were credited with having made a significant contribution to power conservation.
• The lack of electricity, in addition to impacting virtually all 10 critical infrastructure sectors, also hindered the ability of the oil and gas sector to manufacture or transport its products either via traditional transportation means or by pipeline.

Communications

• Landline and cellular companies experienced various operational difficulties as a result of the blackout; however, the Canadian telecommunication industry as a whole succeeded in maintaining the operation of its telephone networks.
• Telecommunications companies across Ontario activated their Emergency Operations Centres to ensure continuous operations of their respective networks.
• Most wireless services including cellular and Personal Communication Services (PCS) were overloaded during the power outage due to high volume usage.
• The blackout, much like the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks, has led to calls for priority access to telephone lines (wire line and wireless) for emergency responders.
• Newspapers and the electronic media struggled to release information to the public, and in most cases, employed backup generators to power their production processes.
• The occurrence of the blackout coincided with the emergence of two critical cyber threats, the Blaster and SoBig worms.  Corporate networks that were unpatched or only partially patched were significantly impacted.

Services
Banking and Finance

• The Banking and Finance industry, which is heavily reliant on computer networks, telecommunications and wireless technology, experienced an immediate degradation of services following the collapse of the electrical grid. 
• Business continuity plans, including the use of backup generators and secure network servers, allowed most financial institutions to remain open and provide at least nominal services on August 15.
• The power failure had minimal impact on North American market activity because it occurred approximately 15 minutes after trading closed.

Food Distribution

• The power outage caused shipping and storage difficulties for commercial retailers and dairy producers.  Many commercial retailers were forced to discard large quantities of stock due to spoilage while many dairy producers were required to ship milk to Manitoba for processing.
• Production operations have become increasingly reliant on just-in-time delivery of supply, making production schedules extremely vulnerable to any interruptions of supply delivery. 

Water Treatment, Supply and Distribution

• The Province of Ontario had adequate supplies of treated, potable water throughout the blackout.
• Due to the prevalence of business resumption and continuity plans, water treatment facilities generally functioned normally and without incident; however, a number of incidents were reported of waste treatment plants releasing only partially treated waste water into neighbouring waterways.
• A protracted blackout might have caused more serious difficulties in procuring the chemicals necessary to treat and purify water.

Manufacturing

• In a province-wide effort to scale back power consumption while the grid underwent restoration, commercial and industrial businesses chose to either shut down completely or reduce production.

Transportation

• The timing of the blackout, coinciding with the closure of workplaces across affected areas, compounded the negative effects on transportation networks.  The afternoon rush hour was complicated by the loss of power to traffic lights, electronic highway signs, traffic monitoring stations and their equipment, and by delays at bus, rail and airport terminals.
• The blackout affected fuel distribution because many gas station pumps were inoperable.

Safety
Emergency Services

• Across the affected areas of the province, police, fire departments and ambulance services experienced a dramatic increase in the volume of calls received.
• Virtually all branches of the emergency services sector encountered transportation delays, backlogged hospitals and intermittent difficulties with communications equipment.

Environmental Safety

• Some environmental safety concerns were reported to be directly related to the power failure.  Boil water advisories were issued in several communities after waste treatment facilities released partially treated waste into waterways.
• Several chemical plants reported the release of hydrocarbons into the atmosphere.

Nuclear Safety

• Out of Ontario’s 11 nuclear reactors, four were able to remain in standby mode and eight had to shut down. This situation required some reactors to start “cold,” slowing the availability of sufficient electricity to meet consumer demand. However, this did not slow down the restoration of the grid.

Government Services

• Only essential Government of Canada employees in Ontario were to report to work on August 15.  This directive was reissued on August 17. Ultimately, an estimated 150,000 Government of Canada employees did not report to work for most of the, if not the entire, work week of August 18–22.
• Numerous government departments invoked Emergency Operations Centres to monitor situations and offer aid to various critical infrastructure sectors.
• During the power outage, a Government of Canada telephone line service was maintained in order to provide Ontario residents with current information about available provincial services.
• The priority of the Government of Canada was to maintain fundamental public services such as public health, safety and security, and social and economic welfare. 

Economic Impacts

• The impact of the blackout and “ensuing power restrictions are estimated to have reduced Ontario’s gross domestic product (GDP) by 1.4%, which in turn reduced the National GDP by 0.7%—the biggest monthly GDP decline in a decade.”  An estimated 2.4 million workers in Ontario and Gatineau, Quebec, lost 26.4 million hours of work time in the second half of August because of the blackout and subsequent conservation period. At the same time, an estimated 713,000 people, or 11.0% of workers, put in a total of 7.5 million overtime hours. The net effect was a loss of 18.9 million hours.
• Estimates indicate that the power outage cost Ontario’s economy between $1 billion and $2 billion.
• On average, most retailers experienced a 40-percent decline in sales during and up to four days after the outage, while the service sector including health, financial, insurance and utilities experienced a similar decline with transactions decreasing by 41 percent the day after the blackout. 
• Gas stations and convenience stores were among the exceptions, with many experiencing a 30-percent increase in sales following the outage.
• According to a survey conducted by the Canadian Federation of Independent Business, the outage negatively impacted 82 percent of small businesses in Ontario