Fifteen years ago today the lights went out on 50 million people in the Northeast—making it the largest power outage in US history.
It happened on Aug. 14, 2003. Wherever you were, the blackout seems like yesterday.
On a warm, sunny day at around 4:10 p.m., power plants shut down in three minutes. The widespread power outage cascaded across eight Northeastern and Midwestern states and the Canadian province of Ontario.
Life seemed to freeze as trains and elevators stopped. Everything, from cellular service to operations at hospitals and traffic at airports, was halted, as everyone waited for the power to turn back on.
An investigation revealed that the start of the blackout could be traced back to an Ohio company, FirstEnergy.
