Jeff Bingaman: “In November of 1965, a disturbance on the electric grid resulted in the loss power to some 30 million people in the…”

“In November of 1965, a disturbance on the electric grid resulted in the loss power to some 30 million people in the Northeastern U.S. Almost all of New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and parts of Pennsylvania and New Jersey were blacked out for up to 13 hours. In July of 1977, power lightening caused the loss of power to 9 million people in New York city and surrounding areas. In December of 1982, high winds caused the failure of a transmission tower. Power was lost to 5 million people. In July of 1996, power was lost to 2 million customers in 14 States in the West, 2 Canadian provinces and 1 Mexican state. The outage was the immediate result of a line sagging into a tree. In August of 1996, again as the result of contact with trees, another outage affected 7.5 million people in 14 Western States, 2 Canadian provinces and 1 Mexican state. In August of last year 50 million people in 8 Northeastern and Midwestern States and 3 Canadian provinces were blacked out for up to 4 days. These were only a few of the major outages that have rendered parts of our Nation powerless over the last few years. The most dramatic outage ever was only last summer. I don't have to tell the Members of this body how serious the effects on the economies of these regions were. We all saw it. Airports were shut down for days. Traffic was snarled for hours. Businesses were closed, schools shut down. The estimates of losses were in the tens of billions of dollars.”