Thu Aug 14 15:50:43 PDT 2003 — Northeastern United States power outage. Cities affected include New York; Boston, Massachusetts; Cleveland, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Toronto, Ontario; and Ottawa, Ontario. The power outage occurred at around 4:20 p.m. Eastern.
On the Internet, we have seen some small East Coast web and mail servers become unresponsive due to this event. Most large websites and services are hosted in colocation facilities with power backup, so this hasn’t caused a very significant impact online.
In the real world, in New York city, cellular providers are offline, people are trapped in subways and elevators, and they’re having a heat wave. Streets and bridges are packed with people, walking home from work. It’s a mess. -Dane