Electrical Blackout Darkens Downtown Chicago Updated 5:00 PM ET August 12, 1999

By Susan Nadeau

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Power outages hit two areas in and near downtown Chicago Thursday, sending workers streaming from buildings and forcing one big hotel to dip into its 2000 emergency supplies to fight the darkness.

Power was restored after more than an hour in the most densely populated area affected and no injuries were reported.

But during the height of the problems buses bulged with people trying to get home and police directed crawling traffic through intersections without traffic signals.

"Welcome to our Y2K preparedness party," said Robert Allegrini, spokesman for the 1,543-room Chicago Hilton and Towers as he helped hand chemically activated "glow sticks" to guests. He said the hotel gave out 6,000 of the sticks which it had on hand for possible power outages linked to turn-of-the-century computer problems this coming New Year's Eve.

He said one guest was stuck briefly in an elevator but the rest were led from their rooms, down pitch-black hallways, to safety.

Power was later restored to the hotel and the rest of an area covering 30 square blocks from the center of the downtown "Loop" southward, and which had less than an hour's notice that power would be cut off.

But other parts of the city remained dark and officials said they hoped to restore power everywhere by Thursday evening.

Banks and exchanges in the city's financial center were blacked out for a time and the city's police headquarters operated on emergency generators.

The Chicago Board of Trade, the largest U.S. futures market, stopped trading early after warnings of the second blackout were issued.

Roosevelt University canceled nearly 100 classes.

"I came back (from lunch) and there were all these people. The lobby was mobbed," said Theodore Gross, president of the school. He said he had to walk up eight flights of stairs to his office to retrieve belongings.

Demand problems caused by weather, which was cool and rainy, apparently played no part in the disruptions which were caused by transformer problems.

"I sent out an order asking everyone to leave the courts including several with juries, and we're doing it," said Marvin Aspen, chief judge of the U.S. District Court for Northern Illinois. He had just walked down 25 floors to the street.

"Our computers are down, our elevators are down and hopefully we'll be back to work tomorrow," he said.

The first blackout west of downtown involved a multi-block area where Commonwealth Edison said 2,300 customers lost power.

The problems arose after three of four transformers at a substation on the city's near North Side went off-line.

One of the transformers had been undergoing repairs for the past week and two other transformers shut down, leaving one working. A high-voltage cable also failed, a spokesman for the utility said.

Firefighters helped some handicapped people out of darkened high-rise buildings, but there were no life-threatening emergencies, a fire department spokesman said.

The local utility recently came under fire for an extended blackout affecting North Side customers that began at the end of a deadly Midwestern heat wave. Residents and businesses were asked to file for compensation for food and other perishables that spoiled during the blackout.

Commonwealth Edison is a wholly owned subsidiary of Unicom Corp.

Well, at least we're getting a lot of practice here in the Midwest.

Terri

-- Anonymous, August 12, 1999

Answers

Funny, there was no heat wave today apparantly and yet an outage. Interestingly the CBOT pits were shut down for the third time in a week and a half. The first one was due to MCI last week which affected the treasury trading system. Then on a day when we have a key 30 year auction, the section of Chicago which includes the Merc blows out and forces the shut down of an undersubscribed Treasury auction. Ooops. If they should be down tomorrow, there WILL be ramifications for the boys who've got unhedged paper. Yikes. If I was a conspiracy buff.......Nah........they wouldn't stall the Treasury markets.....Nah....

Heard the Chitown mayor on the radio on the way home. He said they ought to fire everyone at Com Ed from the top all the way down to the engineers and start fresh because the people they have can't get the job done. Wonder how their Y2K remediation is going?

Hey Com Ed what's up out there?

-- Anonymous, August 12, 1999

So,the mayor of Chicago has said that "they ought to fire everyone at Com Ed from the top all the way down to the engineers" because Chicago had a one hour power outage in part of the Loop? I can't begin to imagine what his reaction will be if Cameron Daley's y2k outage that "could last several weeks" happens to hit in his fair city.

-- Anonymous, August 12, 1999

Nah, Jim, they'd never try that, not with the feds. After all crinton's mr K says the feds are ready for y2k anything, well, anything under their control anyway, and they made sure that electric power wasn't one of those things under their purview, by dumping on the NERC, then jumping ship. Strange, very strange, crinton's feds normally are trying to glom onto any additional control they can.

-- Anonymous, August 12, 1999