Canada and The U.S. say they will set up a joint task force to determine the cause of the worst blackout in North American history.
The task force was announced late Friday by both the White House and the office of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien. Both said the two countries will also join forces to prevent future outages.
Earlier, President Bush blamed an outdated system for Thursday’s massive U.S.-Canadian power outage that affected cities from New York to Toronto to Detroit.
Mr. Bush said the blackout is a wake-up call to modernize the country’s aging electrical grid.
Much of the country’s electrical system is 50 to 60-years-old and investment has not kept pace with increase in demand. One industry group, The Electric Power Research Institute, estimates the U.S. power system needs between $50 billion and $100 billion in investments to bring it up to date.
The blackout had a domino effect, knocking out service to parts of eight states and Canada in only nine seconds. But the president of the North American Electric Reliability Council says the center of focus is the Lake Erie Loop power circuit which runs from New York into Detroit and Canada.
Michehl Gent, whose non-profit council promotes the reliability of electrical systems, said trouble was first detected there with the loss of a series of power lines around Cleveland, Ohio during the hour before the black out hit. He said it is not clear whether these losses caused the blackout or were the consequence of some other problem.
Also, Friday the House of Representatives Energy and Commerce Committee announced it will launch an investigation into the outage and hold a hearing in early September.
