A cascading failure left 30 million people in the dark
On this day · 9 November 1965
One misset relay near Niagara Falls toppled the Northeast's power grid in minutes, plunging eight states and Ontario into a 13-hour night.
At 5:16 p.m. on November 9, 1965, a single protective relay near the Sir Adam Beck station at Niagara Falls tripped, misjudging a routine surge of power. Within minutes the fault cascaded across the interconnected grid, knocking out line after line until much of the Northeast went dark.
More than 30 million people across eight U.S. states, Ontario, and Quebec lost electricity, some for up to 13 hours. The timing, at the height of rush hour, trapped 800,000 commuters in New York City’s subways and stranded thousands in elevators and trains.
A bright full moon over the cloudless sky offered the only light millions had.
The chaos was milder than feared, but the lesson was lasting. The disaster spurred the creation of reliability councils and the monitoring systems, ancestors of today’s grid controls, designed to stop one fault from toppling an entire network.
Sources & references
2 referencesWell-established. Corroborated by 2 independent sources.
