Guest Author - Julie S.

The massive blackout which stretched from Chicago to New York and up into Canada has been brought under control with little damage.

Officials are thrilled that there was little looting or riots, compared with previous large scale blackouts. In fact, crime was down in most cities. Many feel that in the post Sept-11 era, people are far more tolerant of system glitches and not so likely to take advantage of them.

On the other hand, reports of fire were about double normal. People were using candles to read and stay up after dark, and were unfamiliar with safety procedures. Two of the three deaths attributed to the blackout were because of fire.

Officials are still unsure of what caused the massive outage. First reports weree of a lightning strike near Niagara Falls, but now the focus is on a power line near Cleveland Ohio. That line went down at 3:06pm Thursday afternoon. At around 4:10pm, 21 power plants went down almost instantaneously, which caused the loss of power.

New York City alone figures it has lost a half a billion dollars in revenue.