Congress probes cause of blackout

The blackouts caused huge disruption

Power firm FirstEnergy has come under fire at a Congressional inquiry into the blackout which hit 50 million Americans and Canadians last month.

The comments came as the House Energy and Commerce Committee began a two day hearing into the power outage.

Energy companies argued that the blackout could have been avoided if they had been told about the problems more quickly by FirstEnergy.

But FirstEnergy has denied wrongdoing and said it is too early to point the finger of blame before a US-Canadian task force has finished its investigations.

Disruption

About 50 million people in eight north-eastern US states and the Canadian province of Ontario suffered the massive blackout last month, which took down several regional power grids.

The power outage caused widespread disruption, with thousands of people on the New York subway trapped, factories closed and hundreds of flights cancelled.

A series of failures in four transmission lines - three of them owned by FirstEnergy - have come under suspicion as the power failure's possible starting point.

Michigan Governor Jennifer Granholm and ITC, an independent company that operates the power grid in part of Michigan, questioned why FirstEnergy had been so slow in telling operators of the problems.

If ITC and other operators "had been informed during the previous hour that the system was having problems, they may have been able to craft a contingency plan for the energy demand and delivery, and avoid the cascading failure," Ms Granholm said in a prepared statement.

'Premature' speculation

But in a written statement FirstEnergy said "a search for the straw that broke the camel's back is the wrong approach," and said "the cumulative effect of all relevant events" should be considered.

US Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham said it was too early to be pointing the finger of blame.

Speculation was "premature" he said. "We won't jump to conclusions. Our investigation will be thorough and objective."

He added that the US-Canadian inquiry would "follow the facts wherever they lead us".