Chicago`s lights were back on by nightfall Tuesday after a short circuit at a Commonwealth Edison Co. substation caused one of the worst power outages in the city`s history.
The huge outage blanketed sections of a nine-square-mile area north of the Loop Monday night and Tuesday, closing office buildings and courtrooms and disrupting operations at area newspapers, broadcast outlets and high-rise apartment buildings.
The outage affected at least 200,000 Chicagoans in an area roughly bounded by Addison Street on the north, the Chicago River on the south, Lake Michigan on the east and Damen Avenue on the west, according to an Edison spokesman.
Edison officials said power was restored throughout the affected area by 6:30 p.m. Tuesday.
But shortly before 7 p.m., WBBM-TV (Channel 2) was knocked off the air
–in the midst of a news report on the power failure–for about 95 minutes.
An Edison spokesman said the problem was caused by Channel 2`s equipment, not Edison`s, even though the station left the air about the same time that another short circuit took place at Edison`s Crosby substation, source of all the previous troubles.
But a spokesman for Channel 2 said a surge of power from Edison when the second outage was corrected apparently damaged Channel 2`s transmission equipment.
Channel 2 went off the air again at 11:10 p.m Tuesday and returned an hour and 11 minutes later. The station announced that it would shut down voluntarily from 3 to 5:30 a.m. Wednesday to make repairs.
The substation, near Division and Halsted Streets, does not generate power but contains a transformer that reduces the incoming 138,000 volts of current and sends it off to at least four other stations that reduce the voltage even further before delivering it to customers.
Edison officials blamed the areawide outage on the ”arcing” of high-voltage current from powerlines over tower insulators to grounded steel towers at the substation Monday night. Edison spokesman Frank Clark said more arcing took place Tuesday night, causing lights to flicker on parts of the North Side.
”The place looked like a Christmas tree at the height of the arcing,”
said James Schneider, another Edison spokesman.
William J. Cormack, a division vice president at the utility, estimated that 200,000 customers lost power during the worst part of the failure. In addition to hindering residential customers in one of the most densely populated areas of the city, the outage shut countless businesses, large and small, for all or part of the day.
Cormack said the humidity level overnight was 100 percent, and utility crews were ”looking for what in combination with that would have caused it to fail.”
Although high humidity and fog likely played a part in the outage Tuesday, the failure probably was triggered by dust and dirt accumulated on equipment at the substation, Cormack said.
He emphasized that the outage was caused by a short circuit, not equipment failure. The substation equipment, which stands outdoors on a fenced gravel lot, is designed to operate outdoors under all conditions, he said.
Monitors at the substation indicated that the major outage began about 6 a.m. Tuesday when electrical charges began arcing between huge copper conductors and the station shut itself off, Cormack said, though there were periodic ”blinks” earlier.
”What happens when it shorts is that it opens all the fuses–only these are real big fuses–and it does that to protect the system,” he said.
The Crosby substation was built so that if one set of conductors fails, another takes up the slack. But on Tuesday, both faltered, he said.
During the shutdown, he said, power was coming into the station from sources throughout northern Illinois but was not being transferred to substations downtown and on the Near North Side.
The problem initially began Monday night when a series of ”electrical blinks” caused power to fail for fractions of a second at least four times over a large area of the city.
When the first ”blink” occurred about 8:20 p.m., motorists on Lake Shore Drive reported seeing what looked like a huge lightning bolt several blocks to the west, near the Crosby substation. At that point, all the street lights on the drive went out.
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Two other back-to-back outages were reported at 9:05 p.m. The fourth occurred about 9:45 p.m. Full blackouts were reported only after 4 a.m. Tuesday, an Edison spokesman said.
During the morning rush period, workbound commuters noticed that a building or an entire block seemed to have power while next door or across the street, everything appeared dark.
Traffic lights often were out at one corner but not at the next. Police directed traffic at some intersections, but many corners were left
unmonitored. Cautious motorists drove through darkened intersections, granting the right of way and seldom honking.
Policemen who drive three-wheel motorcycles and normally spend their time writing tickets were pressed into service controlling traffic at intersections without working traffic lights. Police said the traffic light problem was sporadic, but even so, it caused a major back-up on the Ohio Street feeder ramp, causing traffic on the southbound Kennedy Expressway to back up to Armitage Avenue, and northbound to the Hubbard Street tunnel.
East Chicago District police said the absence of working traffic lights caused about a half-dozen fender-bender accidents, but no injuries.
Firefighters had to rescue tenants trapped in elevators in four high-rise apartment buildings, a fire department spokesman said.
The city`s Jardine water purification plant, 1000 E. Ohio St., was unable to remove sediment and add fluoride to the water from 4 a.m., when its power went out, until 9:30 a.m., when it was restored. But Lester Dickinson, water commissioner, said the outage did not hamper the city`s chlorination process, which is what makes the water safe for consumption.
Dickinson said that workers blended raw chlorinated water to the plant`s 50 million-gallon reservoir of fully treated water while the power was off.
”Basically we were reverting to procedures used prior to 1964 before the plant went into operation,” Dickinson said. ”Before the plant was built, we took raw water from the intake cribs and passed it through the pumping stations where the chlorine was added. They never added anything else back then.”
Dickinson said that fluoride, which reduces tooth decay, and sediment removal, which improves water`s clarity, are not necessary for safe consumption of water. Still, Chicagoans living north of 39th Street were asked to conserve water during the outage.
The outage caused only minor problems for North Michigan Avenue merchants hoping for a big rush of last-minute Christmas shoppers. Power was restored at Water Tower Place at 9:30 a.m., delaying some store openings by only 30 to 45 minutes.
By 11 a.m., pedestrian traffic in Water Tower Place and along Michigan Avenue was as heavy as it usual at this time of year, and clerks were ringing up brisk sales on electronic cash registers. Some stores extended their closing time a half-hour Tuesday night to make up the lost sales time.
Some of the stores received unexpected business from white-collar workers who tired of huddling outside their darkened office buildings north of the Chicago River. Building managers refused to admit employees because fire protection and other safety devices were not working and because computers could not function without air conditioning.
”I cannot begin to fathom how many business people were affected by this,” said Michael Thom, director of governmental affairs for the Chicago Association of Commerce and Industry.
Using industry standards for the number of workers found in the average office space, Thom estimated that as many 40,000 worker-hours were lost Tuesday in the IBM Building alone. And it was only one of several, including the Merchandise Mart, Sun-Times Building and the Wrigley Building, that couldn`t function for at least several hours.
Traffic Court was closed as a result of the blackout, and Tuesday`s court appearances were rescheduled for Jan. 28.
Peter Deuel, spokesman for the Cook County Circuit Court clerk`s office, said the power failure knocked out all of Traffic Court`s lights, cash registers, telephones and computers.
Deuel said Traffic Court had ”a full house of employees” and that some defendants had shown up for court or to pay parking tickets by the time Supervising Judge Daniel White issued the closing order about 9 a.m.
Deuel said the average daily call in Traffic Court is about 10,000 cases. He said he could not recall the building`s ever having been closed for a power failure, but he said it had closed down during snowstorms in the past.
Ten radio stations went off the air for about 20 minutes when power failed at the John Hancock Center, 875 N. Michigan Ave. Power, with the exception of that provided by back-up generators, was off at the Tribune`s Freedom Center printing facility Tuesday morning, forcing the newspaper to cancel its national mail edition.
Unable to broadcast its own programming, WMAQ-TV (Channel 5), which is based in the Merchandise Mart, patched in programming from a sister NBC station in South Bend, Ind., for about 90 minutes Tuesday morning.
”The talent in South Bend was pleased because it gave them a nice audition in Chicago,” said Nick Aronson, WMAQ director of communications.
Jeffrey Flock, Chicago bureau chief for the Cable News Network (CNN), also in the Merchandise Mart, said he borrowed WGN-TV`s satellite facilities on the Northwest Side to feed material to CNN`s headquarters in Atlanta.
WFLD-TV (Channel 32), which is based in Marina City, was off the air for several hours Tuesday.
Train service was interrupted for about 20 minutes on Chicago Transit Authority rapid-transit lines, according to a CTA spokesman.
The power outage also knocked out all computers and radios in the CTA control center in the Merchandise Mart, although this had caused no problems after power was restored about 4 a.m., the spokesman said.
Many subway stations had lost their lights but were using emergency lights powered by electricity bled off the third rail, he said.
Hospitals in the affected area barely skipped a beat when their normal sources of power went dead early Tuesday. All of them switched to auxiliary power sources.
The Lincoln Park Zoo used emergency generators to maintain an even temperature in buildings housing penguins and snakes, two types of animals most susceptible to sharp changes in temperature, said zoo director Lester Fisher.
The Gonnella Baking Co., 2002 W. Erie St., was able to bake only half its normal 60,000 loaves of bread, leaving restaurants and grocery stores in short supply, a company spokesman said.
A spokesman for the city Department of Aviation said the outage had no effect on the city`s three airports.
David Farrell, director of public affairs for the Illinois Commerce Commission, said commission members will request a written report from Edison detailing the breakdown.
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”The commission will have to review whether or not appropriate action was taken by Edison,” Farrell said. ”We don`t have all the whys and wherefores yet.”
An Edison spokesman said the company has suffered longer-lasting outages in this decade but none affecting so many people.
In 1981, 20,000 customers in an eight-square-mile area of the West Side were without power for two days after two or three transformers failed simultaneously at a substation.
In 1983, 96,000 customers throughout the metropolitan area were without power for three days after a series of storms.