NORTH AMERICA: Power will not be fully restored to parts of the eastern United States and Canada until the end of the weekend, as the consequences of the biggest electricity blackout in north American history continue to unfold.
New York City, Ottawa, Cleveland, Detroit, and other major population areas still had only sporadic power yesterday, almost 24 hours after a massive power surge cascaded through the eastern electricity grid of the United States. The blackout affected approximately 50 million people.
While Americans initially feared that the power cut might be the result of a terrorist attack, it quickly became apparent it was caused by a failure in the 70-year-old electricity grid which covers much of the north-eastern part of north America.
As yet, only one fatality has been reported because of the blackout: a 40-year-old woman suffered a heat-related heart attack while being evacuated from a building in New York. However, with air conditioning systems down, there are fears that the current sweltering heat and humidity in New York could lead to more widespread health problems, particularly among the elderly.
In Cleveland, the problem of high temperatures has been exacerbated by the failure of electricity-reliant water pumping and purification equipment.
This has left much of the city without water and the water that is available may not be clean. Residents have been advised to boil such water before use.
In Michigan, where the Detroit motor industry was also hit by the loss of power, a state of emergency has been proclaimed.
Some towns in the state have declared curfews for under-18s and queues at petrol stations have been reported, as people stock up on fuel to run generators.
Although New York Mayor Mr Mike Bloomberg commended New Yorkers on how calm and well-behaved they were during the power failure, there were reports yesterday of looting in Brooklyn, where 26 people were arrested.
Looting incidents were also reported in the Canadian city of Ottawa, where the lights remained out on Thursday night and yesterday morning.
At a press briefing yesterday, New York Governor Mr George Pataki said that New Yorkers wanted and deserved answers on the cause of the blackout.
However, experts in the electricity industry said it could take days or even weeks to discover what had happened, as they slowly brought power back online and re-traced the progress of the failure.
New Mexico Governor Mr Bill Richardson was among those calling for a re-examination of the country's ageing electricity grid.
"It's taken a blackout to wake everybody up," he told the CNN television network yesterday. "We need a new grid."
While calls for heavy investment to upgrade the country's electricity grid were echoed around the United States yesterday, the chairman of the House of Representatives' Energy and Commerce Committee, Mr Billy Tauzin, said a hearing into the power failure would be held in September, when Congress returns from its summer break.
Mr Tauzin said there was a "crucial need for Congress to enact a comprehensive national energy bill this year".
The biggest overhaul in US energy policy in a decade is due to be the subject of negotiations between the House of Representatives and the Senate in September.
Now it seems likely that questions on the reliability of the grid and the need for major investment will dominate those negotiations.
Other questions which are likely to be asked in the re-examination of energy policy will be the relative successes or failures of the deregulation of electricity utilities in the US over recent years.
The possible need for a hike in electricity prices to facilitate reinvestment in the grid and the need to cut back on electricity use are other points of debate likely to arise.
Similar power blackouts occurred on the east coast of the US in 1965 and 1977.
Such cuts were never supposed to happen again. While awaiting the overhaul of energy policy, most Americans will want to know what caused this unprecedented power failure and who is to blame.
For the moment, however, many will have to contend with a sporadic power supply, which is not expected to be fully back to normal until Monday morning.