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And then there was light

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A man serves ice cream in Times Square, New York, under the bright lights as power returned to the city Friday.

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BLACKOUT BY THE NUMBERS
• In three minutes, 21 power plants shut down, including 10 nuclear plants
• 9,300 square miles in the U.S. and Canada were without power
• 9,500 police officers were out in New York overnight, up from the usual 1,000 to 2,000
• Seven airports grounded planes
• 800 elevator rescues; 80,000 calls to 911; a record 5,000 emergency medical service calls; 60 serious blazes and 11 burglaries in New York City
• More than 100 miners at a nickel mine were stranded underground in Ontario
• Nearly 1 million lose water in Cleveland
• About 50 million live in the affected region from New York north to Toronto and west to Detroit
• The temperature was 92 degrees Fahrenheit in New York City

Source: The Associated Press, Genscape, federal and state governments, law enforcement

(CNN) -- Power is returning to dozens of cities in Canada and the Northeast and Midwest United States after they were hit simultaneously Thursday afternoon by a major power outage. More than 60 million customers were affected at the height of the blackout. Here is a glance of current conditions:

NEW YORK: By Friday evening, power was up and running to all five boroughs of New York City and Westchester County, officials for Con Edison said, although there may still be isolated outages in the region. Electricity service was restored to the rest of the state earlier in the day.

NEW JERSEY: Electricity was restored to nearly all affected customers, with fewer than 5,000 customers still without power, from the peak of 1 million homes and businesses. Gov. James E. McGreevey lifted the state of emergency that had mobilized 700 National Guardsmen and 300 extra state troopers Northern New Jersey commuter railroads and buses had limited to full service.

OHIO: In Cleveland, electricity was working, but Mayor Jane Campbell warned residents to boil drinking water due to concerns that sewage might have contaminated the city's water system.

MICHIGAN: In Detroit, power remained out to huge sections of the city. Gov. Jennifer Granholm declared a state of emergency for the metro Detroit area and ordered emergency gasoline shipments to the Motor City as service stations shut down and cars ran out of gas, grinding traffic to a halt. Authorities said it could be by the end of weekend before power is fully restored. At the peak, about 2.4 million were without power. Detroit Metropolitan Airport had limited operations.

CONNECTICUT: About 14,700 customers, 5,500 in Danbury, remained in the dark early Friday evening from a peak of 278,000. Gov. John G. Rowland pleaded for power savings after a transmission line that feeds southwestern Connecticut fizzled. The line was not expected to be repaired until Saturday. New York and Connecticut officials traded barbs over an underwater cable between New Haven and Long Island that was powered up for the first time Friday.

PENNSYLVANIA: No major problems reported after 100,000 customers, mostly in northwestern counties, initially lost power. Most areas recovered electricity shortly after nightfall Thursday, and FirstEnergy Corp. said all its customers in the state regained electric service by noon.

MASSACHUSETTS: Amtrak canceled all service between Boston and New York, and officials couldn't say whether it would resume Saturday. The Boston-New York line was blocked by power problems between New Haven, Connecticut, and New Rochelle, New York All of the 20,000 customers who lost power had been restored. Officials said Massachusetts was spared because its power grid operates independently from New York's. International flights bound for New York from Israel, Italy and elsewhere were diverted to Boston's Logan Airport, creating a rush on hotel rooms.

VERMONT: A quick shutdown of transmission lines from New York averted major outages in Vermont. A small section of northern Vermont near the Canadian border lost power briefly, but it only affected a few thousand customers. Richard Thompson, the Swanton town administrator, said it was "no different than a winter storm."

CANADA: Toronto was experiencing rolling blackouts, providing residents with temporary power for two hours. Ontario Premier Ernie Eves declared a state of emergency for the province and asked nonessential or non-emergency workers to stay home Friday. After Canadian and U.S. officials traded accusations of blame for the outage, Prime Minister Jean Chretien talked on the phone to U.S. President George W. Bush about a joint Canadian-U.S. task force to determine the cause of the blackout and come up with plans to prevent further outages.


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