History > 2006 > USA > Weather (II)

To reduce her electric bills, Beatrice McGuire, 86, a retired nurse,

chooses not to use the air-conditioner in her apartment in Washington Heights.

Photograph:

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times

City Dims Lights as Heat Strains the Power Grid        NYT

2.8.2006

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/nyregion/02heat.html

For Californians,

Deadly Heat Cut a Broad Swath

August 11, 2006
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

BAKERSFIELD, Calif., Aug. 9 — On the last day of her life, Patricia Miller-Razor did the same things she did just about every other day in this sun-parched town, even as the temperature climbed.

She wrapped herself in her signature sweatsuit. She rode her bicycle to the Green Frog Market. She pondered her oil paintings, and carvings fashioned from avocado seeds, all the while refusing the entreaties from her family to flick on her cooler in her sweltering house.

Ms. Miller-Razor, 77, was later found by her son sideways across her bed, dead of heat stroke.

Roughly 140 Californians met a similar quick and grim fate in last month’s heat wave, a death toll unlike any the state had seen from high temperatures since 1955, state officials said, before air-conditioning went mainstream.

The extraordinary toll, in a place where most residents are accustomed to summer days in which the mercury hits triple digits, has shocked and unnerved state and local officials, leading Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger to order up a task force of health and emergency service officials to study how to avoid such deaths.

The length of the heat wave — it dragged on unabated for two weeks — overwhelmed county coroners, some of whom did not have the cots or refrigerators to handle the bodies; strained the state’s power resources; and caused costly damage to crops and livestock, in addition to the human toll.

While some of those who died had much in common with those who perished in heat waves this summer in New York City and elsewhere — they were elderly or infirm or frugal about using air-conditioners — many others reflected the lifestyle and proclivities of people in the arid Southwest.

There were five homeless people living in tents far off in the desert, who died in them. A half-dozen men were found dead after illegally trying to cross the border near San Diego. A tractor driver who had tilled a farm for decades, undaunted by long hot days in a long-sleeve shirt, died on the property.

Summers are to the Central Valley of California what winters are to northern Maine; people who live here are used to them, prepare for them, and to some extent are not fazed by them. The valley is the agricultural center of the state, and people here are used to toiling on hot days in fields, knocking around in their gardens and generally going about their business, knowing that the nights will bring relief from the dry heat that sears the day.

But for 13 straight days last month, things went differently. “This heat wave was marked by three things,” said Eric A. Weiss, a professor of emergency medicine at Stanford University Medical Center and an expert on heat-related illnesses.

“There was the duration, which is always important because of the cumulative effect,” Dr. Weiss went on. “Two, there were the record temperatures. And three, it did not cool down at night.”

He also said that some misinformation that had been spread about the signs of heatstroke might have caused further illnesses or deaths.

While the elderly are always particularly prone to death in harsh heat waves, fewer than half of those who died in California were over 70, according to a compilation of the most recent coroners’ reports, most of which are not yet complete.

In San Bernardino County, east of Los Angeles, for example, the average age of the 10 who died was 45. There was a 49-year-old man who went to his car to listen to music, fell asleep and was found later, the car heated to 140 degrees. Two men in their 40’s were found outdoors. A 30-year-old construction worker who had headaches all week left his job site for the hospital and died there 20 minutes later.

“That was surprising to us, a real eye-opener,” Sandy Fatland, a spokeswoman for the San Bernardino County coroner, said of the ages. “Perhaps when we are middle-aged, we don’t have people around who make us take care of ourselves; and left to our own devices, we don’t.”

In a state where long hours are spent caring for and harvesting crops, often by young, illegal workers from Mexico, Richard Helmuth, who worked for nearly 60 years at the Del Ray Packing Company raisin farm just east of Fresno, stood out.

The Fresno County coroner’s office attributed Mr. Helmuth’s death to his work; Gerald Chooljian, a co-owner of the farm, said Mr. Helmuth, who was 79, had gotten off the tractor and gone to sit in his car, where he was later discovered by another employee.

Mr. Chooljian was well versed in Mr. Helmuth’s ways — his preference for solitude, his refusal to drink water that did not come from his home, his insistence on working without shade.

“He wore long sleeves and said, ‘I don’t want the umbrella,’ ” Mr. Chooljian said. “And I thought, ‘O.K., you’ve been doing this for 50-odd years, I am 52 so I’m a pipsqueak comparatively.

“He taught me how to drive a tractor,” Mr. Chooljian added. “I respected him. He was his own boss; he did what he wanted, when he wanted. He always said he wanted to die on a tractor.”

Many elderly victims were doomed by personal choice. At the home of an elderly man in Bakersfield where the air-conditioner was found broken, sheriffs found $25,000 in cash.

In Fresno, Araxie Long, 82, and her son Carl, 53, both died in the house they shared, where family members had begged them to turn on the air-conditioner.

“They absolutely hated A-C,” said Diane Rowe, one of Mrs. Long’s daughters. “It wasn’t a matter of finances; they just couldn’t stand it. Now, all I can think about is their beautiful smiles.”

Here in Bakersfield, Ms. Miller-Razor had long refused to use her swamp cooler, which works by evaporation, saying that the cold air gave her body aches.

“She was going to do her thing her way,” her daughter-in-law Amy Razor said. “The house, the way it was locked up with two little six-inch fans, was probably between 125 and 130 degrees. She would tell us ‘I am in tune with myself. I know how to take care of myself.’ ”

Some seemed to have no choice. In a Modesto apartment building with three units, two of the three residents — both older men who had few people to look in on them — died in homes with no air-conditioning. One was Eston Baker, 72, a veteran who liked to volunteer at the local retirement home; the other, Curtis Floray, kept a microphone at the front door for visitors to speak into.

“It seems like the service guys, when they hit 65 or 70, they kind of fall through the cracks,” said Jeannie Riley, Mr. Baker’s stepdaughter, who also lives in Modesto. “I tried to get help from the county for him. They were a little slow on it. He didn’t have anyone. He didn’t have a family. I think that was why he was always around the older people all the time, because he was so lonely.”

Death also claimed the most marginalized: people who came from Mexico and never made it past the border, felled by heat; and those who lived in tent cities in the desert without running water or electricity.

Of the 10 people who died in Imperial County along the Mexican border, one was trying to sneak across the border; one was gardening; 3 lived in trailers; and 5 lived in tents, far from any town. One of the five lived in a big section of brush by the highway.

“Some are known and classified as schizophrenics,” said Henry Proo, a deputy sheriff in Imperial County. “Some are out of the military and could never get back to society; some are drug addicts, and for whatever reason this is the way they live. You got to live somewhere, and someone gives them a tent and they put it under a shady tree.”

Deputy Proo said the authorities were used to deaths in tents during hot summers, maybe one every week or so.

“But no one,” he said, “remembers anything like this.”

    For Californians, Deadly Heat Cut a Broad Swath, NYT, 11.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/11/us/11parched.html?hp&ex=1155355200&en=0db05d708c7cff3e&ei=5094&partner=homepage

10 More Died in Heat Wave, Coroners Say

August 6, 2006
The New York Times
By ANDY NEWMAN

Coroners said yesterday that they had attributed 10 more deaths in Queens and Brooklyn to last week’s heat wave, bringing the toll in the city to at least 20.

The victims, all of whom died of heat stroke, ranged from 52 to 99 years old, said Ellen Borakove, a spokeswoman for the city medical examiner. All of them were declared dead on Friday.

The high temperature in the city on Friday was 89 degrees, more than 10 degrees cooler than it had been earlier in the week, but Ms. Borakove said an entire week of temperatures in at least the high 90’s had probably weakened the victims and brought on their deaths.

“It’s a cumulative thing,” she said. She also said it was possible that some of the people had died earlier in the week but were not found until Friday.

Eight of the deaths occurred in Queens and the other two in Brooklyn. Six of the victims were women, including the 99-year-old; the other four were men, including the 52-year-old. The victims’ names were not released.

The medical examiner’s office had already determined that 10 people died from the heat on Thursday, when the temperature topped 100 degrees in much of the city.

Ms. Borakove said that coroners were still investigating three other deaths in Brooklyn that might have been related to the heat: those of a man in his 30’s found under the Gowanus Expressway and of an 82-year-old woman and her 47-year-old son found dead in their beds.

At least four other heat-related deaths have been reported in the region, two in Newark and two on Long Island.

    10 More Died in Heat Wave, Coroners Say, NYT, 6.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/06/nyregion/06heat.html

Heat Wave Claims at Least 27 Deaths

August 4, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 2:37 a.m. ET
The New York Times

VIRGINIA BEACH, Va. (AP) -- The searing heat wave that scorched the East and Midwest for nearly a week finally showed signs of breaking on Thursday, leaving behind scattered power outages and at least 27 deaths.

More than a dozen states, from Georgia to Connecticut, were still under heat warnings as temperatures rose into the 90s or higher. Virginia Beach reached a high of 99 degrees, but the humidity made it feel like 111.

The temperature climbed to record levels in several cities, including 97 in Bridgeport, Conn.; 98 in Islip, N.Y.; and 100 in Newark, N.J., and Baltimore, according to the National Weather Service.

Some relief rolled in after nightfall, as thunderstorms were reported in parts of the East. Temperatures in Chicago and Detroit dropped on Thursday.

Authorities have confirmed that heat played a role in at least 27 deaths in 11 states and the District of Columbia since the scorching temperatures set in on Sunday. Heat was suspected in at least eight other deaths.

In Illinois, at least six heat-related deaths were confirmed this week in Cook County, and police believe another six deaths on Wednesday could be heat-related.

But the relatively few deaths in Chicago offered evidence that the city had learned from its experience in 1995, when a similar heat wave killed more than 700 people in four days, said Eric Klinenberg, who wrote ''Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago,'' after the 1995 heat wave.

''I would say Chicago has become a national leader for heat emergency planning,'' said Klinenberg, a New York University sociologist. He said there were electronic billboards on major roads, public service announcements throughout the day on local media and the city checked on thousands of vulnerable residents and provided transportation to cooling centers.

But Klinenberg said the heat wave that earlier left more than 160 people dead in California is evidence that many other communities are not prepared to do what it takes to protect residents.

''Most cities only take heat waves seriously when they are experiencing their own disaster first hand and usually the responsiveness comes too late,'' he said.

New York City reported its first heat-related death of the year, an unidentified man whose body was found in Brooklyn. And in Hempstead, N.Y., an 83-year-old woman was pronounced dead of heat exhaustion.

In New Jersey, authorities in Newark confirmed that two elderly people found dead in their home Thursday had died because of the hot weather. Relatives told a television station that both had mental problems and kept their windows closed out of fear of intruders. The home had a fan, but no air conditioning.

In northern Indiana, heat killed an inmate at the mostly un-air-conditioned Indiana State Prison and contributed to the death of another, officials said Thursday.

In Michigan, the brutal temperatures may have caused the death of a 50-year-old man who was pouring concrete at a construction site, authorities said.

Four deaths were reported in Maryland, including three elderly victims who did not have air conditioning.

In Pennsylvania, a 74-year-old custodian was found dead in bed, his heart disease aggravated by the heat. In Oklahoma, a 92-year-old man found near his car Tuesday died of heat-related causes.

Consolidated Edison, the utility that serves much of the New York metropolitan area, said underground electrical problems on Manhattan's East side left 22,400 people without power. On Long Island, 12,000 people were in the dark.

Thousands of customers in downtown Stamford, Conn., lost power after demand caused some underground lines to catch fire and put others at risk of extensive damage. Some businesses were evacuated.

In New York, the heat was not unusual for Iman Arbab, 57, a native of Sudan who sells newspapers from a crate outside Pennsylvania Station in Manhattan.

''For me, 100 degrees -- it's normal,'' Arbab said Thursday.

But even he admitted he was getting a little fed up. ''When you're young, you don't feel it,'' Arbab said. ''When you get old, you feel it.''

Associated Press Writers Don Babwin in Chicago and Desmond Butler in New York City contributed to this report.

    Heat Wave Claims at Least 27 Deaths, NYT, 4.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Heat-Wave.html

More deaths as killer heat wave nears end

Thu Aug 3, 2006 9:13 PM ET
Reuters
By Daniel Trotta

NEW YORK (Reuters) - A record-breaking U.S. heat wave that has killed more than 150 people nationwide in the past two weeks claimed two more victims on Thursday just as relief was due.

The heat, which has moved east from California, also prompted record electricity demand and continued to force New York businesses to dim their Times Square billboards as part of a citywide conservation effort.

"We have had more record-breaking heat today, a lot of it in New York state," National Weather Service meteorologist Dennis Feltgen said.

All three of the New York City area's major airports reported August 3 records of 99 to 100 F (38 C). Baltimore, at 100 F, and Bridgeport, Connecticut, at 97 F (36 C), were among other Northeast cities breaking records, Feltgen said.

"The relief is coming on down. Boston will feel it tomorrow, New York will feel it tomorrow, Philadelphia will begin to feel it later tomorrow and we will begin to feel it in Washington and Baltimore tomorrow night and certainly on Saturday," he said.

Kansas City began to cool on Thursday and St. Louis and Indianapolis were expected get relief on Friday, he said.

In Newark, New Jersey, a husband and wife aged 66 and 65 were found dead in their living room with the windows closed and no air conditioning, said Desiree Peterkin Bell, a spokeswoman for the Newark mayor's office.

In response, the city extended the hours at municipal "cooling centers" where the elderly can escape the heat.

One inmate in Indiana State Prison's disciplinary unit died from excess heat on Tuesday and another prisoner died there on Sunday from heart failure aggravated by the hot weather, prison spokesman Barry Nothstine said.

One of them had been due to be released in November after serving his time for child molestation.

Inmates in the unit were offered extra bottled water and as many cold showers as they wanted, Nothstine said.

(Additional reporting by Michelle Nichols in New York and Andrew Stern in Chicago)

    More deaths as killer heat wave nears end, R, 3.8.2006, http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-08-04T011304Z_01_N03373442_RTRUKOC_0_US-WEATHER-USA.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C5-domesticNews-2

Heat Blankets U.S., Causing Discomfort, and in Some Cases Death

August 3, 2006
The New York Times
By KATIE ZEZIMA

BOSTON, Aug. 2 — Residents from Maine to Georgia and parts of the Midwest broiled under excessive heat Wednesday that strained power grids, taxed patience and, in some cases, proved fatal.

A spokesman for the Cook County medical examiner’s office said heat had been a factor in the deaths of six men in Chicago since Sunday. The authorities in Fleming County, Ky., suspect heat played a role in the death of an 18-month-old boy who was found in a van but will not know until an autopsy on Thursday.

ISO New England, which operates the power grid in the six New England states, and PJM Interconnection, which handles the grid in 11 Midwestern and Middle Atlantic states, both set records for kilowatt use Wednesday. Both called for voluntary electricity conservation and ordered certain customers to reduce use.

As temperatures up and down the Eastern Seaboard and Midwest hit or neared 100 degrees, officials throughout the East urged residents to conserve electricity, drink plenty of fluids, check on the elderly and stay out of the heat as much as possible.

Mayor Thomas M. Menino declared a heat emergency here in Boston, and an automated calling system alerted residents in 150,000 city households to stay out of the heat. Police officers in vans passed out bottled water to officers directing traffic, outdoor tourist areas were deserted and even adults frolicked in fountains to stay cool.

“I just needed to get a little bit wet,” said Jennifer Terlizzi, 31, a personal trainer from Boston, after emerging from a fountain in Christopher Columbus Park here. “This is ridiculous.”

Professional and high school sporting events and practices have been canceled or scaled back from North Carolina, where the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District suspended all evening and afternoon athletic practices, to Massachusetts, where the New England Patriots shut down a children’s entertainment area at their practice camp.

Race tracks closed because of the heat, and gorillas at the Atlanta zoo sucked on popsicles made of Powerade and fruit while the elephants got some relief from cool-water mist machines.

Temperatures reached 98 degrees here, according to the National Weather Service. Across the country, Providence, R.I.; Hartford; Westfield, Mass.; and St. Louis all reached 100 degrees.

Washington baked at 98 degrees and Philadelphia hit 97, as did Columbia, S.C., and Savannah, Ga. The heat is not expected to break until at least Thursday evening.

“If you draw a line from Portland, Me., to Rutland, Vt., below that line there’s just miserable weather,” said Andy Woodcock, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Washington office. “It basically goes from Rutland down to Cuba. Really, the whole East Coast is in an excessive heat warning. This is probably the most widespread as far as the heat goes that I’ve ever seen.”

The problem was not so much the air temperature as the dew point, which hovered in the mid-to lower 70-degree range. That, factored with the high temperatures, made the weather uncomfortably hot and dangerous because the humid air makes it harder for sweat to evaporate, said Bill Thomas, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Taunton, Mass.

Even places where people normally go to beat the heat, like the beaches in Chatham, Mass., where it felt like 108 degrees, could not escape.

“I’ve spent every summer here since I was born, and I just can’t remember it being this warm,” said Stuart Smith, harbormaster in Chatham, on Cape Cod’s elbow. “People at the beach all moved their beach chairs down right to the water.”

Johnny M. Wingers, director of the Macon-Bibb Emergency Management Agency in Georgia, has had to take a 40-foot air-conditioned vehicle to the local Department of Motor Vehicles branch, which only holds about 15 people; 75 were waiting outside.

“We had two who were overcome with heat last week, so they asked us to go on down,” said Mr. Wingers, who is requiring his staff to wear backpack water carriers.

George Murusidze, owner of Classic Pizza in Taunton, Mass., which hit 98 degrees, said employees were draining gallons of bottled water as well as lemonade. Mr. Murusidze said he felt like Wednesday was the first time it had actually been cooler in the kitchen than outside.

“It’s terrible, terrible to be next to the 500-degree oven,” he said. “We have two units of air-conditioning, but it does nothing.

“It’s unbelievably busy because no one wants to open the oven at their houses,” he added.

Catherine Woodling, a spokeswoman for the city of Atlanta, said the weather was bad but, after all, it is August in the South.

“There’s a reason they call us Hotlanta,” Ms. Woodling said.

Brenda Goodman contributed reporting from Atlanta for this article.

    Heat Blankets U.S., Causing Discomfort, and in Some Cases Death, NYT, 3.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/03/us/03swelter.html

Heat, Humidity Combine to Torture East

August 3, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 1:06 a.m. ET
The New York Times

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Record-breaking heat and oppressive humidity made people across the eastern half of the country miserable Wednesday and sent tourists in the nation's capital scrambling for relief in the cool marble halls of Capitol Hill.

Others forced to work outdoors guzzled icy drinks to cope with the heat wave that has sent temperatures soaring over 100 across the East and parts of the Midwest.

''This is unbelievable,'' said Bob Garner, a tourist from Atlanta who retreated with his family into the air-conditioned comfort of the Capitol. ''They get the hottest days of the year while we're here.''

By late afternoon, the temperature at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport had risen to 99, with a heat index of 106. It was even hotter on the steaming pavement downtown. In New York, the temperature rose to 101 at LaGuardia Airport and 96 in Central Park. Philadelphia and Baltimore climbed into the upper 90s.

The National Weather Service posted heat advisories and warnings from Maine to Oklahoma. Forecasters said the heat would linger until Thursday night, when a cool front was expected to bring temperatures down into the 80s.

Thousands who made it through the heat of a day found themselves in the dark Wednesday night after thunderstorms downed trees and power lines in parts of Massachusetts. Most of the power was expected to be restored overnight.

At the Capitol, tourists filled water bottles at drinking fountains and doused themselves. Others drenched their baseball caps before putting them on.

At the Library of Congress daycare center, children stayed inside because it was deemed too hot to swim. Washington Redskins coach Joe Gibbs cut his players a break by pushing back their 4 p.m. practice session to 7 p.m.

''It's unbearable, it's oppressive,'' said Joy Haber, 44, who canceled a trip from Long Island into Manhattan because of the stifling weather. Her 13-year-old son, Sean, skipped day camp when his bus arrived with a malfunctioning air conditioner.

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city was fortunate that no fatalities were linked to the brutal weather. Subway riders were in for a sweltering commute -- the temperature was about 111 at a Pennsylvania Station platform.

The city's electric utility, Con Edison, set its second record in two days for peak electricity demand, surpassing the level from a day earlier. The Long Island Power Authority also set a record.

The Dixie Chicks postponed their Wednesday night show at the outdoor Jones Beach Theater on Long Island because of the scorching heat.

In Philadelphia, concrete worker Bob Ferguson was building walls 32 feet below street level. ''Down in that hole, there's no air,'' said Ferguson, who wore the mandatory hard hat, long sleeves, long pants and work boots.

Bicycle messenger Gravett Dhuja tried to look at the bright side as he rested near a Capitol Hill office building: ''It's been hot, but rain is a lot worse for us.''

Authorities in the capital were prepared to go door to door to get people to public cooling centers, said Mark Brown, deputy director of the D.C. Emergency Management Agency. The city also passed out fans to low-income residents and kept its homeless shelters open around the clock.

The same heat wave was blamed for as many as 164 deaths last week in California.

In Kentucky, an 18-month-old boy was found dead Wednesday inside a van about 60 miles northeast of Lexington. The vehicle's doors were locked, and the boy's mother had to break a window to get to the child, authorities said.

Norfolk Naval Station in Virginia hoisted black flags at gymnasiums and ports to caution sailors against doing strenuous exercise outdoors.

In Boston, animals at the Franklin Park Zoo were kept cool with sprinklers and frozen treats. The African wild dogs and lions got frozen blood; the primates received frozen fruit juice.

''It's a matter of taste, I guess,'' zoo President John Linehan said.

Boston authorities awaited autopsy results on a pregnant woman who died Saturday after collapsing at a sweltering Red Sox game. Denise Quickenton, 29, suffered an apparent heart attack after sitting in sunny bleacher seats where the temperature was at least 90 degrees, officials said. She was seven months pregnant, but a medical team was able to deliver her 4-pound infant at a hospital.

Some Washington tourists pressed on with their plans, gulping bottled water and fanning themselves with brochures outside such landmarks such as Union Station and the Washington Monument.

''The humidity is so bad -- not like in Spain,'' said Carlos Mulas, 56, of Madrid, before boarding a tour bus. ''But Washington is so beautiful. We expect to enjoy it.''

Several members of tourist Gregg Selewski's extended family spent their nights in a recreational vehicle parked at a campground in Greenbelt, Md. They vowed to see everything, despite the heat.

''This is what we came to do,'' said Selewski, 13, of Canton, Mich.

Associated Press writers Desmond Butler in New York City and Adam Gorlick in Springfield, Mass., contributed to this report.

    Heat, Humidity Combine to Torture East, NYT, 3.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Heat-Wave.html

With Dial on Broil, City Staggers Through Day

August 3, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHELLE O’DONNELL

The Ford van crawled down 58th Street in Queens at 2 p.m. on its way to a delivery. The temperature inside was 111 degrees. On Astoria Boulevard, a Con Ed worker in a heavy blue jumpsuit descended into a manhole in which the temperature was surely higher. On Times Square, the lights were dimmed as the temperature rose.

So it went around New York City yesterday as a blistering heat wave continued to settle in like a summer guest who would not go away. The temperature reached 102 degrees at La Guardia Airport, a record for that date, and 97 in Central Park. It hit 100 in Newark, tying the record there.

For a second day there were darkened offices, pleas from the mayor to conserve, and sporadic power failures. North of the city, in Stamford, Conn., a section of downtown was deliberately blacked out to avoid wider damage.

But as the day dragged on in a hazy trance, the heat made even the seconds pass by in a sluggish torpor: it was a morning and night of a million little miseries, with just as many ways to get through them.

Many seats in New York City summer school sessions were vacant after the city’s announcement that students could stay home. Office workers seeking a cigarette break faced a one-two punch of heat and humidity if they dared venture from cooled lobbies. Observant Jews wrestled with how to deal with a day of fasting that began last night — and prohibits the drinking of water. At Rikers Island, running under generator power, guards, inmates and visitors all sweated.

While many New Yorkers labored to endure any brief encounter with the outdoors — a walk to the subway, the mailbox, the bodega — there were those whose jobs kept them outside and forced them to function somehow.

As glistening Con Ed workers stood sullenly along Astoria Boulevard seeking shade in the narrowest of shadows, a worker who gave his name only as Carlos climbed down into a narrow manhole near 28th Street.

There was serious work to do inside the manhole, which was about as wide as a jumbo pizza tray and as hot as the ovens at Patsy’s. Coils of cables had to be sorted and spliced, and customers who were on generators had to be put back onto the power grid.

It was at least 115 degrees in the manhole. Sweat coursed beneath Carlos’s heavy jumpsuit and helmet. He had already spent two hours in a nearby manhole. His 12-hour shift was not yet half over. “I would say it’s your worst nightmare,” he said.

Still, Carlos earned about $10 an hour more than his partner, who remained aboveground.

A Sauna on Wheels

Creeping down 58th Street in Woodside, Queens, in his white Ford van, Anthony Ramirez, 35, tilted his head back for a long gulp, downing the last of a bottle of Gatorade. “I’m going to need another one soon,” he said, looking ahead at the traffic, barely moving.

Sweat dripped down the sides of his face, stained the front of his T-shirt and made his arms look as if they had been dunked in a bucket of water. Hot water. “I feel like the devil’s in here,” he said, “It’s murder, I’m telling you.”

What it was, really, inside his van, was 111 degrees, according to a thermometer that toured some of the city’s hottest locations yesterday. It was 102 at an auto body repair shop in Woodside; the kitchen in a Chinatown restaurant came in at a relatively comfortable 94.7.

Mr. Ramirez’s van, which he uses to deliver packages for an air freight company, has no air-conditioning, and on his trek to four stops in Brooklyn and another in Woodside, it felt very much like a sauna on wheels. With the air outside growing ever steamier, a wooden crate full of antique furniture was still due on Long Island. Maybe on the Long Island Expressway, he said, he would catch a breeze.

EMILY VASQUEZ

Inmates and Officers Bake

Jail is not supposed to be comfortable for those serving time, so it comes as little surprise that inmates at Rikers Island have no air-conditioning. But yesterday’s extreme heat put everyone on edge. At Cobblestone’s Pub in Astoria, a favorite bar for Rikers correction officers coming off their shifts, the officers filed in sweaty and weary.

The officers said inmates are irritated by the intense heat. So are officers, they said; they are used to having air-conditioning in their locker room and in offices. With the jail’s own generators struggling to keep the lights on yesterday, those usual sanctuaries offered little relief.

“Everybody’s sweating bullets in there,” said one officer, a 20-year veteran who would not give his name. “We’re performing our duties because we’re professionals, but the heat is definitely wearing everybody thin.”

Isabel Torres, 45, walked off the city bus that takes visitors to the island. She said she had just visited her 22-year-old son, who had been arrested for tampering with a MetroCard and was suspected in a robbery.

“The heat is horrible in there,” she said. “My son is worried that if the power goes, anything could happen, that maybe there will be a riot.”

COREY KILGANNON

Riding First Class on Subway

The subway can be noisy and cramped and dirty, but yesterday, a window seat on the outbound Q line felt as high-class as a Pullman car. Vents in the ceilings pumped cool air upon grateful passengers going from here to there, and on others going nowhere special. For the homeless in particular, on a hot day, an air-conditioned subway car is itself the destination.

“Is this the Q?” asked an occasional street vendor, Elizabeth Jahjah, 49, minutes after awakening. “I was on the N and I switched because I didn’t like the look of some of the people. I felt bad karma. Very uncomfortable.”

It was almost 2 p.m. Her ride had begun 11 hours earlier, she said, after sitting on a Fifth Avenue bench. “I kept thinking, maybe I’ll take the subway. There’s no breeze.” Eventually, she planned to make her way to Astor Place to use the restroom and freshen up at a coffee shop.

She likes the Q, she said, for its aboveground stretch in Brooklyn.

“The E is sort of depressing, some of the people,” she said. “Some of them don’t even freshen up. Some people ride them all day and all night.”

MICHAEL WILSON

An Oasis: School

Steven Checo, 12, had two choices yesterday. He could kick back with his friends, enjoying a city-sanctioned day off from summer school in the sweltering playground known as the Bronx, or he could go to class. He went to class.

He was one of the few. Not many other students at Middle School 45 near East Fordham Road made the same decision. The Department of Education made summer school attendance optional yesterday in response to the heat wave, and the handful of students who walked out the doors at 1 p.m. were the exception, not the rule.

A department spokeswoman said attendance for students in 3rd to 12th grade around the city was 36 percent compared with an average last week of 72 percent.

One student at the South Bronx school said only 3 out of 11 students showed up in his class. Steven Checo said about 5 out of 12 made it to his. He said he was comfortable in an air-conditioned room, one of relatively few in the system, but he mostly liked the peace and quiet.

Students had many reasons for venturing into the heat in the name of education. Among them: “My mother told me to go,” Adonis Peña, 12, said.

MANNY FERNANDEZ

This Fast Means No Water

“We’ve been drinking like camels the last couple of days,” Rabbi Haskel Lookstein said yesterday in his office at Kehilath Jeshurun, an Orthodox synagogue on the Upper East Side.

Well, sure. So have millions of other New Yorkers. But Rabbi Lookstein and many other Jews drank with particular urgency: beginning last night, they would be forbidden to consume any water for 24 hours. The occasion is Tisha B’Av, a day of fasting to mark the destruction of the First and Second Temples, the Crusades, the Holocaust, and other calamities that have befallen the Jews over the centuries.

Despite the heat, calls to a dozen Orthodox and Conservative rabbis turned up no reports of panicked congregants. “Look, we’ve had Tisha B’Av for about 2,000 years, and it’s always been in the summertime,” said Rabbi Aron Heineman, who runs a center for the elderly in Midwood, Brooklyn. “Somehow or other people get through it.”

Of course, rabbis urged their flocks to set the fast aside if they felt their health was in danger. “People will use their judgment,” Rabbi Heineman said.

ANDY NEWMAN

Less Wool, Greater Comfort

For some, cooling off involved a shearer, and kicking, bucking and bleating.

Those shorn were three alpacas, animals related to llamas and native to South America, who live at John Bowne High School, in Flushing, Queens, as part of the school’s agriculture program. Their fleece, which provides more insulation than sheep’s wool, is useful in their native mountainous terrain, but is a curse on a day like yesterday.

The 14 students on hand to observe and assist in the shearing doused themselves with water to keep cool. The shearer, Pete Sepe, 56, a Connecticut high school agriculture teacher, wore a blue shirt soon colored navy from sweat.

Aster, the first to be shorn, was placid, though her 3-month-old baby whimpered and squirmed. But Ag kicked the shearers out of Mr. Sepe’s hand, and Algonquin’s legs had to be held still. Without fleece, the alpacas seemed shorter, skinnier, longer-necked. But, Konika Chowdhury, 16, said: “They’re not going to be hot anymore. I’m happy about that.”

ROBIN SHULMAN

Precious Little Shade

Newark hit 100 for the second day in a row, and some gave this reason: not enough trees. The city is a prime example of a “heat island,” a phenomenon that occurs in urban areas where bricks, pavement and concrete absorb the sun’s heat, making temperatures rise faster and drop far more slowly than in the surrounding areas.

That Newark has a dearth of green is a symptom of a social and political climate infertile to urban vegetation, said Neil Maher, an associate professor at the New Jersey Institute of Technology and Rutgers-Newark.

It was not always this way. From 1915 to the mid-1950’s, a city Shade Tree Commission planted thousands of the natural leafy air-conditioners. Politicians, responding to the city’s turn-of-the-century urban maladies, including an overabundance of pavement, brick and concrete, made building parks and planting trees a priority, said Clement A. Price, a professor of history at Rutgers-Newark.

Frederick Law Olmsted, one of the designers of Central Park, designed Branch Brook Park in Newark in the late 19th Century. Other parks, including Weequahic Park, built in the 1920’s, also sprouted around the region and added plenty of green to Newark’s golden era, Mr. Price said.

By the 1960’s, however, some trees were bulldozed. Others died of neglect. Summer in the city became a lot grittier, or as William Kelly, 33, a resident of leafy McAllen, Texas, said as he stood in front of an industrial-sized air-conditioning fan in Pennsylvania Station in Newark yesterday, “Because of all the concrete it’s like a big pizza oven here.”

NATE SCHWEBER

Hot? This Is Nothing

New Yorkers grumbled yesterday in the 97-degree weather, but some perspective is in order: It could have been worse.

It could have been July 9, 1936: the hottest day in New York City history as recorded in Central Park. The high that day was 106, according to the National Weather Service.

People in this city still talk about the Christmas blizzard of 1947, the blackout of 1977, the transit strike of 1980. But the hottest day on record has largely faded into meteorological obscurity.

In 1936, Joe DiMaggio was a rookie and La Guardia was a mayor, not an airport. On July 9, the city — the old city, where men wore suits and air-conditioning was little more than an open window — turned red-hot.

At 3:30 p.m., a thermometer in the window of a public library in Brooklyn recorded the temperature at 118 degrees. Asphalt blistered. Thousands spent the night in parks and on the beaches, and Robert Moses, then the parks commissioner, ordered city swimming pools open until midnight.

Fifty people collapsed from the heat and were taken to hospitals, and seven people died in and around the city. Three open drawbridges over the Harlem River expanded so much in the heat they would not shut.

MANNY FERNANDEZ

    With Dial on Broil, City Staggers Through Day, NYT, 3.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/03/nyregion/03heat.html?hp&ex=1154664000&en=a1ad6cc34bdd3d77&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Inconvenience, Not Disasters, as Heat Rises

August 3, 2006
The New York Times
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA and SEWELL CHAN

The mass of hot, damp air that has laid siege to the Northeast bore down harder than ever yesterday, setting new high-temperature marks, breaking records for power consumption and sending hundreds of people to hospital emergency rooms.

The heat reached 102 degrees at La Guardia Airport, 100 at Newark and Teterboro airports, and the upper 90’s across most of the New York metropolitan area, and high humidity made it feel like 110 in some places. Forecasters predicted one more day of misery before the heat wave breaks, with temperatures today expected to be in the upper 90’s across much of the region.

Tens of thousands of people lost power in pockets from Montclair, N.J., to Astoria, Queens, to Stamford, Conn., but all told the region’s power grid held up relatively well, and temperatures did not go as high as some forecasters had predicted.

Businesses, cultural institutions and government agencies heeded pleas to cut electricity use, from hospitals that switched to power from their own generators, to the American Museum of Natural History, which extinguished the lights that keep the giant blue sphere aglow at the Rose Center for Earth and Space.

Even the electronic kaleidoscope that rings Times Square dimmed yesterday, as ABC News and Reuters turned off their giant video screens and crawling headlines, and Lehman Brothers joined Morgan Stanley in shutting down its stock ticker.

Officials appealed for more conservation, warning that soaring residential demand posed a new kind of threat to the grid. Demand used to drop sharply after business hours, but now can stay high around the clock as more people rely on air-conditioning and keep their power-hungry computers and entertainment systems operating, especially on hot, sticky nights like those this week. In some residential areas the peak period for demand was between 8 and 9 p.m.

“These networks will only survive if we reduce the consumption,” Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg said in a televised news conference.

People felt battered by the fetid air and the power problems, yet there was also the sense yesterday of having dodged something much worse. Officials in New York City and cities around the region said they did not know of a single death that could be attributed to the heat.

For the second day in a row, new peaks for electricity use were set across most of the Northeast, far exceeding the highs that the power companies predicted just a few months ago. Power consumption topped out at 13,141 megawatts at Con Edison, 5,736 megawatts at the Long Island Power Authority and 11,146 megawatts at Public Service Electric and Gas in New Jersey — all record highs. Connecticut Light and Power reached 7,339 megawatts, the second-highest mark, behind Tuesday’s.

The three independent system operators (regional agencies that oversee the grid for multiple utilities) for New England, New York State, and the mid-Atlantic states with part of the Midwest all reported new records in their territories, as well.

Most of the power failures that did occur lasted for only a few hours, in dozens of relatively small clusters. Con Edison had as many as 4,500 customers — a customer can be a single home or business, or a multiunit apartment building — without electricity at one time, with the largest groups in Tuckahoe, in Westchester County, and in parts of the Bronx and Queens. In addition, voltage was reduced by 8 percent to Rego Park and Jackson Heights in Queens, to preserve service while crews struggled to repair damaged equipment.

Public Service had more than 4,000 customers out at a time, including the 1,500 in Montclair. Connecticut Light and Power had 1,800 out, and intentionally cut off six large buildings in downtown Stamford to avoid overloading a cable. One building, used by UBS Financial Services, ran on its own generator, while the others, including a branch of the University of Connecticut, closed early for the day.

The fact that the region averted wider power failures was small comfort to those who lost power. None felt more put-upon than hundreds of residents and merchants in Astoria, Queens, who suffered through several days without power last month and lost power again yesterday when some overburdened lines caught fire.

At Jimbo’s Bar and Restaurant on Astoria Boulevard, the owner, George Bountouvas, went through a painfully familiar routine, throwing away the spoiled meat, eggs and milk in his kitchen and sending the cooks home for the day. The bartender kept some beer on ice, but only a few regulars bothered to step through the door.

“We’re able to go to the moon, we’re able to throw bombs on other countries,” Mr. Bountouvas fumed. “But we can’t keep the lights on.”

In Janeth Toral’s one-story house on the boulevard, lights flickered, went out, came back on, failed again — and once again she found herself wondering how she would keep her 2-month-old son, Christian, safe. “I got scared because it’s been so hot,” she said.

Con Edison delivered its first formal report to the mayor yesterday on last month’s blackout. But the 107-page document mostly provided details of a story already known, rather than shed light on its causes.

The heat broke records for the date at La Guardia, where it hit 102 degrees, and at Islip, on Long Island, with 98 degrees. It tied the record at Newark International Airport, where it reached 100 degrees. Several places fell just short of records, including Kennedy International Airport and Central Park, both at 97; Windsor Locks, Conn., at 99; and Bridgeport and Albany, both 95.

Among places for which the National Weather Services does not keep long-term records, the most striking readings were at the eastern end of Long Island, where summer days usually stay much cooler than in the urban core. Montauk reached 98 yesterday, and Westhampton 97.

There were plenty of people toppling along with the records. Dr. Robert H. Meyer, who works in the emergency room at Montefiore Medical Center in the Bronx, said that about 25 people overcome by the heat were treated there. Some other large hospitals reported similar figures.

Three of those treated yesterday morning at Montefiore were residents of the Atria senior housing complex in Riverdale, which lost power during the night and had to be evacuated.

“Elderly people can very quickly became dehydrated, really in heat exhaustion, needing IV fluids and cooling measures,” Dr. Meyer said. “We saw dry tongues, cracked lips, no urine output, excessive sweating, and even vomiting and diarrhea, elevated temperatures — 101, 102 — in people who don’t have fevers, all due to the heat. This is very serious, potentially fatal.”

New York City’s Emergency Medical Service responded to 3,600 calls on Tuesday, about 20 percent more than usual, with heat-related problems accounting for much of the increase. Mr. Bloomberg said that on Tuesday, more than 66,000 people went to city pools, more than 240,000 to city beaches, and 21,000 to specially designated senior centers, many of which stayed open long past their usual hours. Officials said that all of those figures would probably be exceeded yesterday.

Attendance at city summer schools was at 36 percent yesterday, compared with 72 percent last week.

Citymeals-on-Wheels had delivered emergency supplies, including water and nonperishable food, to 13,000 elderly people in the city so far this week. And Mr. Bloomberg said city agencies were checking on those frail residents it knew through various programs.

But the mayor said that when large numbers of people died in heat waves in other cities, they tended to be those who were not known to such programs, who usually fended for themselves. He called on New Yorkers to pitch in to keep those people safe.

“Please, check in on people who are living in your neighborhood,” he said. “You know who they are: the elderly, the infirm.”

“You really can save lives,” he said.

Michael Amon contributed reporting for this article.

    Inconvenience, Not Disasters, as Heat Rises, NYT, 3.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/03/nyregion/03power.html

Heat cooks eastern part of USA

Updated 8/2/2006 10:55 AM ET
AP
USA Today

NEW YORK (AP) — Commuters sweated on their way to work Wednesday as the temperature and humidity started climbing back up to heat wave levels after a night of little relief.

The National Weather Service posted heat advisories and warnings from Maine to Oklahoma. Triple-digit temperatures were forecast Wednesday along the East Coast as far north as parts of Maine and New Hampshire.

The temperature was already above 80 before dawn Wednesday at Nashua, N.H. New York's LaGuardia Airport still had 92 degrees at midnight and eased only to 86 degrees by 6 a.m., the National Weather Service said. In the heart of crowded Manhattan, the low at Central Park only got down to 83.

In the stifling subway tunnels, there was no air conditioning on three cars of the train Sayed Bukhari rode into Manhattan.

"People were crying," Sayed said.

"You don't beat it," workman Frank Kenney, 40, said Tuesday in Bangor, Maine. "You just get through it."

Equipment problems and stormy weather caused scattered power outages during the night in parts of New England, shutting off fans and air conditioners, utilities said.

Electricity usage in the six-state New England region could top 28,000 megawatts Wednesday, breaking the one-day record of 27,395 megawatts set just two weeks ago, according to Erin O'Brien, a spokeswoman for ISO New England, which oversees the region. The demand Tuesday was just shy of the record, she said.

The hot weather brought its share of troubles Tuesday, putting animals in jeopardy, disabling cars and prompting New York to turn off lights atop the Empire State Building.

Residents on Chicago's South Side were evacuated from high-rise buildings by the hundreds on Tuesday, one day after the power went out to 20,000 customers. Illinois officials blamed three deaths on the heat.

A 15-year-old high school football player died in Georgia, one day after collapsing in the heat at practice, and the heat was suspected in the death of a 75-year-old woman in Wisconsin who kept the air conditioning off to save money.

To the north and west, some areas had started to enjoy a break from the heat. Hayward, Wis., cooled to 70 on Tuesday, down from 104 degrees on Monday.

Elsewhere, however, by mid-afternoon Tuesday the temperature in Chicago was 100, Baltimore reached 99 and Washington hit 97, though the humidity made it feel like 107. Highs of 100 in Newark, N.J., and 97 in Atlantic City, tied records. In Manchester, N.H, it reached 95, tying the record for the date set in 1933.

Utilities said customer demand for power reached or exceeded all-time record highs.

With a disastrous 10-day power outage in one borough still fresh in memory, thermostats at city offices in New York City were set at 78, up from the usual 72. Lights were turned down on the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building, as were the lights illuminating the George Washington Bridge, the Brooklyn Bridge and other spans.

Farmers used fans and cold showers to keep their cattle cool, but at least 25,000 chickens died of the heat at an Indiana when electricity was shut off so firefighters could fight a blaze at an adjacent building.

The American Automobile Association's Mid-Atlantic division handled 7,400 calls for assistance from Monday afternoon through Tuesday evening — a 37% rise over normal summer call volume.

"That's about comparable to what we get in a major snowstorm," said John B. Townsend, an AAA spokesman. Many were for overheated vehicles, hoses, belts breaking down and cracking and tires blowing out on the hot asphalt.

In Maine, Aquaboggin Water Park in Saco prepared for big crowds on Wednesday, bringing in cases of bottled water for customers and calling in extra staff.

"We're gearing up for it," general manager Sally Christner said. "Nobody else is excited about the heat, but we are. This is a great place to be when it's hot."

    Heat cooks eastern part of USA, UT, 2.8.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2006-08-02-heat-wave_x.htm

Hundreds Evacuated in Chicago as Heat Wave Persists

August 2, 2006
The New YorkTimes
By GRETCHEN RUETHLING

CHICAGO, Aug. 1 — About 1,300 residents were evacuated from more than a dozen high-rise apartment buildings on the city’s South Side on Tuesday after a power failure left many in sweltering conditions as a heat wave stretched into a fifth day.

The evacuations came after about 3,400 customers lost power on Monday night when an underground cable failed, said Tom Stevens, a spokesman for Commonwealth Edison, the electric company. The failure’s cause is under investigation, Mr. Stevens said.

No deaths or serious illnesses were reported in connection with the power failure. But the heat wave has contributed to at least three deaths here since the weekend, including that of a 51-year-old man who was found dead in his apartment on Monday with the windows closed and no fan or air-conditioner, the Cook County medical examiner’s office said.

The heat had a grip on about two-thirds of the nation on Tuesday, from West Texas in an arc to southern Wisconsin and east to the Atlantic, stretching as far north as southern Maine, where highs for the day were near 90 degrees to above 100, the National Weather Service reported.

In Rockdale County, Ga., a 15-year-old boy died of heat stroke after collapsing at football practice on Monday night, officials said.

Chicago residents sweated through temperatures hovering around 100 degrees on Tuesday, making it the fifth consecutive day that the area had temperatures above 90 degrees.

“It’s just like Hurricane Katrina,” said Lutricia Somerville, 38, who said she had tried without success to call the city’s 311 nonemergency line to find out when her power might be restored. “You can’t get through.”

Ms. Somerville, a security officer who was crunching on ice cubes as she watched children play in water from an open fire hydrant near the evacuated apartment buildings, said she had $300 worth of groceries spoiling in the heat.

About 400 of the most vulnerable evacuees were taken to college dormitories and a handful of hotels, including the Palmer House Hilton and the Crowne Plaza, with the electric company paying the bill, said Larry Langford, a spokesman for the Chicago Fire Department.

The remaining evacuees were taken by bus to the McCormick Place convention center on the South Side, where they lounged on cots, watched movies, played games and ate food donated by the Salvation Army, said Lisa Elkuss, a spokeswoman for the Department of Human Services.

At least 15 states in the Midwest and on the East Coast were facing excessive-heat warnings on Tuesday, with high temperatures around 100 degrees in many places, said Mike Looney, the chief of services for the Weather Service’s Central Region headquarters in Kansas City, Mo.

Thousands of Chicago residents visited cooling centers on Tuesday. Signs along Lake Shore Drive warned motorists of the heat and advised them to check on neighbors and to stay hydrated.

Many evacuees returned to their homes later on Tuesday after power was restored to most customers.

The Chicago area, which has been under an excessive-heat warning since Friday, is expected to start cooling by Wednesday night. Temperatures are expected to drop to the lower 80’s on Thursday, said Bill Nelson, an observation program leader with the Weather Service in Romeoville, Ill.

In the meantime, Chantay King, 30, a college student who lives in the area affected by the power failure, said she and her 10-month-old son, Romell, had been keeping cool since the weekend by playing in water from an open fire hydrant.

“My baby’s so hot, he won’t do anything,” Ms. King said. “He won’t take no food because it’s too hot for him.”

And Ms. Somerville, who sat in her air-conditioned truck for hours on Sunday night to keep cool during a power failure, said her elderly mother had refused to leave her house.

“My mama’s hardheaded,” Ms. Somerville said. “She don’t want to go to no cooling center. She’s trying to help everybody else.”

    Hundreds Evacuated in Chicago as Heat Wave Persists, NYT, 2.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/us/02chicago.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

Electrical Use Hits New Highs in Much of U.S.

August 2, 2006
The New York Times
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA and MATTHEW L. WALD

A smothering heat wave shattered records for electricity use across a wide swath of the country yesterday as utilities and government officials called for conservation and braced for even more strain on the power grid today.

Power systems held up well despite worries about overloaded plants, transformers or lines. But utility executives warned that the risk of breakdowns rises steadily as a heat wave wears on, and with today’s temperatures expected to top yesterday’s, with possible record highs along the East Coast, power companies were girding for a huge challenge.

Three independent system operators, agencies that manage regional grids for New York, the mid-Atlantic and the Midwest, set record highs for electricity demand yesterday, breaking records set just two weeks ago. New England was just shy of a record.

Experts say demand is rising faster than the ability to meet it, which over the long run could pose the risk of both local and regional failures.

New York City took extraordinary steps to cut consumption, including turning off the display lights on the Brooklyn Bridge and ordering the city’s jail on Rikers Island to use generators. Some leading businesses raised their thermostats after Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg ordered most city office buildings to do so.

Over all, the power grid east of the Rockies is fairly strong, experts say, in part because of changes made after the biggest blackout in North American history, in August 2003. Independent system operators and the control room engineers who monitor systems at utilities are better trained and better equipped than they were in 2003, and they are in closer touch with one another.

“At this point, everybody is on their toes,” said Stanley L. Johnson, a spokesman for the North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry group in Princeton, N.J.

As the throb of air-conditioners and generators has become the summer’s soundtrack, most striking is how fast the overall demand for power has climbed. In most cases, the system operators surpassed not only previous records, but also the predictions they made in the spring for peak summer demand.

PJM Interconnection, the system operator whose member utilities cover most of the country from the Hudson River to the Chicago area and as far south as North Carolina, oversaw delivery of about 144,000 megawatts at its peak yesterday afternoon — up more than 10,000 megawatts from the record set last summer. PJM said demand growth has been equivalent to adding another Baltimore and its suburbs each year.

The Long Island Power Authority in New York surpassed 5,600 megawatts yesterday for the first time and predicted more than 5,700 today — 10 percent higher than the record set last year. “It’s an extraordinary growth,” said Richard M. Kessel, the chairman. “This is an extraordinary event, electrically.”

The New England and New York system operators said demand could push higher today, but it was expected to drop in the Midwest. At PJM, the concern was that power use would fall in the Ohio Valley and farther west, but climb along the Eastern Seaboard, putting added strain on the major transmission lines connecting the two regions.

“Tomorrow could be tricky, because if there’s significantly higher demand in the East, getting it to the East will really tax the transmission system,” Ray Dotter, a PJM spokesman, said yesterday. “We’ll still be sweating.”

Power demand has climbed much faster than predicted across the country since 2004, raising concerns about whether efforts to build new plants and transmission lines, and encourage conservation, will satisfy the nation’s appetite for electricity.

At American Electric Power, which serves five million people in 11 states, from Virginia to Ohio to Oklahoma, J. Craig Baker, the senior vice president for regulatory services, said that the heat wave “is stressing the transmission and distribution system considerably,” and that the industry needed to think seriously about how to reinforce it.

Projecting demand for electricity can be harder than predicting the stock market, but the North American Electric Reliability Council tries to do so each spring. In 2003 and 2004, actual growth in demand was smaller than anticipated, but last year’s peak demand exceeded projections by 1.7 percent. Because growth last year was so strong, the council predicted an 0.5 percent rise this year, a number that was clearly too small.

Jim Smith, a spokesman for the New York Independent System Operator, which oversees the state’s power markets and distribution, said: “There are more people, more houses, those houses are bigger, there are more electronics in those houses, and they have bigger air-conditioning units. Computers, plasma televisions, video games, BlackBerrys, iPods — every new gadget you can think of has to be plugged in somewhere.”

More than any other factor, air-conditioning drives the increase. “When it gets hot, I don’t say, ‘I want to crank up my lights,’ ” said Jonathan Cogan, a spokesman for the Energy Information Administration, a federal agency. “What I do is turn on my air-conditioner.”

In 1978, 56 percent of American households had air-conditioning. By 2001, the most recent year for which government statistics were available, that figure had risen to 77 percent, and all evidence suggests that it has continued to climb since then.

Experts say that for now, at least, the long-distance power transmission system appears to be up to the challenge, though there is a constant threat of local distribution problems because persistent heat and the electricity surging through the lines can overwhelm equipment. That is what happened last month in parts of Queens that lost power for more than a week.

The reliability council has long advised utilities and system operators and set standards for operations and personnel training, but its recommendations were merely advisory, and investigations after the 2003 blackout showed that they were not always followed. However, on July 20, the government designated it as the electric reliability organization for the United States, a step allowed under the 2005 energy bill, making its standards mandatory nationwide.

That designation is too recent to have had any impact on reliability, industry officials said. What has made a difference, though, is a national program of audits that began after the 2003 blackout, in which teams of utility experts review one another’s training standards and operating procedures.

The audits are intended to catch problems like those in Ohio that led to the 2003 collapse across much of the Northeast, the Midwest and parts of Canada: failure to trim trees that can catch transmission lines, inadequate training of operators, and computer systems that can malfunction without humans noticing.

To deal with the latest surge in demand, power companies and government officials called on businesses and residents to cut power use voluntarily — taking steps like raising thermostats, turning out lights and drawing blinds to keep out the sun. But in some cases, conservation measures went farther. The New York Independent System Operator invoked an existing program that cuts power to some of the biggest consumers around the state, “shedding” about 600 megawatts of demand — and yet the region still peaked far above last year’s record.

Higher demand also means bigger electric bills for consumers, in part because rates rise as demand increases. Consumption also tends to rise as heat waves go on, even if the peak temperatures are no longer increasing. Nighttime temperatures stay high, so air-conditioners are used more hours each day.

As Mr. Dotter, the PJM spokesman, said, when the heat persists, people say, “I was trying to conserve but I can’t take it anymore,” and then turn up the air-conditioner.

    Electrical Use Hits New Highs in Much of U.S., NYT, 2.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/us/02power.html?hp&ex=1154577600&en=93dba9c0a6481f98&ei=5094&partner=homepage

The Vulnerable

Checking Up on Those Trapped at Home

August 2, 2006
The New York Times
By MANNY FERNANDEZ

Jeanette Means went out into the 95-degree heat yesterday so Raymond Trapp did not have to.

Ms. Means, a social worker in the South Bronx, left the comfort of her air-conditioned office and hopped in a cab. She was sweating by the time she let herself into his apartment. She found Mr. Trapp seated on his leather couch watching television, within range of a small air-conditioner and a large square kitchen fan.

Mr. Trapp — “73 and a half,” he said proudly, and in good health — was wearing an appropriately airy green tank-top and was surrounded by pictures of his family and of his younger self, when he used to work on ships. Ms. Means, armed with a notepad and motherly concern, was checking on Mr. Trapp on one of the hottest days of the year, making sure he had food, fluids and a working air-conditioner.

Mr. Trapp seemed grateful for the company. He was taking a relaxed, philosophical view of New York City’s latest heat wave. “Cold, heat,” he said. “That’s God’s work. You can’t run away from that.”

Just as the heat brought Ms. Means and Mr. Trapp together, it brought together a nurse and a 65-year-old lung cancer patient in Queens, and connected a nurse consultant named Lovely Gibson with an 83-year-old woman in Brooklyn. Around the city yesterday, as the temperature neared 100 degrees, social workers, care providers and nurses visited the homebound elderly, one of the most vulnerable populations in hot and humid weather. They were there to look after the New Yorkers who live alone or in isolation, too disabled or too ill to venture far.

Many of the elderly live mere blocks or even steps from one of the many “cooling centers” the city has opened in air-conditioned buildings. But for New Yorkers of a certain age, struggling with bad eyesight or a bad back or Parkinson’s disease, around the corner is not as close as it seems. And yesterday’s heat, which caused some young men to walk around with damp towels on their heads, was severe enough to take a toll on some of the city’s oldest residents, no matter how hard they tried to avoid the outdoors or strenuous physical activity.

Nina Messana, a 71-year-old mailroom clerk, was walking in Lower Manhattan about 10 a.m. when she collapsed in her son’s arms. “I picked her up and I started taking her home,” said her son, Tom Stokes, 38. “She was feeling kind of dizzy. Someone passing by brought her water.” Ms. Messana was recuperating later at Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn.

In Riverdale yesterday afternoon, a power failure forced the evacuation of Atria Riverdale, a 15-story retirement home on Henry Hudson Parkway. Nearly all of the residents, about 60 people ranging in age from 80 to almost 100, sought refuge in a nearby synagogue as they waited for power to be restored.

“They are watching a movie and enjoying the cool air-conditioning,” said Colin Ankersen, the regional vice president for the company.

Con Edison had begun restoring power even before the evacuation was completed.

Nearly one million New Yorkers are 65 or over. About 300,000 of them live alone, according to census data distilled by the city’s Department for the Aging.

Ms. Means, who works for the Neighborhood Self-Help by Older Persons Project, a nonprofit group that provides services to the elderly in the Bronx, called about 30 of her homebound clients yesterday to find out how they were coping.

“At this point, we’re willing to take a cab to deliver a fan,” Ms. Means said. “We’re just trying to make sure everyone is safe.”

Halina Trzcianowska, a nurse with the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, spent much of the late morning in Sunnyside, Queens, assisting Jorge Ros, 66, who suffers from chronic arthritis, and Ann Noughton, 65, who has lung cancer. Ms. Trzcianowska urged Ms. Noughton’s son to make sure his mother stayed hydrated.

“Be prepared,” she told him. “Make sure she’s O.K. just in case the power goes out.”

In Stuyvesant Heights, Brooklyn, Ms. Gibson, who works with the Visiting Nurse Service, kept a 20-inch window fan in the back of her S.U.V., just in case one of her clients was in need of extra cooling. “The extreme heat is a concern because a lot of seniors don’t like air-conditioning,” Ms. Gibson said. “They didn’t grow up with it. They say a fan is fine.”

Yesterday’s visits were more than health checkups. They were partly social calls, as the older hosts spun tales of yesteryear for their visitors, and everyone bonded over the collective misery of a 109-degree heat index.

At the Rev. Randolph Brown Houses in Stuyvesant Heights, Ms. Gibson, 38, visited Margaret Smith, 83, who said she was managing to stay cool and was happy to offer some sage advice. “I went out on the sidewalk and sat down,” Ms. Smith said. “I went out there where there’s no building and I feel the breeze. A wise man builds on a rock and a fool builds on the sand.”

Jennifer Epstein, Ann Farmer and Jennifer 8. Lee contributed reporting for this article.

    Checking Up on Those Trapped at Home, NYT, 2.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/nyregion/02elders.html

Contingencies

Generators Generate Love and Hate in Queens

August 2, 2006
The New York Times
By MICHELLE O’DONNELL

At first, no one in the brick apartment buildings on 51st Street in Woodside, Queens, complained about the giant white trailer that appeared at the curb.

About the size of a cargo container, the trailer, which houses an 800-kilowatt generator, and a service truck gobbled up about seven parking spaces, on a street where spaces are as prized as truffles.

“Five days I have no air-conditioner, no elevator,” said Consuelo Boza, one of the generator’s champions, as she and her houseguests from Spain navigated a narrow passage to a car that was double-parked on the street. “But they put this here and I have everything.”

But there was also no parking, Ms. Boza was told.

“Yeah, but I don’t care,” she said.

Across parts of western Queens, noisy, diesel-fuel-guzzling generators have become a common sight, continuing to supply power to thousands of Consolidated Edison customers.

Although the blackout officially ended last week, the utility company is still using 19 generators at some sites in Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside and Astoria where it is still repairing damaged feeder cables. It is using another 19 generators to supply power to densely populated buildings in an effort to reduce the pressure on an already overtaxed grid, according to Alfonso Quiroz, a spokesman for the utility.

And some private businesses, wary of new electric failures as temperatures soar, have opted to power their buildings with their own generators.

One result is a cross between urban crisis and open-air movie set, as yellow police tape cordons off swaths of curbs and the generator technicians sit back as if in director’s chairs, taking in the scenery. The industrial street furniture is simply part of post-blackout life in Queens, and most residents of 51st Street — like Ms. Boza, now able to enjoy electricity — have taken it in stride.

But when one of the technicians for the company supplying the generators, H. O. Penn, asked a resident what kind of Christmas ornaments would be appropriate for a generator, there was an outcry that quickly spread. (The technician, who would not give his name, said it was only a joke.)

It turned out that the generators, as wonderful as they were for supplying power, were a bit like houseguests — not very welcome over the long haul.

Part of the problem, residents say, has been the days of breathing diesel fumes.

Rosemarie McHugh, a retiree, said the fumes from the diesel fuel were rising up to her fifth-floor windows and left her feeling sick.

“I just don’t understand why Con Ed doesn’t have this resolved by now,” she said yesterday as she folded laundry.

Eric Kessel, 34, a packaging designer who lives in the same building, said he and his wife could see the fumes rising near their fourth-floor apartment. “When I wake up in the morning, it stinks,” he said. “It just hangs there.”

Mr. Quiroz said the fuel the utility was using had a low sulfur content, 0.05 percent. The sulfur content determines how dirty the emissions will be. And it is no small amount of fuel that the generators burn. An 800-kilowatt generator like the one on 51st Street can hold 550 gallons of fuel, and needs to be refilled every 10 hours, said Chris Olert, another Con Edison spokesman.

Several calls yesterday to H. O. Penn in Poughkeepsie, N.Y., seeking additional information about its generators were not returned.

The generators are not cheap. For small generators, 200-kilowatt and 400-kilowatt machines, the utility pays about $2,300 to $4,500 a week in rental fees, Mr. Quiroz said. He did not know how much the utility paid to rent the larger machines. Diesel fuel can run into thousands of dollars per generator each 24 hours.

For keeping customers supplied with power, however, the generators have been worth the expense, though it is not one that the company might be finished with soon.

“I don’t think we have a clear sense of how long the generators are going to be there,” Mr. Quiroz said.

    Generators Generate Love and Hate in Queens, NYT, 2.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/nyregion/02generator.html

Overview

City Dims Lights as Heat Strains the Power Grid

August 2, 2006
The New York Times
By ALAN FEUER

Trying to forestall the crippling — and potentially hazardous — effects of the fiercest heat wave of the summer, New York City undertook a range of preventive measures yesterday, from shutting off the colored lights on the Empire State Building, to limiting air-conditioning in the fancy seats of Yankee Stadium, to ordering some municipal buildings, like the Rikers Island jails, to use their generators.

As temperatures around the region reached as high as 100 degrees, and as the heat index, which takes humidity into account, climbed to 113, sweltering New Yorkers sent the daily demand for power to record highs, despite city efforts to conserve. And today’s forecast calls for even hotter weather.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg set in motion an array of plans to help those most at risk. Some 400 “cooling centers” were opened in New York. Public pools stayed open an hour later than usual, until 8 p.m. City hospitals were asked to top off the fuel in their generators, and while there were no reports of fatalities, or even serious injuries, due to the heat, it was unclear what the human cost of the heat wave would be. Across the city, nurses and social workers were sent to visit the homebound elderly. [Page B1.]

“This is a very dangerous heat wave,” Mr. Bloomberg said. “It really is more than just uncomfortable. It can seriously threaten your life.”

The city’s biggest employers, including stock exchanges, banks and tobacco companies, heeded requests from Consolidated Edison and the mayor to reduce power consumption by dimming lights and shutting down fountains and some elevators. Some switched to generators to lighten the load on the power grid.

The steamy weather touched everyone and everything: “We’re pretty melty, especially on the subway,” said Don Carlson, a lawyer, who was on Wall Street yesterday meeting with a client, not out sailing as he wanted to be.

Mr. Carlson, 45, was in a poplin suit — not that he would stay in it too long. “I will be out of this suit in 15 minutes” — and into shorts and flip-flops, he said.

Firefighters sweltered at a blaze in Queens and at emergencies elsewhere; restaurants complained that they lost walk-in business by having to keep their inviting paneled windows closed; even the famed Pepsi-Cola sign on the East River in Queens was switched off.

The National Weather Service issued excessive heat warnings for New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, lasting until 5 p.m. tomorrow. A stagnant-air warning was also issued, as the weather service said the heat index rose to between 108 and 113 degrees yesterday afternoon.

Across the region, thermometers read like basketball scores: in Central Park yesterday, the high was 95 degrees; at La Guardia Airport, it was 100; and even along the shore, it was 99 in Belmar, N.J.

Today, temperatures are expected to be even higher, and the heat index is expected to be 110 to 115 degrees. The heat index will remain above 90 degrees even after the sun goes down tonight, the weather service said.

Snapshots from the heat: Sweat pours off the blond ringlets of a 7-year-old boy on the climbing wall in Central Park. An Orthodox Jew has to change his traditional garb at least six times a day. A short-order cook partakes of water, ice cream and the walk-in freezer. And visitors to Central Park have trouble finding a horse and carriage.

“We wanted to take a carriage ride in Central Park, but there’s no horses. It’s too hot,” said Lisa Moreira, 37, who was slathering sunscreen on her two children and her four nieces visiting from Los Angeles. She said they were headed to the American Museum of Natural History for dinosaurs and air-conditioning.

Her husband, Marcio, put it this way: “This is a Brazilian who says it’s stinking hot.”

Some reactions to the heat reflected a sense of consternation lingering from the recent blackout in western Queens. Then, people saw how fragile the city’s power grid could be, and yesterday it was tested yet again.

Late last night, utility companies reported scattered power failures throughout the region, with about 8,000 customers having lost power on Long Island, about half of them in Babylon; about 4,050 customers without power in New York City and Westchester County; and 7,500 throughout New Jersey, including 250 customers in Montclair. Utilities apply the term “customers” to anything from a one-family house to a large apartment building.

As people cranked up their air-conditioners, records for electricity use toppled from the Midwest to the mid-Atlantic states.

A new record for a single hour’s use was set yesterday in New York State, according to the New York Independent System Operator, which runs the power grid. Shortly after 3 p.m., the “real-time load” was 33,869 megawatts, well above the previous record of 32,624 megawatts, which was set two weeks ago. One megawatt powers about 1,000 homes. Con Edison also reported record levels of demand. At 5 p.m., the utility said its power use had reached a high of 13,103 megawatts, surpassing the record of 13,059 megawatts recorded at 5 p.m. on July 27, 2005.

The Long Island Power Authority surpassed 5,600 megawatts yesterday for the first time, and PSE&G in New Jersey set a record of 11,001 megawatts.

All of which necessitated a widespread conservation plan, the mayor said. At a news conference yesterday he announced the dimming of the necklace lights on the city’s four East River bridges, and the same on the Coney Island parachute jump. The George Washington Bridge went dark last night. So, too, did city landmarks, including the Chrysler Building and the Staten Island Ferry sign in front of Whitehall Terminal. The mayor said several private institutions, including Fordham and Columbia Universities, as well as Rockefeller Center, had agreed to cut back on power.

At Citigroup’s headquarters on Park Avenue, one car in each elevator bank was taken out of service, and the air-conditioning was turned down. The big “Citi” sign atop the company’s tower in Long Island City, Queens, was switched off.

The torch and crown of the Statue of Liberty will remain illuminated so they are visible to pilots, but the lights in its base have been turned off. Thermostats in city buildings were set yesterday at 78 degrees, as they were at the main hall on Ellis Island and in buildings that are part of the sprawling Gateway National Recreation Area. Barry Sullivan, superintendent of the recreation area, said he gave his employees permission to wear “professional-looking shorts and short-sleeved button-down shirts sans ties.”

In Connecticut, Gov. M. Jodi Rell suspended admission fees at all state parks and beaches yesterday, a policy that will stay in effect today. In New York, Gov. George E. Pataki did the same at the state’s beaches, parks and pools.

While there were relatively few emergency calls related to the heat, city health officials said yesterday that they had tested all their generators and were ready for a possible influx of heat-stricken patients.

It usually takes 24 to 48 hours for the effects of the heat to be felt, said James Saunders, a spokesman for the city Health and Hospitals Corporation. “This is Day 1,” he said.

At the Queens Adult Care Center in Elmhurst, the residents abandoned their bedrooms for the air-conditioned smoking room, where at least 20 men and women sat together in the cool air. Staff members gave out ice water and handed fans to residents who did not have them.

In Richard Becker’s room, two white oscillating fans stirred the heat, but did little to cool the air.

“These fans are basically useless,” Mr. Becker, 55, said. “I could feel the sweat pouring from my body in the morning.”

Not far way, a fire at Queens Boulevard and Broadway destroyed at least six businesses. More than 150 firefighters responded. Six were injured, including one from heat exhaustion.

“You sweat, that’s what you do,” Firefighter Yurgi Ganter said, as he peeled off nearly 100 pounds of gear. “I’ve lost four or five pounds in water weight today.”

For some, there was relief, however tenuous and brief. Emilio Ramos, a security guard at Macy’s in Herald Square, had the bad luck yesterday to be posted at a door on Broadway, which caught the sun all afternoon.

“The other security guards told me the secret,” he explained, “to come and stand by the doors.”

Even as he said this, two young girls and a whoosh of cool, blue air rushed out.

“You feel it, huh?” he asked.

Reporting for this article was contributed by Michael Amon, Sewell Chan, Ann Farmer, Kate Hammer, Patrick McGeehan and Emily Vasquez.

    City Dims Lights as Heat Strains the Power Grid, NYT, 2.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/02/nyregion/02heat.html

As Heat Wave Looms, N.Y. Reduces Energy Use

August 1, 2006
The New York Times
By DIANE CARDWELL and SEWELL CHAN

Bracing for triple-digit temperatures, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg declared a heat emergency in New York yesterday and urged businesses, residents and city employees to conserve energy to help avert a citywide version of the blackout that crippled western Queens for more than a week.

As part of the administration’s efforts to cope with the heat, workers at 53 city buildings were directed to raise their thermostats to 78 degrees, hospitals were put on alert for an increase in the number of patients and officials were preparing to run large operations like Rikers Island on generators. The heat emergency designation, the Bloomberg administration’s first, also carries with it the threat of criminal charges for city employees who do not follow its provisions.

“This is a very serious, dangerous heat wave,” Mr. Bloomberg said at a City Hall news conference. “We’re all tough, but a little bit of common sense and a little bit of cooperation will go a long ways here.”

Forecasters predicted that the temperatures could surpass 100 degrees today and tomorrow, with some of the region’s highest temperatures in southern New Jersey, as a hot air mass that has killed more than 160 people in the West in recent weeks moved eastward.

The National Weather Service issued excessive-heat warnings for cities including Albany, Baltimore, Buffalo, Chicago, Cincinnati and Tulsa, Okla. While a break from the heat was expected in the Midwest by tomorrow night, the heat was expected to settle into major East Coast cities including Washington, Philadelphia and Boston starting this afternoon.

The New York metropolitan region is under a heat warning until 8 p.m. tomorrow. In the city and in Westchester County, temperatures are expected to climb to 101 degrees this afternoon, with a heat index of 106 to 111 degrees. Similar readings are forecast for southern Connecticut, the Hudson Valley and Long Island.

The heat index, which reflects the combined effects of heat and humidity, could be as high as 113 degrees in the northeastern New Jersey counties of Bergen, Passaic, Essex, Hudson and Union.

At City Hall, anxiety over the potential for another blackout in New York City rose along with the temperatures. As Mr. Bloomberg detailed the city’s emergency plans in the Blue Room, Kevin M. Burke, Con Edison’s chief executive, was one flight up, testifying at the first of a series of City Council hearings on the blackout in Queens last week. Afterward, Mr. Burke said he was “most concerned” about the still-fragile power network that covers western Queens, where he said there was a higher risk of another power failure in the coming days.

Governments and utilities around the region announced measures to cope with both the blackout threat and the expected high temperatures. Gov. George E. Pataki directed all state agencies to intensify their energy-saving measures and said that state park beaches would waive admission fees today and tomorrow.

Public Service Electric and Gas, which serves New Jersey, called on customers to cut back energy use but said they believed its power supplies were adequate.

And New York City officials directed its agencies to look for ways to save power, like shutting down computers when they are not in use; they are considering taking 10 to 20 percent of elevators out of service. The necklace lights that grace the bridges over the East River will remain dark indefinitely.

Mr. Bloomberg said that under certain circumstances he could require that private companies undertake conservation measures, but he did not do so in this case, saying that he believed he could persuade them to reduce their energy use and that he wanted to keep the city running as fully as possible.

The city plans to keep its 383 cooling centers, which served more than 4,000 New Yorkers over the weekend, open longer through Thursday, with the hours depending on the location. The Parks Department plans to keep city pools open for an extra hour today and tomorrow, from 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.

Although the blackout ended on the night of July 25, Mr. Burke, Con Edison’s chief executive, told a City Council hearing that hundreds of Queens customers continued to rely on 38 generators for their power. Con Edison was able to deploy only 50 generators during the blackout — a number that Council members said was far too small. Mr. Burke said the utility intended to buy more generators or change the companies it rents generators from.

Mr. Burke said that the utility had found that the cables that failed in Queens during the recent blackout had an average age of 16 years, compared with 20 years for the entire Long Island City network, which powers the area of the blackout, and 24 years for the larger Con Edison service area. However, he noted that one feeder that failed had a component that had been installed in the 1950’s. He said that Con Edison had begun a series of “autopsies” of the feeder cables that failed.

“We did not meet our high standards and our customers’ expectations in northwest Queens,” Mr. Burke said. Asked whether he agreed with Mr. Bloomberg’s statement that he deserved “a thanks” from the city for his work on the crisis, he said, “I don’t think anybody should be thanking me personally.”

Mr. Burke said that Katherine L. Boden, a 16-year Con Edison veteran who is vice president for Manhattan electric operations, was leading a team of workers who would test and inspect the Long Island City network and fix or replace components as needed.

But if the council members were expecting a sweeping mea culpa from Mr. Burke, they were disappointed. He called New York City’s electricity grid “the most reliable system in the country,” citing a 2004 survey of 47 utilities in the United States by the PA Consulting Group, a company based in London.

Mr. Burke was asked repeatedly about reports in The New York Times and Newsday that showed that the Long Island City network had an exceptionally high number of feeder-cable failures, according to annual statistics that Con Edison has provided to the state’s Public Service Commission.

Mr. Burke did not dispute those reports, but he noted that the 27,000-volt feeder cables were supposed to be configured so that any network could continue to supply electricity at periods of peak demand even if two of its feeders failed. Usually, customers do not notice a feeder failure because other feeders take over. Even so, experts consider feeder failures an important warning sign.

Using a different measure — the rate of power interruptions that customers experience — Mr. Burke said the Long Island City network’s performance, with fewer than 3 interruptions per 1,000 customers, was better than average for Con Edison’s service area and far better than the statewide average of 1,006 interruptions per 1,000 customers in 2005.

Last year, each interruption lasted less than a minute on average for customers in the Long Island City network, Mr. Burke said. That is better than the Con Edison average and better than the statewide average of about 2 hours.

To cope with the heat wave, city and state officials urged residents to stay out of the sun, drink lots of fluids and avoid strenuous activities.

“We ask all New Yorkers to look out for their friends, family, and neighbors, especially elderly individuals and others who face higher risks in hot weather,” Governor Pataki said.

    As Heat Wave Looms, N.Y. Reduces Energy Use, NYT, 1.8.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/01/nyregion/01power.html?hp&ex=1154491200&en=afbe2472e510cbf4&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Nation Braces for Another Heat Wave

July 31, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 7:20 a.m. ET
The New York Times

DETROIT (AP) -- Scorching heat again built up over the Plains and Upper Midwest early Monday as the furnace-like air that blistered California last week settled over the nation's midsection.

Numerous heat warnings were in place from Michigan to Oklahoma, with high temperatures expected to climb into the 90s or 100s, and sparking thunderstorms along its eastern edge.

The heat wave was keeping thousands huddled in their air-conditioned homes as many poor and homeless people sweat it out or head for cooling centers.

The combination of temperatures in the mid to upper 90s and high humidity threatened to make it feel like 100 degrees to 105 degrees in the Lower Peninsula.

In western Upper Michigan, highs ranging from 97 to 102 degrees combining with high humidity could make it feel as hot as 110 degrees to unprotected skin, forecasters said.

Highs Sunday reached only into the 80s statewide, but thunderstorms caused disruption and damage as they crossed the Lower Peninsula.

About 25,000 customers of Detroit Edison, DTE Energy Co.'s electricity production unit, lost power at some point during Sunday's storms, spokesman Len Singer said. Consumers Energy Co. spokesman Jay Jacobs said 14,000 customers lost power.

In Minneapolis, temperatures are expected to be near triple digits in the metro area and dew points are expected to be high Monday, said meteorologist Matt Friedlein. The heat index will approach 105 to 110 degrees, he said.

In Oklahoma on Sunday, temperatures reached 106 degrees in Stillwater in north-central Oklahoma and Ardmore in south-central Oklahoma and 104 degrees in Bartlesville, Lawton and Muskogee.

The thermometer hit 101 in Tulsa and 102 in Oklahoma City, the 17th time this year that the state capital has reached triple digits. That's compared to twice last year and not at all in 2002 or 2004.

Residents of Bismarck, N.D., experienced their seventh July day of triple-digit temperatures on Sunday, meteorologist Ken Welk said. The July record for the city is 12 days, set in 1936, he said.

Twelve people were taken to hospitals after suffering heat-related illnesses at an international scout jamboree Sunday in Maryland.

The jamboree in Darlingon was organized by the Polish Scouters Association, and it included children from Australia, England, Poland, Canada, Argentina and America, said Reed Blom, the director of Camp Spencer. None of the illnesses was considered to be serious.

Among those sweating it out in Michigan were 8,000 Boy Scouts attending a national conference at Michigan State University in East Lansing -- and sleeping in mostly un-air-conditioned dorms. Organizers of the National Order of the Arrow Conference had 20 to 25 medical professionals on hand.

Scouts were being warned to pay attention if they started feeling the effects of the heat. ''Get indoors, take it easy,'' Order of the Arrow director Clyde Mayer said. ''The Boy Scout motto is, `Be prepared.' And I think our guys will be.''

Associated Press writer Murray Evans in Oklahoma City contributed to this report.

    Nation Braces for Another Heat Wave, NYT, 31.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Heat-Wave.html?hp&ex=1154404800&en=c7b32001209e8abb&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Heat wave rolling over Plains, Midwest

Updated 7/31/2006 11:03 AM ET
AP
USA Today

MINNEAPOLIS (AP) — The upper Midwest and Plains states were bracing for another day of sweltering weather, with numerous heat warnings in place from Michigan to Oklahoma. Temperatures were expected to climb into the 90s or 100s, and spark thunderstorms.

Nate Olson, wearing short sleeves and stocking up with extra water, was ready for the heat Monday morning, saying, "the past week's been pretty bad."

Olson, who cleans sewers for the city of Bloomington, said that last week, one of the workers on his crew got sick in the heat and was taking a couple of days off. But Olson, 20, said he would be working until 3:30 p.m.

"I have a big water jug," said Olson. "You just have to keep drinking all day long."

It was 87 degrees at Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport at 9 a.m. Monday, a day that was shaping up to be the Twin Cities' ninth consecutive day above 90 and the 17th in July.

The heat index, a measure of temperature plus humidity, was expected to approach 105 to 110 on Monday in the Twin Cities.

Forecasts for above-normal highs were also posted for Monday along the East Coast, where triple-digit readings were in the offing by midweek from the Carolinas through southern New England.

Officials cautioned people to drink plenty of fluids, not to overexert themselves, and check on the elderly and those who don't have air conditioning.

In Cleveland, James Gilbert, 28, an unemployed car detailer was out looking for work on a muggy, 81-degree Monday morning with the temperatures headed into the 90's. He approaches staying cool methodically.

"Try to keep a lot of powder on and take a shower, a cold shower and put powder on," said Gilbert, wearing a long white T-shirt. "Basically you've got to bear with it. Try to finish what you're doing and get back into the cool air of the house and shade somewhere."

On Sunday in Bismarck, N.D., the thermometer hit 112 — 10 degrees above the previous record for the date and just two degrees shy of the all-time high set in 1936.

In Fargo, actors in Trollwood Park's performance of "Fiddler on the Roof," who wear wool coats for one scene, were assigned air-conditioned rooms during intermission. Men waited until the last minute to put on their beards, to prevent the adhesive from wearing off. Dancers at a German folk festival, also in Fargo, eliminated a couple of numbers because of the heat and attendance was down.

"A lot of the seniors in the community enjoy this festival a lot, and with the heat it's tough for them to come out," said festival coordinator Marijo Peterson.

Ahead of the heat wave, thunderstorms across Michigan on Sunday blacked out about 55,000 power customers. Almost all were back on line Monday, but the high heat promised to be the big problem by the afternoon.

"Mother Nature's giving us a different kind of kick today," DTE Energy Co. spokeswoman Lorie Kessler said. She said the utility expected to be able to handle the demand but urged the public to avoid unnecessary electricity use.

In Oklahoma on Sunday, temperatures reached 106 degrees in Stillwater and 104 degrees in Muskogee. For Oklahoma City, where the high was 102, it was the 17th time this year that the state capital has reached triple digits. That's compared with just twice last year and not at all in 2004.

In Maryland, 12 people ranging in age from 14 to 65 were taken to hospitals Sunday after suffering heat-related illnesses at an international gathering of young people. The jamboree in Harford County was organized by the Polish Scouters Association.

At a Boy Scout gathering at Michigan State University in East Lansing, youths stayed in mostly un-air-conditioned dorms, and organizers had 20 to 25 medical professionals on hand.

Scouts were being warned to pay attention if they started feeling the effects of the heat. "Get indoors, take it easy," Order of the Arrow director Clyde Mayer said. "The Boy Scout motto is, 'Be prepared.' And I think our guys will be."

    Heat wave rolling over Plains, Midwest, UT, 31.7.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2006-07-31-heat-wave_x.htm

Hundreds evacuated from Ohio flooding

Updated 7/29/2006 12:52 AM ET
AP
USA Today

EASTLAKE, Ohio (AP) — Fast-rising water gushed into homes early Friday in suburban Cleveland, chasing people to rooftops to await boat rescues as 10 inches of rain raised the Grand River 11 feet above flood level.

"We think everybody got out. But we cannot be certain," warned fire Capt. Ken Takacs, who estimated 600 residents were evacuated along the river, which curves around three sides of Painesville.

In Eastlake, between Cleveland and Painesville along Lake Erie, the Coast Guard searched for a man reported missing while checking on his boat at a marina near the Chagrin River. The Lake County coroner identified a man found drowned as Stephen Rihaly, 51, of Eastlake, The (Cleveland) Plain Dealer reported.

A deluge hit the area Thursday and early Friday, but by midday the sun broke through and flood waters began to recede. The weekend forecast called for clear weather.

By Friday night, most residents had returned to their homes, but two shelters remained open for those experiencing power outages or sanitation problems, Painesville police dispatcher Wendy Loomis said.

"It is receding, but we still have a lot of little secondary creeks that are still at a higher level," Loomis said.

Gov. Bob Taft declared a state of emergency in Lake County, helping the state provide resources to respond to the flooding and assist with recovery.

The evacuations in Painesville included 10 to 12 people rescued from condo and apartment rooftops by boat crews operating in 15 feet of water, Takacs said.

Some people had to drop from second-floor windows, and in one case a large front-end loader nudged a rescue boat through a tough current to reach a woman who uses a wheelchair, Takacs said.

Jeanette Fattori, 57, and her husband fled their Eastlake home with only their prescription medication.

"I thought we were going to drown. It was just filling up our basement and the only way we got out of there was in a small boat with people from the fire department," Fattori said at a Red Cross shelter.

Kevin Ford, 37, said the water flooded the bottom floor and garage of the Painesville condo he shares with his mother.

"We had two vehicles, appliances and furniture and they're probably all destroyed. I saw a refrigerator floating," he said.

Flooding severely damaged many of the riverfront condos and apartments, but there were no immediate damage estimates, Takacs said.

Elsewhere, a brief storm knocked out power to more than 5,000 people in New York Friday afternoon. Con Ed spokesman Chris Olert said crews were working to restore power for the customers on Staten Island, the latest to lose electricity in a series of problems for the utility this month.

    Hundreds evacuated from Ohio flooding, UT, 29.7.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/storms/2006-07-28-ohio-storms_x.htm

In California, Heat Is Blamed for 100 Deaths

July 28, 2006
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

FRESNO, Calif., July 27 — A searing heat wave nearly two weeks old is responsible for more than 100 deaths across California, the authorities said Thursday. So overwhelmed is the local coroner’s office here that it has been forced to double-stack bodies.

Most of the deaths have occurred in the landlocked Central Valley, the state’s agricultural spine, where triple-digit temperatures have lately been the norm. The heat has been linked to at least 22 deaths here in Fresno County, whose funeral homes have offered to help with the coroner’s backlog.

“We’re just trying to catch up,” said Joseph Tiger, a deputy coroner in Fresno. “I have been here 10 years, and I have never seen it this bad. Our boss has been here over 20, and he hasn’t seen it this bad either. For the last two weeks it has just been unbearable hot.”

The Governor’s Office of Emergency Services said the heat wave had been confirmed as the cause of death among at least 53 people around the state. Pending autopsies, heat-related causes are presumed in the death of scores of others, said Roni Java, a spokeswoman for the emergency services office.

Many of these suspected heat deaths have been among the elderly, who often live as shut-ins and will not open windows, said Loralee Cervantes, the Fresno County coroner.

The toll of such casualties has no recent precedent in California. According to data provided by the California Department of Health Services, the greatest number of heat-related deaths in the state since 1989 had been 40, in 2000. A department spokeswoman, Patti Roberts, said data prior to 1989 were unavailable.

Among the dead here were a 38-year-old worker found in a field, an unidentified man around 40 who made it to a hospital emergency room where his body temperature was recorded at 109.9 degrees and a 58-year-old man who was found drunk. Statewide, Ms. Java said, the youngest person killed by the heat has been a 20-year-old man from San Diego, and the oldest a 95-year-old man in Imperial County, on the Mexican border.

A doctor and his assistant toiled here on Thursday in the coroner’s office, which recently grew to 50 beds from 25 after getting a bioterrorism grant but has rarely had 25 bodies. On Thursday morning there were 58.

The morgue was converted from an eyeglass factory several years ago and has no air-conditioning in crucial areas. Decomposition has been a problem, Ms. Cervantes said, and bodies have piled up because of the lack of space.

“This has been our biggest challenge,” Ms. Cervantes said in an interview. “It’s frustrating.”

While the Central Valley is used to temperatures crackling in the triple digits at this time of year, the evenings tend to be cooler. But temperatures in recent days have been lingering in the 80’s after sunset, mixed with humidity far higher than this region is accustomed to.

By midday Thursday the mercury had hit 112 in Fresno, though temperatures elsewhere had dropped and weather forecasters were predicting a break in the heat almost everywhere in the state by Friday.

In the meantime, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said, state workers are doing everything possible to prevent additional deaths.

“The summer heat wave continues to be dangerous as California has seen record-breaking, consecutive days of triple-digit temperatures,” Mr. Schwarzenegger said in a statement. “A mobilized force of local workers will continue to knock on doors and make phone calls to protect our vulnerable residents who may be exposed to the relentless heat.”

The record temperatures have also hit farmers hard, with roughly 16,500 cows, 1 percent of the state’s dairy herd, dying of the heat, according to California Dairies, the state’s largest milk cooperative. Further, panting, miserable cows, which lack the benefit of sweat glands, have yielded 10 percent to 20 percent less milk than usual, said trade groups and dairy farmers in the region. California produces more milk than any other state in the country, providing about 12 percent of the American supply.

Six counties have declared states of emergency because of the large number of dead livestock, and the California Department of Food and Agriculture has waived a regulation requiring haulers of dead animals to transport them to rendering plants in eight counties in the Central Valley. The waiver frees the haulers to leave the carcasses in landfills.

“It is just a bad, bad situation,” said Larry Collar, the quality assurance manager for California Dairies. “In 25 years in Southern California, this is the most extreme temperatures we have ever seen and the most extreme length of time we have seen.”

The high temperatures have also caused problems with field crops around the state.

“We have been having trouble mainly in the Central Valley with the walnuts,” said Ann Schmidt-Fogarty, a spokeswoman for the California Farm Bureau. “The intensity of the sun and heat actually burns them inside the shell.”

In addition, she said, the weather has caused delicate fruits like peaches, nectarines and plums to ripen unevenly.

At the Te Velde dairy farm in Bakersfield, about 100 miles south of here, 16 cows have perished in the last 11 days, and 12 more have been sent to slaughter because they could not handle the heat, said Ralph Te Velde, 59, who has run that family farm for three decades.

The rest of his 1,600 cows sought relief under a patch of water misters Thursday morning, but by 9:30 a.m. some were already showing signs of distress, their fat pink tongues dangling to their chins.

One of the herd, her five-minute-old calf being licked by a neighboring cow a few feet away, was being hosed down by Mr. Te Velde’s son. At the end of the lot, dead cows were piled up, their carcasses a twisted black and white mass.

Mr. Te Velde and other dairy farmers have struggled to get rendering companies to come and get dead livestock. “The main challenge is a disposal challenge in the Central Valley,” said Steve Lyle, a spokesman for the Department of Food and Agriculture.

Dino Giacomazzi, a dairy farmer in Hanford, between Fresno and Bakersfield, said he had been watching Yahoo! Weather for days, hoping to see the last of the heat.

“We spend a lot of time and money making sure these cows are comfortable all the time,” Mr. Giacomazzi said. “Because uncomfortable cows don’t make milk.”

Fire Threatens Transmission Lines

SACRAMENTO, July 27 (AP) — A wind-driven wildfire near the Oregon border is threatening the major power transmission lines between California and the Pacific Northwest, though California grid operators said Thursday that they could reroute electricity if the lines went dead.

State and federal air tankers, ground crews and equipment are being diverted from other areas to fight the fire, which is burning among three transmission lines about a mile and a half apart. The fire is paralleling the lines, which together carry about 4,200 megawatts between the Bonneville Power Administration, in Washington, and California.

The fire, caused by lightning, was discovered Tuesday and had grown to more than 400 acres by Thursday.

Carolyn Marshall contributed reporting from San Francisco for this article.

        In California, Heat Is Blamed for 100 Deaths, NYT, 28.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/28/us/28heat.html?hp&ex=1154145600&en=51c9f3cd5a424f0c&ei=5094&partner=homepage

California heat-related deaths reach 83

Updated 7/26/2006 10:06 PM ET
USA Today
By Aaron C. Davis, Associated Press

SAN FRANCISCO — Temperatures made a barely noticeable dip on the 11th day of 100-degree heat Wednesday, but the stress on California's electric grid eased slightly, as did the possibility of rolling blackouts.

The number of deaths believed to be caused by the heat rose sharply, reaching 83 since the heat wave started baking the state July 16. The heat and the increased power use blew out thousands of transformers, and farmers reported animals dying in the fields, and fruit and nuts scorched on the vine.

Hundreds of thousands of homes and businesses lost power at the peak, but just a few thousand remained in the dark Wednesday. Still, the widespread failures have left little opportunity for routine maintenance.

The coroner's office in Fresno County, which has reported 20 deaths as probably heat-caused, had bodies stacked two to a gurney because there were so many. Coroner Loralee Cervantes said that her staff was doing autopsies non-stop and that decomposition of some bodies made the cause of death difficult to determine.

Other states also attributed deaths to heat — Oklahoma said two people whose homes lacked air conditioners were the latest victims there, bringing to 10 the number of heat-related deaths since July 13.

An achingly slow cooling trend will cause highs to drop a few degrees by the weekend in California, according to National Weather Service forecaster Jim Dudley.

"We're seeing some relief coming, if you can call 105 relief," he said. "We're inching away from this super hot air mass we've had over us, though it's tricky. ... It's hard to get those things to move."

The record power usage on Monday and Tuesday had prompted power grid managers to declare an emergency and warn of possible involuntary rolling blackouts. Now the managers are waiting for cooler weather to begin assessing the damage and do maintenance, said Gregg Fishman, a spokesman for the grid manager, Independent System Operator.

"We have some balancing to do to allow as much maintenance as we can while we're in a cooling spell," he said. The company is now focusing on restoring power to those still without it.

More than 1,100 Pacific Gas and Electric Co. transformers were damaged by the heat, leading to about 6,000 outages affecting over 1.2 million customers since Friday, company spokesman Brian Swanson said.

The St. Louis area and the New York City borough of Queens slowly were returning to normal more than a week after weather-related power blackouts.

About 80,000 homes and business around St. Louis still were without electricity, according to Ameren Corp. Two storms July 19 and July 21 had knocked out power to more than a half-million customers.

A sixth death was blamed on the storms and blackout; the man died Wednesday in a fire that started while he was working on a power generator in East St. Louis, Ill.

In Queens, the last of the 100,000 people affected by a 10-day outage had their power restored, but the Consolidated Edison utility still warned of lower voltage and occasional outages.

California's inland valleys have registered some of the highest temperatures during the heat wave, with highs of around 115 and lows of about 90 degrees.

Farmers who face sun-baked crops and lower milk production are rushing farmworkers to the fields well before dawn so they can get out by late morning, when temperatures creep above 100.

Even with misters and fans to keep cattle cool, experts estimate as much as 2% of the state's dairy herd may die.

The surviving cattle are producing less milk, farmers said. Dairy production in the state — No. 1 in the nation — was down as much as 15% in the past few days, according to the California Farm Bureau.

Though this is peak harvest time for fruits like peaches and nectarines, the heat stops the ripening process. Tomatoes being grown for salsa, ketchup and pasta sauces were found split in the fields, which will make them hard to sell.

It's too early to say what percentage of crops may be lost.

The heat might mean a slightly smaller harvest of wine grapes, said Karen Ross, president of the California Association of Winegrape Growers. When temperatures rise, vines stop growing to conserve water.

"They're just like people," she said. "They kind of shut down when it gets this hot."

    California heat-related deaths reach 83, UT, 26.7.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2006-07-26-power-problems_x.htm

Record heat clings to much of nation

Updated 7/25/2006 11:08 PM ET
USA TODAY
By William M. Welch

Record heat is wilting people, crops and animals as much of the nation feels little relief from a summer of swelter.

Temperatures were at triple digits in much of the West for a 10th straight day Tuesday. Although forecasts offered hope for lower temperatures today, a stubborn weather pattern that has left much of the country hot and dry remains in place.

At least 53 deaths were possibly linked to the heat, the Associated Press reported.

"This over 100 all the time is ridiculous," says Rex Kerr, 78, of Van Nuys, Calif. "I can't get enough water."

Kerr was studying for his next driver's test at the Wilkinson Multipurpose Senior Center, one of several locations Los Angeles Mayor Anthony Villaraigosa designated as "cooling centers" for anyone who needs relief.

According to the National Climatic Data Center, the average temperature for the contiguous 48 states in June was 71.8 degrees. That is the second warmest June since records began in 1895. The only hotter June was 1933 at 72.35.

It's been so hot that railroad operator CSX ordered trains to slow down to avoid buckling hot tracks, spokesman Gary Sease said.

In the Great Lakes, experts expect "killer" algae, which can be toxic and flourishes in warmer water, to wash up on lakefront beaches, says Ohio State University zoologist David Culver.

On the Great Plains, hot, dry weather damaged crops, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture's weekly crop report. Crop conditions have "really gone downhill," says Roger Barrick, extension educator for two Eastern South Dakota counties.

In Kansas, the heat took a toll on corn in the field.

"It is pretty sad out there," said Doug Jardine, crop pathologist at Kansas State University.

Animals were in danger also.

Thirty-five retired greyhounds died after an air-conditioning failure at a kennel outside Portland, Ore.

Thousands of cows and other farm animals died in the California heat, leaving farmers with piles of carcasses.

Organizers of the annual Capital Lakefair Festival in Olympia, Wash., blamed heat for lagging attendance from last year.

"When in Olympia, Wash., do you see temperatures of 101 degrees?" asked Teri Chmielewski, vice president of the fair. "People just don't want to come out of their houses."

Power remained out for about 145,000 homes and businesses in St. Louis after storms last week.

In New York City, some residents of Queens went a ninth day without power after an outage.

Even in Arizona and Nevada, it's been hotter than usual, and the normal desert cooling at night isn't happening.

"That's when it can be really intolerable, when you're trying to sleep," said Bill Patin, 65, of Reno.

In California, "there's sunburn on walnuts," state Farm Bureau spokesman Ron Miller says. The heat has also cut milk production 15% and left cows too tired to reproduce.

"The bulls don't want to mess around," Miller said.

Not everyone was hot.

Angela Bennett, retail manager for Silvan Ridge/Hinman Vineyards in Eugene, Ore., said the heat is not a big deal.

"It would be different if it was 100 degrees all summer, but it's already down to the 80s," she said.

    Record heat clings to much of nation, UT, 25.7.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2006-07-25-power-problems_x.htm

As Heat Soars in California, Power Supply Is Strained

July 25, 2006
The New York Times
By RANDAL C. ARCHIBOLD

LOS ANGELES, July 24 — Days of heat and humidity have driven demand for electricity to record highs in California and other states. If people cannot take the weather anymore, neither can transformers and other equipment, which have sputtered and shorted out and left tens of thousands of people without power.

The authorities in California, which is normally cooler and drier this time of year, warned on Monday that the high demand could lead to rolling blackouts, a dreaded term here that brings reminders of the widespread blackouts during the energy crisis of 2000 and 2001.

Officials issued an alert under which certain large businesses voluntarily agree to curtail power use in times of unusually high demand. The California Independent System Operator, which manages the power grid, said the operating reserve of electricity had dipped to around 5 percent, well below the optimal 15 percent or more.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger ordered state agencies to reduce electricity consumption by 25 percent, acting on a prediction from the state’s power grid managers that demand would peak at 52,000 megawatts, a mark they had not expected to reach until 2011. Demand peaked at 50,270 megawatts at 2:44 p.m. Pacific time, breaking the record of 49,036 megawatts set last Friday.

In other parts of the country, thunderstorms have compounded problems, leaving more than 200,000 people in the St. Louis area without electricity, some of them since Wednesday. Officials at Ameren Corporation, the utility there, said they had brought in some 4,000 employees and contractors from several states to work around the clock to restore power.

Thousands of people in Queens entered a second week without power after equipment failures at one point left some 100,000 people without electricity.

Unlike a few years ago, the culprit behind the rash of power failures in most cases this summer is equipment, some of it old but generally unaccustomed to running at such high demand over such a long stretch of hot and humid days, more than two weeks in some places. Temperatures and humidity were lower Monday than they were over the weekend but remained above normal.

Enrique Martinez, the chief operating officer of the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, likened the equipment problems to driving a car 100 miles an hour nonstop for long periods.

“If you continue to do it, it’s going to break down,” said Mr. Martinez, whose utility was trying to restore power to 9,000 homes and businesses around the city, down from 20,000 customers who had lost power over the weekend. Southern California Edison, which supplies power to suburban cities, said 17,000 customers remained without power.

Mr. Martinez spoke at a news conference in the San Fernando Valley, where the temperature in the Los Angeles neighborhood of Woodland Hills reached 119 on Saturday, a high for Los Angeles County, according to the National Weather Service’s preliminary check of records.

The heat wave in Northern California, which drove temperatures to around 90 degrees Sunday in the normally cool and foggy San Francisco, has been blamed for several deaths, and 900,000 households lost power at some point over the weekend and into Monday. Brian Swanson, a spokesman for Pacific Gas and Electric, which serves Northern California, said that by noon Monday, 50,000 customers were still in the dark.

The authorities in Stockton, Calif., are investigating the death of a patient at the Beverly Healthcare convalescent home, from which about 200 residents were evacuated Sunday after the air conditioning apparently malfunctioned as the temperature hit 115 degrees.

The power failures have hit Southern California’s valley areas particularly hard, but the blackouts also affected Hollywood, the West Side and other parts of the city. In some cases they had the skipping effect of a tornado: a few houses on a street went dark, or even just parts of houses, while others continued to blast air conditioners.

One of the busiest Web sites, MySpace, based in Santa Monica, Calif., said the power failures, along with problems with its own backup generators, had shut down full use sporadically over the weekend.

Relief appeared on the way, with temperatures expected to fall to the usual 70’s and 80’s beginning Tuesday.

But the electricity system, experts have warned, remains vulnerable, especially in Southern California.

The North American Electric Reliability Council, an industry group, said supplies nationwide were tighter this summer than last, and in a report in May singled out Southern California and southwestern Connecticut as particular areas of concern.

Still, despite most power grids having run at or near record demand this past week, most power failures in the country this summer have come from problems with the distribution system, not with the supply. Local utilities typically learn of problem transformers and cables only as they fail, said Stan Johnson, who monitors power grid trends for the council.

“It does raise some very serious questions that need to be answered, if we are putting sufficient money in upgrading the distribution system,” Mr. Johnson said.

But Mr. Martinez said the utility had been keeping pace with repairing and replacing equipment and called this heat wave, with its severity and length, a particularly unusual strain.

Maintenance crews working on transformers and other equipment are “bringing more new ones in as they can,” he said. “They weren’t designed to deal with a heat wave like this.”

Carolyn Marshall contributed reporting from San Francisco for this article, and Cindy Chang from Los Angeles.

    As Heat Soars in California, Power Supply Is Strained, NYT, 25.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/25/us/25power.html

Soaring California temperatures prompt record power use, scattered outages

Updated 7/23/2006 11:59 PM ET
USA TODAY
By William M. Welch

LOS ANGELES — Southern California's beaches have lost their customary cool to a sweltering heat wave bringing record-breaking triple-digit temperatures and Southern-style humidity to the West Coast.

In the East, tens of thousands of people were without air conditioning in New York City because of power outages.

In San Diego, where cool ocean breezes usually make for comfortable summer weather in the 70s, the temperature hit 114 at the San Diego Zoo's Wild Animal Park, says Brad Doyle, a forecaster for the National Weather Service.

Temperatures hit 101 in downtown Los Angeles, breaking a previous record for the day of 96 degrees set in 1960. The thermometer hit a record 119 in Woodland Hills in the city's San Fernando Valley. Burbank saw 112; Long Beach was 101.

The deaths of three people in California were blamed on the heat.

"It will feel very uncomfortable in Southern California," Doyle says. "It's very unusual for this extended period of time."

Power outages triggered by residents cranking more cooling out of air conditioners have affected several parts of California.

Morning thunderstorms — also a rarity — brought only a little relief to Southern California on Sunday, and the forecast is for more heat and mugginess this week. Unusual heat was felt across much of the rest of California, too.

The Pacific breezes that normally keep San Clemente cool gave way to 106-degree heat in the beach city between L.A. and San Diego. At Huntington Beach, where thousands watched the start of the U.S. Open of Surfing, the temperature hit 93. Newport Beach was relatively cool at 81, while nearby Santa Ana saw 104.

It was hot even for normally hot desert cities. In Palm Springs, the weather service recorded 121 degrees. A bit of a break was in store: 115 was forecast for today.

Records were set in Northern California, including 115 at Livermore and 102 at San Jose. San Francisco's 87 broke a record for the date of 81 degrees that had stood since 1917. Record temperatures were set or equaled all along the state's Central Valley, including 109 in Sacramento.

Power use also broke records Friday and Saturday. The California Independent System Operator, which manages the state's power grid, issued an emergency notification Saturday urging residents to conserve power through today.

There have been no rolling blackouts such as those that hit the state in 2000 and 2001, but local outages occurred. Severe summer weather brought problems elsewhere in the country, too.

In New York City's borough of Queens, a power outage was taking days to fix and had left about 72,000 people in the dark.

Big thunderstorms hindered repair efforts Friday and knocked out some fixed circuits, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said. Some residents have been without power since last Monday.

In St. Louis, heat and storms left about half the city without electricity over the weekend. Hundreds of people spent the weekend in Red Cross shelters, and there were at least four weather-related deaths in the area.

Contributing: Wire reports

    Soaring California temperatures prompt record power use, scattered outages, UT, 23.7.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2006-07-22-heat-wave_x.htm

Sweltering heat blamed for at least 28 deaths nationwide

Updated 7/21/2006 8:05 PM ET
USA Today

ST. LOUIS (AP) — National Guard troops stepped up their search for people in hot homes without power to run air conditioning Friday as heavy rains and tree-toppling winds added to the misery of the worst power outage in the city's history.

"We have 55% of the residents without power. Our biggest fear is that the number will go up," said Jeff Rainford, spokesman for Mayor Francis Slay.

A heat wave that has baked much of the nation this week has been blamed for at least 28 deaths.

The death toll in Oklahoma alone rose to seven. The state medical examiner's office said the heat caused the deaths of four elderly people on Thursday, including one in Oklahoma City, where the high that day was 107.

Oklahoma City was so hot that a portion of Interstate 44 buckled, forcing the temporary closure of two lanes.

In St. Louis, the weather has flip-flopped between sweltering heat and violent storms. As many as 500,000 Ameren Corp. customers in the area lost power Wednesday, making Thursday's heat that much more unbearable.

Progress in restoring power had been made, but Ameren said the number of customers without power rose even higher Friday, to 570,000, as a new wave of storms passed through.

In northwest St. Louis County, winds from the latest storm tore the roof off an office building, causing concerns about a natural gas leak and leaving about 100 workers to fend for themselves in the rain.

Jeff Winkler, an analytical chemist at Severn Trent Labs, was just pulling into the parking lot when the roof came off.

"I saw the roof flying, and I was thinking, 'Please, don't hit my car,'" said Winkler, 26. "I thought I saw the worst of it earlier this week — but this was worse."

The power company had said Wednesday's outage was the worst in its 100-plus year history, and that it could take four days to restore power. On Friday it said the work could take even longer.

More than 500 people spent Thursday night in two Red Cross shelters, and a third shelter was scheduled to open Friday afternoon to take in people who could not stay in their hot homes, Rainford said. Virtually every hotel room in the region was booked for the weekend, mostly by residents taking refuge from homes without power.

High temperatures in St. Louis had dropped to the mid-80s Friday, but National Guard troops, police, firefighters and volunteers were knocking on doors that morning to check on elderly residents and offer bottled water. On Thursday authorities said a 93-year-old St. Louis woman had been found dead in a home without power to run the air conditioning.

More than 50 cooling centers were set up in the area, but Agnes Reese, who spent Friday in one of the shelters, said the lack of air conditioning was just part of the problem.

"There are a lot of people who are hungry because all of their food has spoiled," said Reese, 48.

The weather in Missouri and Oklahoma was expected to be relatively cool over the weekend, a relief after days in which several people died in sweltering conditions.

The death of a 93-year-old man in De Soto, Mo., appeared to be heat-related, Jefferson County Sheriff's Capt. Ralph Brown said. The man and his 82-year-old wife had refused to leave their home despite Thursday's heat and the fact the power was out.

In southwest Missouri, a 76-year-old woman who went looking for her dog apparently succumbed to 103-degree heat and was found dead on a porch about a mile from her Ozark home, police said Friday.

Deaths in Oklahoma included a 79-year-old man who collapsed and died from the heat in the eastern part of the state while trying to contain a small fire he had started to burn some weeds, said Kevin Rowland, chief investigator for the state medical examiner's office.

Heat-related deaths also have been reported this week in Illinois, Pennsylvania, Arkansas, Indiana, South Dakota, Tennessee and Kansas.

In New York, tens of thousands of people were still without power Friday, the fifth day of a mysterious electrical problem during the hottest week of the year.

Consolidated Edison spokesman Chris Olert said the power company was making every effort to get the situation fixed but couldn't estimate when that might happen. He said the company didn't know why things went wrong.

    Sweltering heat blamed for at least 28 deaths nationwide, UT, 21.7.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2006-07-21-heat-deaths_x.htm

USA in scorcher survival mode

Updated 7/18/2006 11:25 PM ET
USA TODAY
By Brad Heath

Teacher Doris Davis began the first day of kindergarten Tuesday with the usual lessons for students: how to sit cross-legged and raise hands before speaking.

The only thing missing at the year-round school in Louisville was recess.

The weather — a blistering 92 degrees — was just too hot to send the children outside.

"They need to be able to run around and play and that's what we normally would do," Davis said. "But we have children with asthma who can't come out on an ozone-alert day."

The roasting heat enveloped much of the nation again Tuesday, leaving millions of people searching for ways to escape temperatures that topped 90 degrees from California to Connecticut.

Authorities blamed the heat wave for at least six deaths — one each in Arkansas and Indiana, and two each in Oklahoma and Pennsylvania. It temporarily knocked out power Tuesday morning in part of New York's LaGuardia International Airport, forcing American Airlines and the Delta Shuttle to cancel some flights. Another outage stopped a New York subway train; 70 passengers had to be evacuated.

Temperatures reached 90 degrees in at least 44 of the Lower 48 states, said Weather Channel meteorologist Tom Moore. And as a result, staying cool — or trying to, anyway — became a shared national experience.

The heat meant no horseback riding for kids at Congressional Camp in Falls Church, Va., where the temperature hovered around 95 degrees. Instead, campers learned horse anatomy — indoors. Archery lessons were moved inside, too. The camp set up water stations outside for kids walking between buildings.

"Kids don't just have the option to drink. They have to drink every time they pass a water station," camp director Jennafer Curran said.

Keeping cool

Less than two weeks have passed since the last patches of snow melted in Bev Chatelain's yard in Cooke City, Mont., a mountain town not far from Yellowstone National Park. Cooke City remains the coolest place in the state, but with temperatures above 90 degrees this week, Chatelain's 18-year-old daughter, Chelsie, found a fast way to cool off in the Clark's Fork River, a twisting current of glacial snowmelt. As Chatelain, 48, put it, you don't so much swim in the river as much as duck in and climb out fast.

"It's cold, cold, cold," she said. "It's probably 40-some degrees. If that."

Cool was good enough for Paula Garoutte when the air conditioner in her Urbandale, Iowa, home stopped working this week. She and her husband, Bill, went downstairs, laid blankets and pillows on the floor and had a slumber party.

"We put the fans on and it was 15 degrees cooler," Garoutte said. "We had the TV down there. We made popcorn and got our pillows out. It was the cat and my husband and me."

Elsewhere, air conditioners pumped so hard that electricity demand, which set records in many parts of the country Monday, was on track to break them again Tuesday in the Northeast, said Stan Johnson, situation awareness manager of the North American Electric Reliability Council, which monitors the nation's power grid.

That caused a few scattered outages and prompted requests from some utilities for people to reduce usage, Johnson said, but overall the system "is holding up quite well."

In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg directed City Hall to do its part in conserving energy: Only natural light filtered into the rotunda, and some passageways and rooms were dark. In many cities, officials cranked the air conditioning in libraries and senior centers so the sweaty could come to cool off.

In Springfield, Mo., the Red Cross prepared to open shelters in churches and schools that it normally uses only during the coldest days of winter to keep people warm. In Greenville, S.C., relief agencies started giving away fans to those without air conditioning. So many people came that the local Salvation Army ran out, spokeswoman Pam Garcia said.

In Des Moines and Detroit, some folks weren't so law-abiding. Police had reports of stolen air conditioners, though Detroit police spokesman James Tate said thieves likely were more interested in selling them as scrap metal than in staying cool.

'Spread like wildfire'

The heat wave was triggered when a ridge of high pressure settled over the USA, creating an enormous bulge of warmth over most of the continent, The Weather Channel's Moore said.

"It spread like wildfire, so to speak," Moore said.

A cold front brought some relief Tuesday to parts of the Midwest. The Pacific Northwest, spared until now, is expected to see high temperatures in the 90s and 100s this weekend, and forecasters said areas accustomed to high heat in July and August will remain hot, especially the southern Plains, the Southwest and the Deep South.

Photographer Tom Bianchi is from Palm Springs, Calif., so he's used to the desert heat. But he wasn't used to what he found in Chicago — "not with this humidity," he said. Bianchi, 60, was there to participate in the physique competition of the Gay Games, which drew 12,000 athletes. Temperatures reached 100 degrees in the athletes' holding area Monday, he said. Tuesday, he said, felt cooler.

People elsewhere in the country noticed little difference.

"If I see sprinklers or hydrants, I just drench myself," said New Haven, Conn., letter carrier Ceferino Roman. "This is the worst."

Oswaldo Delmoral, 40, spends his days fishing hot dogs out of hot water and cooking sausages over a steaming grill in a truck in Greenwich, Conn.

"It's about 100 degrees in here, but I used to work in a truck that was 120 degrees, at least," the food vendor said. "It gets hotter as the day goes on, but what can you do?"

In New York, where thousands of people visited city-run cooling centers this week, telephone repairman John Stracquadanio, 34, had a plan to dodge the heat.

"We've been drinking lots of water, staying hydrated," he said, sweating under his hard hat as he worked on telephone lines. "And when we go down in the manhole, it's much cooler."

Contributing: Patrick O?Driscoll in Denver; Charisse Jones in New York; Catherine Rampell in McLean, Va.; Judy Keen in Chicago; Gary Stern, Westchester (N.Y.) Journal News; Ron Barnett, The Greenville (S.C.) News; Wes Johnson, Springfield (Mo.) News-Leader; Gwen Florio, Great Falls (Mont.) Tribune; Ken Fuson, The Des Moines Register; Jessie Halladay, The Louisville Courier-Journal; The Associated Press

    USA in scorcher survival mode, UT, 18.7.2006, http://www.usatoday.com/weather/news/2006-07-17-heat-wave_x.htm

Nation Sweats as Heat Hits Triple Digits

July 18, 2006
The New York Times
By JENNIFER STEINHAUER

LOS ANGELES, July 17 — Mail carriers fanned themselves with telephone bills, children greased with sunscreen begged for just one more hour at pools and local officials pleaded with residents to turn down their air conditioners and refrain from midday dish washing as high temperatures afflicted nearly every state in the nation Monday.

The National Weather Service issued heat warnings from Las Vegas to New Jersey, where temperatures approached 100 degrees after a weekend of breathtaking discomfort.

The heat was at its worst in the Northeast, Midwest and West, with the temperature in New York (100 degrees) rising above that in Miami (98 degrees). Seeking someone to feel sorriest for? Call a friend, if you have one, in Death Valley, where the nation’s highest temperature was recorded Monday at a parching 125 degrees.

The best bet for relief? In the East, it would have been Wiscasset, Me., relatively frosty at 80 degrees. High temperatures claimed at least two lives; a 3-year-old boy in died on Saturday in South Bend, Ind., after locking himself in a hot car, and The Associated Press reported that a 60-year-old woman was found dead of lung disease and heat stress on Monday in her Philadelphia home.

In Southern California, an unusual burst of Gulf Coast moisture created a stubborn bout of humidity better known in Houston than in Hollywood.

Day laborers, cable installation men and warehouse workers from the San Fernando Valley to Palm Springs paused frequently in their work to draw on frigid water bottles and catch their breath. Residents in Los Angeles lamented any parking spot that was not within feet of their destination.

“This is the hottest July I remember,” said Elizabeth Hunter, a native Angeleno who lives in the Silver Lake neighborhood.

Ms. Hunter’s minipoodle, Lake Ziggy-Pierre, accustomed to daily two-mile walks, has spent the last several days folding like a fan after a tenth of a mile and then racing back home to lie, panting, on the tiled bathroom floor.

California surpassed its record of peak demand power use Monday , expending 46,561 megawatts compared with last year’s record of 45,431 megawatts, according to the state’s Independent System Operator. (One megawatt powers about 750 homes.)

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger urged residents to conserve energy and directed state agencies to cut electricity use by 25 percent for the rest of the week during hours of peak use.

In Illinois, Gov. Rod R. Blagojevich created cooling centers in 130 office buildings statewide between 8:30 a.m. and 5:30 p.m. On the West Side of Chicago, Dana Atkins, 36, waited outside a cooling center at 7:30 a.m. to escape her un-air-conditioned home and bury herself in romance novels and crossword puzzles, trying to escape the headache that the heat had induced.

Some people — usually those shorter than 4 feet who enjoy activities that exhaust, bore or otherwise vex their caregivers — insisted on finding fun in the heat. At Millennium Park in downtown Chicago, dozens of children splashed and jumped in the Crown Fountain, where water shoots out of two 50-foot-high glass block towers.

Michele Lukowski, 35, of Munster, Ind., took her sons, ages 2 and 6, to play in the fountain.

“I love the heat, as long as I don’t have to go somewhere like work dressed up, I don’t mind sweating,” Ms. Lukowski said. The family has air-conditioning and a pool at home and enjoys hot weather.

“They’re outside kids,” she said. “We’ve been in the pool all weekend.”

With temperatures around 100 degrees and the stifling humidity pushing the heat index to nearly 105, Baltimore declared a “code red” heat emergency and opened 10 cooling centers where the weary could hide from the heat and find water and ice. Others found refuge at an ice rink at the Northwest Family Sports Center.

“It’s so beautiful in here,” said Lisa Lalor, the director of a summer camp at the center. “I mean, it’s a funny thing to go home from work and everybody says, ‘It was a scorcher out there today, wasn’t it?’ and here we’re wearing mittens and gloves. It’s just a little bit of heaven.”

Theresa Dodd, a 21-year-old student at Loyola College in Maryland, headed for a tanning salon just north of Baltimore to maintain her golden look of summer, unable to tolerate her usual outdoor sunbathing ritual.

In New York, people did what they always do: Complain. Endure. Live in fear of having a single centimeter of clothing brush the arm of a fellow subway rider.

Relief was in sight for some places. According to the National Weather Service, southwest winds will continue to pump hot air into the Chicago area, and the combination of high temperatures and high humidity could create dangerous conditions there. But a cold front might bring showers as early as overnight.

Many Americans will need to keep a supply of Popsicles and oscillating fans at the ready. In St. Louis; Tulsa, Okla.; and Philadelphia, temperatures are expected to fall only to the mid-70’s at night, and much of California is expected to stay hot for much of the week.

Here in Los Angeles, it was not the heat, it was the ....

“People are not used to humidity down here,” said Jamie Meier, a meteorologist at the National Weather Service in Oxnard, northwest of Los Angeles. “People get extraordinarily uncomfortable. But it has helped decrease fire danger, because the more humid the atmosphere, the more difficult for rapid fire growth.”

And now for the good news: a marine layer helped cool Los Angeles by Monday evening.

    Nation Sweats as Heat Hits Triple Digits, NYT, 18.7.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/07/18/us/18sizzle.html

In Mid-Atlantic, Flooding's Fury Goes Downriver        NYT

30.6.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/nyregion/30flood.html

In Mid-Atlantic,

Flooding's Fury Goes Downriver

June 30, 2006
The New York Times
By ALAN FEUER

It would seem that misery, like water, flows downstream.

A day after a nexus of swollen rivers spilled their banks in some of the worst floods in the Mid-Atlantic region in decades, the waters slowly started to recede yesterday. But trouble did not go with them.

From upstate New York to Philadelphia, there were flooded homes and businesses, washed-out bridges, closed roadways, inundated streets and untold millions of dollars in damage. Most of that occurred along the twin paths of the Susquehanna and the Delaware Rivers, which overflowed for much of the day.

For people on the Delaware, in particular, canoes replaced cars, and homes were ruined yet again by high water for the third time in 21 months.

The devastation, however, was unequally divided. In Wilkes-Barre, Pa., where nearly 200,000 people were ordered to evacuate on Wednesday night, the levees on the Susquehanna held, and the evacuation order was rescinded. Even so, 6,000 people remained in shelters yesterday, and parts of town were still so wet that striped bass were seen swimming on the streets.

On the other hand, almost 75 percent of Conklin, N.Y., near Binghamton, was under water as the Susquehanna there crested at almost 25 feet, 14 feet above its flood level. The waters rose above the mailboxes, and the air stank heavily of fish. A dead cow floated by.

"The peak of the flooding is moving downstream now," said Geoff Cornish, a meteorologist for Pennsylvania State University. Mr. Cornish said that the lower reaches of the Delaware River Valley would probably be the worst — and last — areas to be hit yesterday by the floods as days of rainwater worked through a circulatory system of tributaries into the river.

The overspilling itself was largely expected to be over by this afternoon, but even so, the high water has already been blamed for 15 deaths in the region, and the National Weather Service said it could be days before water drains from flooded areas. That means it could take until the weekend or beyond before work crews can start repairing damaged buildings, bridges and roads.

While it was too early to determine precisely the extent of the damage, Gov. Jon S. Corzine of New Jersey said that the destruction was reminiscent of flooding in April 2005 that caused $30 million in damage. Gov. George E. Pataki of New York estimated damage in his state to be closer to $100 million. "Unparalleled devastation," he said.

Weather experts said the flooding was a combination of what they called a "striking rain event" — three to five inches of rain across entire states in just a few hours — and a steady buildup of rain over days. The storm system, which set records in some areas both for total rainfall and for flood levels, was the third in three years to cause extensive flooding in the two sprawling river basins.

There was a tone of grim inevitability on Wednesday when officials in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania announced that rivers in their states were going to crest. Evacuations were planned, sandbags laid, boats acquired, National Guard troops mobilized. If the waters were coming, people knew.

But when the waters came, there was not much to do except ride them out. In Phillipsburg, N.J., the Delaware crested at nearly 38 feet, nearly 15 feet above flood stage, and in Trenton it crested at nearly 25 feet, about 5 feet above flood stage.

The entire state of New Jersey remained under an emergency declaration yesterday, as more than 6,000 people were forced from their homes. The mayor of Trenton, Douglas Palmer, said that the city had only enough drinking water left for a day and a half because it had to close its filtration plant. Ten bridges over the Delaware River between Pennsylvania and New Jersey were closed.

At least 3,000 people were forced from their homes in New York, where Governor Pataki extended Wednesday's state of emergency to four more counties, bringing the total to 13. Near Binghamton, the Susquehanna rose 14 feet above flood stage, to almost 26 feet. In the city itself, where water topped the floodwalls of the river Wednesday evening, the deluge had significantly receded by yesterday afternoon. The residential west side of the city was still flooded, however, and many streets were closed to traffic.

In Delaware County in upstate New York, bordered by the Susquehanna and where the east and west branches of the Delaware River run, officials said damage was pervasive. Roads were closed throughout the county, communities were evacuated, nearly 8,000 people lost power and at least three towns had to truck in drinking water. More than a dozen bridges were washed away, according to a preliminary assessment.

"We got flooded in all four of the watershed basins. I don't think this has happened before," said Nicole Franzese, the county's planning director.

In Wilkes-Barre, some 50,000 people had fled on Wednesday night, but the Susquehanna there rose only to 34 feet, well below its 41-foot floodwalls. The levees, reinforced in 2004, did not break. Because the order to evacuate Wilkes-Barre was given on Wednesday at 1 p.m., the evacuation itself was fairly calm, "busy, not panicky," as one woman said. In West Pittston, 15 miles up the river from Wilkes-Barre, most of the water had receded from the streets by half-past noon, leaving behind a wake of mud and dust.

Contractors went to work quickly, pumping water from basements and spraying disinfectant on soon-to-be moldy carpets. The Susquehanna looked bucolic in the sun, but residents emerged from their homes to find that overnight they had acquired pools of water in their backyards.

Then there was Conklin, to the north in New York, where the water burst through windows and into living rooms, pouring out of homes and back onto the street and dragging whatever stood in its way: tables, televisions, plants, stoves. On the lot at Cycle Center, a motorcycle shop, the handlebars of a Harley-Davidson poked up from underwater, looking like a pair of antelope horns.

"There have been floods before, but nothing like this, nothing compared to this," the town's supervisor, Debbie Preston, said. "Half the town is wiped out. Even my house is gone."

"It's total devastation," Ms. Preston said. "Most of our people have no insurance, and they've lost everything. How do you get back on your feet after something like that, I just don't know."

On the Delaware, the rising water filled a McDonald's in Easton, Pa., as well as an Exxon station, its gasoline tanks peeking out only inches above the spill. New Hope, Pa., had a ghost-town look, with empty, sodden streets, darkened shop windows and no sounds at all, save those from pumps and generators working at the overflowing riverbanks. Water lapped the underside of the Lambertville-New Hope Bridge, then flowed downstream, where it surrounded the historic Bucks County Playhouse.

Farther downstream, in Yardley, Pa., just upriver from Trenton, hundreds of residents living in the blocks between the river and the Delaware Canal evacuated their homes, then stood on the banks, watching as the brown muddy water swirled past, and through, their houses.

"It's very discouraging," said Stella Ficiak, whose raised ranch house on Letchworth Avenue was partly submerged for the third time in the last three years. "It took us so long to fix it up after the last flood. We were just done, and now we have to start all over again."

Reporting for this article was contributed by Nicholas Confessore in Wilkes-Barre, Pa.; Jill P. Capuzzo in New Hope and Yardley, Pa.; Lisa W. Foderaro in White Plains; Anahad O'Connor in the Catskills; Elizabeth Olson in Maryland; Fernanda Santos in Binghamton, N.Y.; and Michael Wilson in Easton, Pa.

    In Mid-Atlantic, Flooding's Fury Goes Downriver, NYT, 30.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/nyregion/30flood.html

High Water in Two Big River Systems,

With Different Approaches to Flood Control

June 30, 2006
The New York Times
By LISA W. FODERARO

The flooding that swallowed up communities along the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers this week was not merely the result of what meteorologists call a striking rain event, three to five inches of rain across large areas in just a few hours. It was also caused by all the rain leading up to the deluge, saturating the ground.

The storm, which set records in some areas for both rainfall totals and flood levels, was the third in as many years to cause extensive damage in the two river basins, prompting some to wonder whether the extreme weather patterns that scientists say accompany global warming have already arrived.

The Susquehanna travels for 444 miles from its headwaters near Cooperstown, N.Y., south through Pennsylvania to the Chesapeake Bay, and many of the river's tributaries and streams — there are 48,000 miles of them — started to flood on Monday. The river itself crested late Wednesday and early yesterday, reaching 26 feet in Danville, Pa., six feet above flood stage.

Along the Delaware, which flows for 330 miles from the Catskills to the Delaware Bay, the rain also caused swollen creeks and streams, which, in turn, forced up the river levels long after the downpours ended. In Riegelsville, N.J., just south of Easton, Pa., the river rose to 33 feet early yesterday afternoon, 12 feet above flood stage.

The flooding along the two rivers prompted declarations of emergencies, mass evacuations, rescues and untold property damage claims. Along both rivers, there were scenes of rooftops poking out from a muddy expanse of water.

The approaches to flood control are markedly different along the two rivers, though.

The Susquehanna, considered one of the most flood-prone rivers in the country, has an extensive system of levees, walls and flood-control dams, said Susan Obleski, a spokeswoman for the Susquehanna River Basin Commission. The 27,510-square-mile basin — bigger than Vermont, Massachusetts, New Jersey and Delaware combined — is laced with shallow streams that flood easily.

"The river is very shallow as well, so it doesn't take a lot of rain before it starts to overflow its banks," she said. "We're particularly vulnerable to flash flooding."

There are a total of 35 flood-control structures maintained by the Army Corps of Engineers along the river basin. On Wednesday, officials in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., held out hope that the towering flood wall there would contain the water. It did, and the water crested 6 or 7 feet below the top of the 41-foot floodwalls.

While it is too early to say what the flood-control structures up and down the river accomplished in this storm, the commission estimates that in 2004, the bulwark held back 135 billion gallons of floodwater, preventing $1.6 billion of additional damage.

The Delaware, by contrast, has no concrete flood walls or protection dams, although there are five dams on the tributaries that feed it, said Clarke Rupert, a spokesman for the Delaware River Basin Commission.

In the 1970's, a plan for a major dam project at Tocks Island that would have supplied hydroelectric power, drinking water and flood protection on the Delaware was shelved after a huge outcry. The land that was purchased by the federal government in anticipation of the project later became the Delaware Water Gap National Recreation Area.

Because much of the nontidal portion of the Delaware has a federal designation of "wild and scenic," it is unlikely that anyone will revive attempts to create a new flood-control project any time soon.

" 'Wild and scenic' has to do with the free-flowing nature of a river," Mr. Rupert said. "The Delaware is the longest undammed river east of the Mississippi. It's been our experience that the approach to dealing with flood losses has shifted away from constructing new dams and levees to local measures like property acquisition, flood proofing, flood plain regulation and storm water management."

Environmental advocates and scientists have long cited the practice of building on flood plains as a cause of the devastation caused by rising rivers, but the recurrence of major floods in the East in recent years is also prompting new worries about global warming.

Claudia Tebaldi, a project scientist for the National Center for Atmospheric Research, in Colorado, said in a telephone interview that it was impossible to link a specific storm to climate change. "But we know that in a warm climate, the likelihood of getting intense precipitation events increases," she said.

Mr. Rupert pointed out that this is not the first time that major floods have occurred within a brief period. Flood crest figures for the Delaware in Trenton show that the highest crest occurred in 1904 and the third-highest in 1903. "If we were conducting this interview 100 years ago, we would be talking about two tremendous floods that took place in the span of six months," he said.

Still, he said, the recent floods are right up there. The storm in September 2004 — remnants of Tropical Storm Ivan — ranked sixth, while last year's storm in April was fourth. This year's should also make the short list. The water levels had reached 24.97 feet in Trenton as of yesterday evening, which could make it the new No. 5.

But it was unclear if the river had actually crested. "The jury is still out, so to speak," Mr. Rupert said.

    High Water in Two Big River Systems, With Different Approaches to Flood Control, NYT, 30.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/30/nyregion/30anatomy.html

Mid-Atlantic States Reel Under Deluge; 10 Dead

June 29, 2006
The New York Times
By ALAN FEUER

A network of swollen rivers, heavy from days of steady rain, spilled across their banks yesterday, threatening to inundate towns and cities from Virginia to Vermont and causing thousands of evacuations along the banks of the Susquehanna and Delaware Rivers in New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

Two hundred thousand residents threatened by the rising Susquehanna were ordered to leave the Wilkes-Barre, Pa., area, and thousands more were evacuated from their homes elsewhere in the region.

Earlier in the week, Washington suffered the worst two days of rain in its history.

A two-punch combination of saturated earth and rising currents led to at least 10 deaths and reports of two houses, one with a 15-year-old girl trapped inside, set adrift. The day of devastation led the governors of New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania to declare emergencies across wide swaths of their states. The potential for destruction was so widespread and unpredictable that the National Weather Service issued flood warnings for eight states.

"It is a historic event," said Todd Miner, a meteorologist from Pennsylvania State University, who said the rains had been caused by a low-pressure system trapped offshore by a bulge in the jetstream in the western Atlantic Ocean.

Even as the sun began to break out in parts of the Northeast, officials warned that the worst might be yet to come. Residents in parts of New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia were cautioned that more flooding might occur today as rivers crested their banks.

The damage from the floods was still being tallied late last night, and the reports were sobering. Two truck drivers died near Sidney, N.Y., 35 miles from Binghamton, when their rigs plunged into a 50-foot-deep hole in the washed-out bed of Interstate 88, and a 15-year-old Pennsylvania boy as well as someone trying to rescue him drowned in a lake in Luzerne County, officials said.

Gov. Edward G. Rendell of Pennsylvania declared emergencies in 46 of the state's 67 counties and activated 1,000 members of the National Guard, saying the storms were "a major hardship." Entire villages in Delaware County, N.Y., were left stranded. Several people were reported missing, their fates unknown.

The storms were fiercest, Mr. Miner said, in a corridor that ran from Virginia through eastern Pennsylvania to central New York, where Binghamton received 4.05 inches of rain on Tuesday — the most in one day in the city's history.

The most intense flooding seemed to be occurring along the banks of three rivers: the Susquehanna, the Delaware and the Schuylkill. Nearly 200,000 people in and around Wilkes-Barre were ordered to evacuate as a precaution, with officials saying they expected the Susquehanna to crest its 41-foot floodwalls today.

In Binghamton, 3,000 people were evacuated from hospitals and homes — even as the stranded sipped cocktails on the terrace of the Holiday Inn downtown and watched the Chenango River breach its banks. Nearby, floodwaters lapped the retaining walls of the Susquehanna. Divers and boats of the New York State Police were helping the evacuees.

At the same time, the Delaware was also rising quickly, officials in New Jersey said, in part because upriver in New York and Pennsylvania, some towns and cities had opened floodgates to empty their own flooding lakes into the river.

"Believe it or not," said Col. Joseph R. Fuentes, superintendent of the New Jersey State Police, "they're getting even more rain than we are."

Don Maurer, spokesman for the New York State Emergency Management Office, confirmed that some upriver towns had opened their floodgates, saying it was standard procedure in a downpour.

"They're trying to minimize the release, however," he said, "because they're well aware of the impact downstream."

The Delaware was expected to crest this afternoon at 28 feet — 3 feet higher than in the severe flooding in April 2005. By last night the floods had already shut down parts of Trenton, as Gov. Jon S. Corzine ordered most state buildings to be closed through today. Six thousand people in New Jersey were evacuated, mostly in Trenton, and officials there said it was the city's worst flooding since 1955.

The State House was kept open, although the main highway to the building, Route 29, was closed for several miles near downtown Trenton.

At a news conference several blocks from the river in a neighborhood called the Island, Mr. Corzine said, "We're standing on a spot that in the next 24 to 36 hours we expect to be under water."

The Schuylkill River was expected to crest in Philadelphia this morning. It flooded over its banks yesterday, closing the Kelly Drive on the east side of the river, and later the Martin Luther King Jr. Drive on the west. Admiral Wilson Boulevard, the main road to the Benjamin Franklin Bridge into downtown Philadelphia from New Jersey, was flooded yesterday morning as well.

At the Pepacton Reservoir in Delaware County, N.Y., which supplies drinking water to New York City, the water was flowing over the dam's spillway last night at 19,721 cubic feet per second, said Nicole Franzese, Delaware County's planning director. The county was one of nine in New York placed in a state of emergency by Gov. George E. Pataki.

And although much of the rain had tapered off by yesterday afternoon, the number of streams and rivers reported to be flooding continued to pile up, including the Roanoke River in Virginia and the Mohawk and Neversink Rivers in New York. Even Esopus and Rondout Creeks in New York State rose above their banks.

The overflowing Cattail Brook in Livingston Manor, N.Y., suddenly swept one house from its foundation and, with the 15-year-old girl inside, dumped it in the water.

Mr. Parker said that rescue workers had been trying to reach the girl, whom he identified as Jamie Bertholf, a classmate of his daughter. She is missing and presumed dead.

To the east of Binghamton, about 120 National Guardsmen were deployed to help with evacuations in the town of Walton, another flood-prone area near the reservoir. Asked about damage to homes in the area, Mr. Maurer said: "I don't think it'll look as dramatic as New Orleans, but if it's your house ..."

Along the Jersey Shore, environment officials were monitoring bacteria levels at the beaches, which often rise to unsafe levels during flooding. Elaine Makatura, a spokeswoman for the New Jersey Department of Environmental Conservation, said that increased levels of enterococci bacteria had been found at some bay beaches, but so far not along the ocean.

In Washington, the federal government closed the National Archives, the Justice Department and the offices of the Internal Revenue Service. Yesterday the storms — and the flooding — moved beyond the capital and toward the suburbs. In Rockville, Md., for instance, more than 2,000 people were evacuated from around Lake Needwood, as waters rose to nearly 25 feet above normal levels, emergency officials said.

In western Maryland, three people were rescued from a stalled car late Tuesday, only to die when the floodwaters carried them from the bed of a pickup truck, officials said. Edward J. McDonough, spokesman for the Maryland Emergency Management Agency, said that two teenagers who went to check on the rising waters of Little Pipe Creek in Carroll County were presumed dead.

Officials in Pennsylvania said that a driver was killed near Gettysburg when she lost control of her car and hit a truck, and an elderly man died after his car washed off a bridge near Equinunk on the Delaware River, the state police said.

A search continued for an 8-year-old girl who was apparently swept away in the raging waters in southwest Virginia, and another search was taking place for two teenagers who disappeared near a swollen creek in Keymar, Md., the state police there said.

Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies from the National Guard to the Coast Guard to the state police in several states came to the rescue of the soaked and stranded, using everything from sandbags to helicopters.

The deluge, from the earth and sky, demolished house and highway alike. Parts of the Pennsylvania Turnpike were closed; so too was the Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.

Then there was the house that was spotted drifting down the Susquehanna River in New York — on fire for a while, it seemed.

"When the house was torn up, the gas was still on," said Mr. Maurer, the spokesman for the New York State emergency office.

"And it ignited."

Reporting for this article was contributed by Laura Mansnerus in Trenton, Anahad O'Connor in White Plains, Fernanda Santos in Binghamton, N.Y., Nate Schweber in Livingston, N.Y., Ronald Smothers in Newark, and Robert Strauss in Philadelphia.

    Mid-Atlantic States Reel Under Deluge; 10 Dead, NYT, 29.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/29/nyregion/29flood.html?hp&ex=1151640000&en=bf3a8fcd8de344bc&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Eastern States Preparing for More Rain and Floods

June 28, 2006
The New York Times
By GARY GATELY

BALTIMORE, June 27 — Relentless rain continued drenching the East Coast on Tuesday as the region braced for overnight downpours that prompted evacuations of homes and businesses, knocked out power to tens of thousands, shut down government office buildings and led to flash flood warnings from upstate New York to North Carolina.

Heightening anxieties, the National Weather Service said a tropical storm forming near Cape Fear in North Carolina would bring more precipitation and heavy winds up the Atlantic coast to the lowlands of eastern Maryland and Northern Virginia, which in the past few days have been battered by storms and flooding.

The flooding was blamed for car crashes that killed two people in Maryland and New Jersey and for the disappearance of an 8-year-old girl swept away by rushing floodwaters Tuesday afternoon in southwestern Virginia.

On Tuesday evening, the National Weather Service called for four to six inches of additional rain in the Washington area, where more than seven inches fell Sunday and Monday. The deluge sent residents to emergency shelters in Maryland and Pennsylvania. Rescuers pulled stranded motorists and pedestrians from floodwaters, and workers heaved sandbags in front of office buildings in the nation's capital.

"This has probably been the most intense rainfall in a 24-hour period in the history of Washington," said Michael McGill, a spokesman for the General Services Administration, which oversees buildings closed because of flooding, including the headquarters for the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service. Both are expected to stay closed through at least Friday, he said, mostly because of basement flooding and damage to electrical systems.

"We're still in the process of evaluating the damage to those systems," Mr. McGill said. Because of flooding and power failures, popular attractions like the National Museum of Natural History and National Museum of American History remained closed Tuesday.

In Maryland, the flooding heavily damaged dozens of roads, the authorities said, and the forecast made highway officials anxious. "We're spread so thin already, getting another three, four, five inches of rain Tuesday night would be devastating," said David Buck, a spokesman for the State Highway Administration.

Flooding, Mr. Buck said, closed at least 35 Maryland roads, many on the Eastern Shore, and in some cases, torrents washed away huge chunks of asphalt and created a hole that closed lanes on I-95 and flooded Route 29 in suburban Washington.

In Annapolis, the county executive of Anne Arundel County, Janet S. Owens, urged several dozen residents of low-lying areas to leave their homes after officials opened seven floodgates of the Howard Duckett Dam on the Patuxent River. "I am asking these residents to be proactive and leave as early as possible," she said.

Ms. Owens said the county had shelters ready to take in at least 200 more people if necessary, and officials in other Maryland counties also prepared shelters.

Tides, she said, are expected to be two to three feet above normal with winds of 20 to 30 knots. Like other wary government officials in the region, Ms. Owens said the National Hurricane Center was closely monitoring the conditions that could lead to a tropical storm off the coast of North Carolina.

In Pennsylvania, Gov. Edward G. Rendell said the state was preparing to respond quickly to possible flooding in areas along several rivers, including the Schuylkill and the Susquehanna River. Some residents had been evacuated.

Based on forecasts, Mr. Rendell said, "Moderate to major flooding will likely affect parts of the commonwealth overnight and through Thursday."

In Scranton, The Associated Press reported, the American Red Cross set up an evacuation center at Green Ridge Assembly of God church, and other towns throughout eastern Pennsylvania reported flooding.

In southwestern Virginia, disabled children in Craig County, some in wheelchairs, waited for their parents at a high school after being evacuated from an Easter Seals camp Monday night. Nearby, officials continued searching for an 8-year-old girl swept away in Alleghany County.

Outside Washington, in Prince George's County, about 70 Maryland residents who had been evacuated, some by rescue boats, returned to their homes Tuesday, said Mark Brady, a Prince George's County fire and rescue spokesman. "We're just keeping our eye on the sky and hoping for the best," Mr. Brady said.

Flooding also occurred in Delaware and New Jersey.

    Eastern States Preparing for More Rain and Floods, NYT, 27.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/28/us/28floods.html?hp&ex=1151553600&en=b59692c83f1b8a77&ei=5094&partner=homepage

Savage Storms Wreak Havoc Across the Washington Region

June 27, 2006
The New York Times
By FELICITY BARRINGER

WASHINGTON, June 26 — Rain hammered the nation's capital on Sunday and Monday and filled the lowlands of eastern Maryland and northern Virginia, disrupting Amtrak service, flooding tunnels and a major subway station, drowning crops and knocking out power to government buildings.

A total of 5.19 inches of rain was recorded at Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on Sunday, the National Weather Service reported. More storms were expected to pelt the saturated ground through Tuesday and into Wednesday, raising concerns that the Potomac River might have trouble containing the water later in the week. The deluge followed a long dry period, however, reducing the chances of river flooding.

As the roar of the rain muffled even the sound of thunder, the storms knocked down a 100-year-old elm not far from the front door of the White House and closed the headquarters of the Internal Revenue Service, the Justice Department and the Environmental Protection Agency, forcing at least 3,000 employees to stay home. The National Archives, the National Gallery of Art, the National Endowments for the Arts and the Humanities and the National Zoo were also closed.

In Maryland, the storms forced a celebration to evacuate from a recreation center in Chevy Chase and buried a mile-long stretch of a Silver Spring highway in mud. Part of the capital Beltway in Virginia was closed and air traffic in the region was delayed, forcing travelers aloft, on the rails and behind the wheel to wait, in some cases until early Tuesday, to get to their destinations.

A spokesman for the Weather Service, Chris Vacarro, said a stationary weather front stretching from Northern Vermont to the Florida Panhandle had produced the storms and would continue to do so at least through Tuesday.

Though the Washington metropolitan area was soaked, the weather there seemed like a heavy summer shower compared with the thorough lashing of the agricultural heart of the Eastern Shore in Maryland.

"The rain just came down with such intensity," said Wayne Robinson, director of emergency management for Dorchester County. "We have reports of 11 inches Sunday, some as much as 15 inches over two days."

Mr. Robinson added: "It just kept going across the roads, and the asphalt is just washed away. The culverts, the big pipes over little streams, those were just washed completely out."

He said that as many as 23 roads had been cut off and that at least as many had been reduced to one lane.

"There has been a lot of crop damage: cucumbers, sweet corn, wheat, soy beans," he said, expressing concern, too, over the area's thousands of chickens housed in rows of long, low coops.

Edward J. McDonough, a spokesman for the Maryland Emergency Management Agency, said the small town of Federalsburg in Caroline County had been evacuated briefly as emergency workers checked the stability of a farm dam.

In Maryland, power failures left the homes and businesses of more than 10,000 Pepco customers dark, and in Northern Virginia, 3,300 customers of Dominion Virginia Power were also without electricity.

When Bill Hart, a partner and general manager at the Strosnider's hardware store in Bethesda, Md., arrived at work at 7 a.m. on Monday, he said, "I already had five cars out there waiting for me, asking if we had sandbags." By 9:30 a.m., Mr. Hart said, pumping equipment was sold out.

In some areas, driving was particularly perilous. In a wooded agricultural preserve in northern Montgomery County, Md., the county fire captain, Carl Mauney, joined a county police officer, Nick Augustine, to pull a woman from a small sedan that had been pinned against a guardrail by strong currents and was at danger of falling eight feet into a swollen creek.

"I put on a life jacket, a helmet and a throw-rope," Captain Mauney said. "The water was pretty calm until I got close to her vehicle, then it was flowing strongly."

With waters up to the car windows, the woman, at his urging, climbed out the driver's-side window. "Then we walked maybe 10 or 15 feet through moving water and got on top of a little island," where they were safe, he said.

That was one of several rescues in the northern part of the county during the next 24 hours, said Mr. Mauney, who broke off his account to leave on another emergency call.

Robert Strauss contributed reporting from Haddonfield, N.J. for this article, and Matthew L. Wald from Washington.

    Savage Storms Wreak Havoc Across the Washington Region, NYT, 27.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/27/us/27rain.html

U.S. Report Faults Nation's Preparedness for Disaster        NYT

17.6.2006
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/us/17fema.html

U.S. Report Faults

Nation's Preparedness for Disaster

June 17, 2006
The New York Times
By ERIC LIPTON

WASHINGTON, June 16 — States and cities in hurricane zones generally have better plans to deal with disaster than do other regions, but the nation's overall level of preparedness is still far from sufficient, a new report by the Department of Homeland Security says.

For the nation as a whole, the report rates only a quarter of state emergency operations plans and 10 percent of municipal plans as "sufficient" to cope with a natural disaster or a terrorist attack. That is the highest of the three ratings defined by the analysis, above "partially sufficient" and "not sufficient."

"The majority of the nation's current operating plans and planning processes cannot be characterized as fully adequate, feasible or acceptable to manage catastrophic events," says the report, which was requested by President Bush as part of his administration's response to the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The assessment, which based its ratings on an analysis of preparations in categories like evacuation, medical care and public notification, found that the only states with fully adequate, feasible and acceptable plans were Florida, Maryland, Massachusetts, Mississippi, New York, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and Vermont.

The plans of most other states were deemed partially sufficient. But those of Louisiana, whose efforts were severely criticized in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, and West Virginia were rated not sufficient.

Further, the assessment focused on the state and municipal plans as documents, meaning the federal evaluation teams did not necessarily determine that a state or urban area could fully deliver on them.

Despite the billions of dollars in federal grants disbursed to cities and states since the 2001 terrorist attacks to improve preparations for catastrophe, officials at the Homeland Security Department said they were not surprised by the results.

"It is a natural evolution towards working together as a nation to implement the lessons from seminal events such as the Sept. 11 attacks and Hurricane Katrina," said George W. Foresman, the department's under secretary for preparedness.

In addition to overall ratings for a given plan, there were also ratings for 10 individual categories within it. Florida was the only state to get a top rating in all categories, an outcome reflecting its status as a frequent hurricane target. South Carolina also performed particularly well, with a top rating in nine categories.

Among urban areas, New York City and Washington, the two targets of the 2001 attacks, each received mixed reviews, with New York still needing to work on preparations for mass care, communications, basic direction and control. The Washington area has to work on some of the same, the report said, and its medical and health plans are clearly not sufficient. Over all, New York City was rated partially sufficient, and the Washington area not sufficient.

The analysis, which started with an assessment by the jurisdictions themselves that was then followed up with an evaluation by federal officials, shows that Michael Chertoff, secretary of homeland security, should not have cut grants to New York City, said Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York.

"Two weeks ago, Chertoff cut the money to New York dramatically, basically saying there were other, greater needs," Mr. Schumer said. "Here they are saying New York is not adequately prepared."

The most common flaw among plans across the country, the report said, was a lack of a clear command structure for how governments would react to a major disaster. Among other common flaws were failure to address sufficiently how governments would care for the sick, the elderly, the disabled and others with special needs; lack of planning to ensure that the public has accurate and timely information and instructions; "significant weaknesses in evacuation planning"; and inadequacy of ability to manage and care for a large number of evacuees.

    U.S. Report Faults Nation's Preparedness for Disaster, NYT, 17.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/17/us/17fema.html

Storm Nears Hurricane Strength and the Gulf Coast of Florida

June 13, 2006
The New York Times
By TERRY AGUAYO

MIAMI, June 12 — A hurricane warning was issued on Monday and evacuations were ordered for parts of the Florida Gulf Coast as the season's first tropical storm intensified on a path that could bring it ashore as a hurricane.

The National Hurricane Center put out the warning for a 300-mile stretch from Longboat Key, near Sarasota, to Ochlockonee Bay, south of Tallahassee.

Early Monday evening, the storm, named Alberto, had winds of 70 miles per hour, just 4 m.p.h. shy of hurricane speed. Landfall is expected Tuesday.

"We're forecasting the worst-case scenario just to be sure everyone is prepared in case a minor fluctuation does occur," said Michelle Mainelli, at the hurricane center.

Forecasters were mostly concerned with an expected four to six inches of rain and flooding from storm surges along parts of the coast, Ms. Mainelli said.

"We're really stressing those as our main concerns," she said. "Some isolated areas may even see up to 10 inches of rainfall."

Gov. Jeb Bush told reporters at an afternoon briefing at the state's Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee that evacuation orders had been issued for residents in low-lying areas in six counties between Tampa and Tallahassee along the Gulf coast.

"If you are ordered to evacuate, you should really do it," Mr. Bush said. "Don't think you can ride out a storm. It's not worth losing one's life."

The governor said that 17 shelters in 11 counties were ready to open. He declared a state of emergency for the state, giving him the power to enforce price-gouging laws and activate 7,500 National Guard troops.

The areas singled out for evacuation are less populated than many other areas of Florida, and Craig Fugate, the emergency management chief, said that because they were not in major media markets, it might be harder to get the word out.

Mr. Fugate and other state officials said they remained worried that Tropical Storm Alberto might prove to be a repeat of a storm that struck the East Coast in March 1993 and left more than 40 people dead in Florida.

That 1993 storm was not a hurricane, but it pushed an enormous wall of water into the same areas now in Tropical Storm Alberto's path. Ten people died in Taylor County, part of which was ordered evacuated on Monday.

The Federal Emergency Management Agency said it was "coordinating with state and local officials as they make decisions for their communities on evacuations and response activities."

Gulf Coast residents were making their own preparations. At a Home Depot in St. Petersburg, Frances Musgrave, 79, shopped for sandbags.

"I always keep a little dried milk, boil my eggs and make sure I have bread and sandwich meats," Ms. Musgrave said.

The storm began as a tropical depression on Saturday, nine days into the hurricane season, which ends Nov. 30. Before threatening Florida, it caused flooding in Cuba and prompted the evacuation of 25,000 people in Pinar del Rio province, the Cuban newspaper Granma reported.

Government forecasters have predicted that 13 to 16 tropical storms will form in the Atlantic Ocean this season. Of those, 8 to 10 are likely to become hurricanes, they say, and as many as 6 may be Category 3 strength or higher, carrying winds stronger than 111 m.p.h.

Christine Jordan Sexton contributed reporting from Tallahassee, Fla., for this article, and Lynn Waddell from St. Petersburg, Fla.

    Storm Nears Hurricane Strength and the Gulf Coast of Florida, NYT, 13.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/us/13storm.html

Alberto Becomes 1st Named Storm of Season

June 11, 2006
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Filed at 11:34 a.m. ET
The New York Times

MIAMI (AP) -- Tropical Storm Alberto, the first named storm of the 2006 Atlantic hurricane season, developed Sunday from a poorly organized tropical depression in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and appeared likely to carry heavy rain to Florida, forecasters said.

By midday, the storm had maximum sustained wind near 45 mph, up 10 mph from early in the morning, the National Hurricane Center said.

It was expected to continue growing but without developing into a hurricane.

''The satellite presentation of the storm is not very impressive, so not much additional strengthening is anticipated,'' said hurricane specialist Richard Pasch.

At 11 a.m. EDT, Alberto was centered about 400 miles west of Key West and about 445 miles south-southwest of Apalachicola, forecasters said.

It was moving northwest at about 9 mph but was expected to turn toward central or northern Florida, where it could make landfall early Tuesday, forecasters said.

The tropical depression that produced Alberto formed Saturday, nine days after the official start of the hurricane season, in the northwest Caribbean, which can produce typically weak storms that follow a similar track this time of year, forecasters said.

''They can also meander in the Gulf for awhile, and we've seen some dissipate before reaching any land areas,'' Pasch said.

Forecasters said up to 30 inches of rain could fall over the western half of Cuba, creating a threat of flash floods and mudslides, and up to 8 inches could fall over the Florida Keys and the state's Gulf Coast.

Scientists predict the 2006 season could produce up to 16 named storms, six of them major hurricanes.

Last year's hurricane season was the busiest and most destructive on record. Hurricane Katrina devastated Louisiana and Mississippi and was blamed for more than 1,570 deaths in Louisiana alone.

The season was the busiest in 154 years of storm tracking, with records for the number of named storms (28) and hurricanes (15). Meteorologists used up their list of 21 proper names -- beginning with Arlene and ending with Wilma -- and had to use the Greek alphabet to name storms for the first time.

This year, however, meteorologists have said the Atlantic is not as warm as it was at this time in 2005, meaning potential storms would have less of the energy needed to develop into hurricanes.

Last year, the first named storm of the season was Tropical Storm Arlene, which formed June 9, 2005, and made landfall just west of Pensacola in the Florida Panhandle.

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On the Net:

National Hurricane Center: http://www.nhc.noaa.gov

    Alberto Becomes 1st Named Storm of Season, NYT, 11.6.2006, http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-Tropical-Weather.html