Multi-city blackouts? Power grid Clusterfuck?

What's going on? My friend and ex-colleage Jason McCabe Calacanis says there's just been some kind of massive power outage in NYC… our old Silicon Alley Reporter offices just lost power… all phone circuits in NYC seem to be busy, and all New Yorkers on my IM list just went black. I hope everything's okay. This feels familiar, in a very uncomfortable way. Update: Reuters says " Power outages struck major U.S. and Canadian cities on Thursday, witnesses said, although it was not immediately clear if there was a link between the breakdowns. Power outages were reported in the New York metropolitan area and Detroit, as well as in Toronto and Ottawa, witnesses said." Sounds like the grid went down. BoingBoing pal John Parres IMs to say that there's been an explosion on 14th Street in NYC… people flooding car lanes on brooklyn bridge… CNN now reporting that "niagra mohawk power grid overloaded"…Warren Ellis points to news updates that blame Con Ed transformer on fire, upstate NY… Mayor Bloomberg says black smoke at 14th street in Manhattan not result of explosion/fire, but smoke caused by auto-shutdown….Numair IMs, "just think how PISSED people would have been if verizon had already replaced the payphones with wifi hotspots. 'WTFis this? WIFI?!!!!'
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