New York's mayor praised residents for responding with compassion.

New York's mayor praised residents for responding with compassion.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
Bouncing back from the largest blackout in U.S. history, cities from the Midwest to Manhattan restored power Friday to millions of people -- only to confront a second series of woes created in the aftermath of the enormous outage.
Electricity flowed in Cleveland on day two of the blackout, but water moved at a trickle. Times Square was once again the luminous center of Manhattan, but none of the subways were yet running. The lights clicked on in more than 1 million homes in Michigan, but gas remained in scarce supply around Detroit.
Officials in Michigan warned that the whir of air conditioners and the glow of televisions might not return until the end of the weekend as the cause of the massive outage remained a mystery. Canada and the United States formed a joint task force Friday to investigate what caused the blackout and how to prevent it from happening again.
The blackout washed across a huge slice of North America, knocking out service in parts of eight states and Canada in just nine seconds.
Compassion vs. crime
In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said he received a call from President Bush offering congratulations on the city's handling of the crisis. Crime in the city was actually down overnight compared to an average evening, he said.
"I think all New Yorkers have done their part," Bloomberg said. "If we compare this time to what happened in 1977, when there was chaos and crime, this time we saw compassion."
But compassion doesn't make the trains run. The subway system remained paralyzed while the two major commuter rail lines limped through Friday with sporadic service. The city's subways, which carry 5 million daily riders, won't return until at least today, Bloomberg said.
Late Friday, Consolidated Edison announced that all power had been restored to New York City. By then, though, some New Yorkers had already endured an outage longer than the 25-hour blackout of 1977.
OHIO
Businesses let ideas flowamid gap in water service
In Cleveland, only spotty power outages remained Friday night after 1.4 million FirstEnergy Corp. customers were in the dark during the peak of the nation's largest blackout. Water that had dried up in 20 suburbs was mostly flowing again, even if just at a trickle.
FirstEnergy ended rolling blackouts that it started earlier in the day to conserve electricity because demand was greater than supply. The rolling blackouts affected as many as 125,000 customers in Cleveland-area communities.
The search for the cause of the blackout focused on an antiquated Midwestern power loop around Lake Erie and Lake Ontario. Utility experts backed away from earlier suggestions that it might have started in Ohio.
Ohio's sole operating nuclear power plant in Perry, east of Cleveland, remained shut down Friday and probably won't restart for several days, FirstEnergy said.
Creative solutions
Before electricity and water were restored, businesses came up with creative ways to cope.
The 706-bed Menorah Park nursing home in Beachwood took buckets of water from a 60,000-gallon swimming pool to use for flushing and mopping.
Stylists at Creative Cuts in suburban Brunswick boiled water in pans for shampoos. Workers at a BP gas station stashed ice cream cones in the outdoor ice storage bin.
From his vacation retreat in Canada, Gov. Bob Taft asked the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio to document minute-by-minute what happened and why, and to recommend how to prevent a future blackout.
U.S. Rep. Marcy Kaptur, D-Toledo, called for more public oversight of power production, and Toledo Mayor Jack Ford was drafting a letter to Congress demanding improvements to the energy grid.
PUCO Chairman Alan Schriber said some of the state's transmission lines, including those estimated at 30 years old, may need to be upgraded.
"It's just like highways. Highways are there to move traffic. Highways get old; they get broken down; they need repair," Schriber said.
Cleveland Mayor Jane Campbell said she was pleased by the city's response -- employees and residents -- to the blackout.
"We had a plan in place for such an emergency, and we executed that plan," she said. However, she acknowledged it was a little different to plan it than to actually do it.
MICHIGAN
Officials predict recoverywill prove to be slow
In Detroit, officials warned that it could take days to fully restore electrical service throughout the city and other parts of Michigan.
With residents of the region urged to stay home, automakers virtually halted production here and across the Midwest. Most of downtown Detroit remained shuttered and deserted. Bottled water was trucked into some areas, mail delivery was canceled in two ZIP codes, and only 9 percent of the city's gas stations were open, producing long lines that in some cases were monitored by police.
City buses were halted. Truckers, though unimpeded by commuters, had to wait several hours to haul their freight into Canada over the Ambassador Bridge.
As day turned to evening, a state of emergency for the Detroit region declared by Michigan Gov. Jennifer Granholm remained in effect, though officials announced that power had been restored to 1.2 million of 2.1 million homes. Although much of the nation's focus during the blackout was on New York City, Detroit was rebounding from the disaster more slowly.
"We are through the first 24 hours of this blackout with probably better results than any of us could have expected," Wayne County Prosecutor Mike Duggan said at a Friday afternoon news conference with Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick. "But we are a long way from being out of the woods."
CANADA
Travel remains disrupted;leaders stress conservation
Lights flickered back on Friday across a swath of central Canada, but travel was still disrupted, and people were asked to use as little electricity as possible.
The blackout meant serious delays for travelers, with Air Canada canceling all flights until midafternoon Friday after its Toronto operation center lost emergency power.
"The situation is still somewhat fragile," airline spokeswoman Laura Cooke said of the problem at Canada's biggest airport. "The operation system is here in Toronto, but it affects flights across the system."
Toronto Mayor Mel Lastman said people should avoid using air conditioners or dishwashers, and urged everyone to get a flashlight rather than relying on candles because of the fire risk.