Stranded Britons Face Travel Nightmare as Blackout Hits US

Thousands of British holidaymakers were facing travel chaos today after a massive blackout brought large parts of north-eastern America to a virtual standstill.

Up to 1,700 Britons were stranded at New York’s JFK airport last night after British Airways cancelled five of its flights returning to Britain because of the power cut.

A further two flights from Toronto to Britain were also axed, and a planeload of passengers aboard a Virgin Atlantic jet bound for New York was forced to turn back to Heathrow Airport.

Virgin Atlantic flight VS17 was nearly three hours into its journey to New York when the pilot announced the Airbus A340 had to return to Britain.

It eventually arrived back at 2am and the weary travellers were immediately shepherded on to shuttle buses and taken to a nearby hotel for the night.

A spokesman for Virgin said it was planning to fly most of them out to New York at 4.30pm today.

Businessman Arthur D’Arcy, 45, originally from Surrey but now living in New Jersey, said Virgin had treated the passengers well.

“About three hours in the pilot came on the tannoy and said, ’I’m sure you are wondering why we are taking a left turn in the middle of the Atlantic’,” he said.

“He then told us it was a power failure in the US and because we were before the halfway point of the flight we would have to go back.

“Everyone is obviously very tired but there isn’t really much you can do about it.”

A second Virgin flight was diverted to Washington as chaos gripped New York.

BA spokesman Iain Burns said some of the airline’s westbound flights from Britain to the US, already in flight, were diverted to Philadelphia and Boston, and Toronto-bound planes went to Montreal.

Amid scenes reminiscent of the September 11 2001 terrorist atrocity President George Bush vowed to fully investigate why the blackout had been so widespread.

Ruling out terrorism as the cause behind the power cut he said he was confident things would return to normal later today and promised to ensure that such “a massive national problem” would never happen again.

Thousands of office workers poured out of high-rise buildings while terrified commuters trapped on the underground network desperately clawed open the doors to escape the rising heat as growing panic gripped New York.

“Are we being attacked again?,” one man asked, a concern shared by many in the still-shaky city which is approaching the second anniversary of the September 11 attacks.

Praising the emergency services Bush insisted that the country was better organised today to deal with an emergency than it was two years ago, and said that the country was “slowly but surely” coping with the blackout.

“I’m confident we can get things up and running,” he said. “I have been working with federal officials to make sure the response to this situation was quick and thorough and I believe it has been.”

An assessment into “why the cascade was so significant, why it was able to ripple so significantly throughout our system up east” are among the key issues to which Bush will want answers.

“We’ll find out why and will deal with the problem,” said Bush, who expressed support for modernising the nation’s electricity grid.

“Millions of people’s lives are affected,” he added. “I fully understand that their lives will not be normal for the short run and hope that they continue to cope with this in a manner that they done so far.”

The Mayor of New York said power would be restored later today, provided the electricity restoration plan hit no further setbacks.

Michael Bloomberg stressed there was no evidence of terrorism, although New Yorkers likened the chaotic scenes on the streets to those of 9/11.

He said there was no evidence of criminal activity or of any person being injured as a result of the widespread power cut, allegedly linked to a lightning strike on a power station in Niagra Falls.

Tiffany Walters, 26, who works in a Manhattan law firm, said lights and computer screens in her office started flickering a little after 4pm local time (9pm UK time). Within minutes everything ground to a halt.

“Everybody freaked out at the beginning,” she said. “People were saying they could smell burning and we all were wondering if it was terrorism.

“It feels and looks so like 9/11. Everybody’s wandering around the streets with fear on their faces and trying to find out what’s going on.”

During the crisis traffic lights went out throughout downtown Cleveland and other major cities, creating havoc at the beginning of rush hour.

There were reports of power cuts in northern New Jersey and in several Vermont towns.

In Connecticut, Metro-North Railroad service was knocked out. Lights flickered at state government buildings in Hartford.

Every prison in New York state reported a loss of power and were forced to switch to back-up generators.

The black-out will be rated as one of the worst in recent history, rivalling a power cut in New York City in 1977 which left nine million people without electricity for up to 25 hours.

That blackout led to riots, looting and mayhem in the city causing millions of dollars worth of damage.

Lightening knocked out the electricity on July 13 at a time when the city was suffering from a financial crisis and high unemployment levels.

Mobs took advantage of the darkness and set fires, smashed windows and hauled away food, clothing and appliances, while the city went without power.

The rampage continued the next day in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn as staff tried in vain to protect their products but many businesses never recovered from the looting.

Around 4,500 people were arrested after the chaos which caused damage estimated at around 61 million.

During yesterday’s crisis four nuclear power reactors – two in New York and two in Ohio – were shut down because of the loss of off-site power.