Blackout a wake-up call, says Bush

New York City’s subway, stopped in its tracks by this week’s historic power failure, resumed service on Saturday, and a US-Canadia...

New York City’s subway, stopped in its tracks by this week’s historic power failure, resumed service on Saturday, and a US-Canadian task force searched for the cause of the blackout.

The White House announced the cross-border task force on Friday on the crisis that plunged as many as 50 million people in the Northeastern US and the Canadian province of Ontario into darkness.

‘‘We need to take a look at what went wrong, analyse the problem and come up with a solution. We don’t know yet what went wrong but we will,’’ US President George W. Bush said during a visit to California.

‘‘I view it as a wake-up call,’’ the President said, describing the worst blackout in North American history as ‘‘an indication we need to modernise the electricity grid.” In New York, trains halted for nearly 36 hours started running again early on Saturday.

Procedures put in place after a huge blackout in 1965 failed to isolate breakdowns to small areas of the country. Former Energy Secretary Bill Richardson said much of the US electricity system was 50 or 60 years old. ‘‘We’re a superpower with a third-world grid. We need a new grid,’’ said New Mexico Governor Richardson. (Reuters)