Colorado's vast beetle-kill pine forests threaten power grid

One of the least-publicized aspect of the mountain pine bark beetle epidemic, which has decimated nearly 2 million acres of trees in Colorado, is the threat it poses to the region's power grid. Whole mountainsides of dead and toppling trees throughout the state raise the specter of disaster on the scale of the great Northeast Blackout of 2003.

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Memories of the 2003 Blackout

At 4:15 p.m. on Aug. 14, 2003, tens of millions of people across the Northeast and Midwest U.S. and Ontario were suddenly without power. Our STAFF AND READERS tell us what happened next.

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Seeing the financial world as an electric grid

One of the most useful ways of thinking about the world economic crisis and how we might deal with it is to recall the great Northeast blackout of the summer of 2003. Yes, an electrical failure.

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Surviving emergencies with '3 Days, 3 Ways'

There were two big emergencies during my stint as a New Yorker - 9/11 and the Northeast Blackout of 2003. I learned a lot about disaster preparedness after that (for example, keeping bottles of wine around for unexpected guests isn't as important as having bottles of water stored away for unexpected events).

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