NEW YORK CITY - An extraordinary power blackout hit steamy U.S. and Canadian cities Thursday, stranding people in subways, closing nine nuclear power plants from New York to Michigan and choking streets with workers driven from stifling offices.
Canadian officials said late Thursday the outage was caused by a lightning strike at the Niagara power plant.
"We have been informed that lightning struck a power plant in the Niagara region on the U.S. side," said Jim Munson, a spokesman for Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien.
The blackouts robbed the electricity used by millions of people in a broad swath of the Northeast - stretching west to Ohio and Michigan - and in southern Canadian cities, starting shortly after 4 p.m. EDT. In Toronto, Canada's largest city, workers fled their buildings when the power went off. There also were widespread outages in Ottawa, the capital.
Power began to come back in some cities as afternoon turned to evening, but officials said full restoration would take much longer.
Outages ranged over an area with roughly 50 million people.
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