Could Northeast Blackout Have Reached Arkansas?

Officials in the northeast are still struggling to figure out what caused yesterday`s blackout--the biggest in history. And if you`re wondering if it could have spread as far as Arkansas, the chances are quite remote. But when the lights did go out yesterday, local Entergy officials say they noticed local power systems beginning to operate faster. "We also noticed the loads on some of our lines jumped up a little bit, not a lot, but it was curious that all of them changed at the same time," Jim Case of Entergy said. Case says that`s because so many different power companies are all connected to each other, whether directly or not. "The grid was designed for economic exchange of power and emergency backup in case someone has a local problem they might need to import some power," Case said. Case adds that there was no way for energy companies to tell where the outage would stop, it just had to find it`s natural stopping point. Case says his office has been in constant conference calls with the northeast companies to make sure their restoration wouldn`t affect our power.