Submitted by: kirkland on Thursday August 14th, 2003 at 04:10 PM EST

A major power outage simultaneously struck dozens of cities in the United States and Canada late Thursday afternoon.

Cities affected include New York; Boston, Massachusetts; Cleveland, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; Toronto, Ontario; and Ottawa, Ontario. The power outage occurred shortly after 4 p.m.

State officials said the Niagara-Mohawk power grid was overloaded. The grid provides power for New York and stretches into Canada. The officials said the outage is a natural occurrence and not related to terrorism.

Much of Midtown Manhattan and Wall Street were shut down. All area airports and the Long Island Railroad were also affected. The airports were operating on back-up power and operations were reported to be normal, officials said.

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