State of Emergency Declared

New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey has declared a state of emergency after today's East Coast power outage.

Gov. McGreevey is telling New Jersey residents to remain calm, limit phone usage and conserve energy if they have power.

A spokesman for the governor said the National Guard will be fully mobilized.

Power was reported out in northern New Jersey down to Monmouth County.

In Newark, people were stuck in various stages of mid-commute. Some were in office elevators, while others were left sitting in parking garage lifts.

Tempers were flaring as traffic snarled. But Newark police reported no incidents of lawlessness as of 5:00 p.m.

Thousands of commuters also were seen in Manhattan flooding toward ferry services to Weehawken and Hoboken.

Passengers trying to get home on N.J.Transit have been delayed.

Also, all four major airports in the New York area are closed.

Some parts of Pennsylvania, all in the northwestern corner of the state, were also hit by the huge power blackout that hit cities from New York to Ottawa to Detroit on Thursday.

Power went out to much or all of Erie, Forest and Venango counties, according to emergency management officials. Outages were reported starting at about 4:10 p.m.

"It's going up and down, and we've had some brownouts," said Erie 911 supervisor Liz Schultz. "I've heard there are people at the hospital (stuck) in elevators, but they are getting them out."

Much of Pennsylvania and all of Delaware were unaffected; the lights remained on in Philadelphia and Pittsburgh. PJM Interconnection, the Valley Forge, Pa.-based company that manages the power grid in much of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, Ohio and Delaware, said it hasn't received any reports of major power outages on its network.

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