MEN AT TORONTO FINANCIAL DISTRICT DURING BLACKOUT, 2003-08-14 (photo)

Men wait to cross Bay street in the financial district of Toronto, August 14, 2003. The office of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien said Thursday night that a lightning strike on a power plant near Niagara Falls, New York, was the cause of the massive power blackout that hit large areas of North America Thursday. A spokeswoman for the Prime Minister's Office told Reuters that officials on both sides of the U.S.-Canada border confirmed that lightning hit a power plant in New York state and started a cascading blackout over an area of 9,300 square kilometers (3,600 square miles) in the U.S. Northeast and Ontario. REUTERS/Andrew Wallace ANW