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Commonwealth Edison’s Chairman Tom Blackmarr explains the nature of the blackouts in the Loop as “an employee error that just could not be avoided.” When asked the nature of the error, Blackmarr responded: “A new team of employees were trying to power up the ‘Zapmar’ [a new Com Ed development for wiping out nonpaying customers]. The ‘Zapmar’ was very angry today and needed more energy than we could have expected. The ‘Zapmar’ is very temperamental and becomes very upset when certain customers refuse to pay their power bills. ‘Zapmar’ requires huge amounts of electricity to function properly and this may cause certain unexpected blackouts.”
As to the allegations that the outages were from a series of blown transformers in the city’s West Side, Blackmarr continued with: “Don’t make me call ‘Zapmar’ in here on you people. . . .’Zapmar’ is very angry with you right now and ‘Zapmar’ is going to take a ‘Time Out.’”
