Tom Cune News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

Issues to deal with. >> tom, it seemed like every time there's a storm or maybe some cyber threat or a national security crisis, we talk about doing something about the national grid, and then, of course, that conversation goes away, swallowed up by the news cycle and my sense is that this comes at a politically inconvenient time, we're going to go back to talking about the election inevitably over the next week. so if not now, when? when do we fix the national grid? do you expect that conversation to go away like it usually does? >> no, i don't expect it to go away. everybody understands the ...

Lights off. over 8 million households still without power this afternoon stretching in north carolina to maine all the way west to michigan. utility companies are working around the clock to get it back up and running. according to local elected of h officials it could be weeks, not days, before full power is restored to everyone. >> during hurricane irene restoration took eight days. for hurricane sandy the full restoration may, in fact, take longer. >> to give you a sense of the impact, check out this comparison of what the normal manhattan skyline liked light lack night. how to do it tom cu...

State of our national grid? i mean what sort of improvements could be made? what sort of investment would be required to really get it to the best possible condition? >> well, we have -- believe it or not -- the best electric grid in the world right now, and it is far superior to other parts of the world, but, again, electricity is so essential. we need to continue to improve things. we need to continue to improve our response and recovery to storms. right now we have more than 50,000 people, an army of people in here to help restore power. but the magnitude of the task is huge. this is the bi...

President of the institute. one of the most jarring images is video that made the rounds online about power stations at 14th streit and fdr highway exploding and lighting up the sky in this explosion. all of the lights around it going out. i like at that. i used to live icouple of blocks from there. i know power is still out in my neighborhood. i say that means we're kind of screws for a long time here. is that what that picture suggests to you? >> well, the picture might suggest that. that particular incident wasn't as serious as some of the other situations they have in lower manhattan, whic...