All right, BrendanLoy.com readers, you’ve seen my blackout pictures and heard my audio posts (and if you click on the “Read the rest of this post” link below, you can read pretty much my whole story). Now I want your stories! SHA girls, assorted family members and friends, readers who find my site at random, I want to know: Were you affected? Where were you when the power went off? How did you react? What did you do? How long was your power out? Leave a comment here and tell me!
As for me, I was up on the 13th floor of the building in Tribeca where I work, sitting at my work computer — which happens to be a laptop — when the fan next to me stopped running, and the room got a lot quieter. My computer, being a laptop, seamlessly switched to battery power, so it took me a few seconds to realize that everyone else’s computer, not to mention everything else electric in the room, had shut off. Upon grasping this, I stolled out into the living room — our “office” is really a very large apartment where our husband-and-wife team of bosses, Lyn and Richard, live — to see whether Richard’s employees, who work in a separate area of the apartment, were affected too. I quickly ascertained that they were (and also glanced out the window and ascertained that nothing seemed amiss in the Midtown skyline). Not long after this, Richard proclaimed — I have no idea where he got his information — that the “whole building,” a 17-story structure that is also home to Mariah Carey, was out of power.
I went back to Lyn’s area, where I work, and started typing out a cell phone photo-post announcing that our office had lost power and we had reports that the whole building might be out. In the midst of typing this, Lyn came in and said that one of Richard’s employees had said the whole city, plus Long Island and New Jersey, was out. My immediate reaction was extreme skepticism: I asked who the employee had heard this from, and where that person had gotten his information. Lyn didn’t know, so I typed something into my cell phone that was extremely wishy-woshy on the point of whether city was out of power — I didn’t want to mislead anyone with gossip. :)
But then when I tried to up the post online, my phone wouldn’t connect. I tried several times, with no luck. This was slightly suspicious, but only slightly; after all, I have a Sprint phone, and the Wireless Web aspect of the phone does frequently have problems. I had a better sense that something might really be wrong, though, when I tried to call the Audioblog phone number, and couldn’t get through. I tried this repeatedly, but no luck. It began to seem more and more plausible that the whole city was out of power — and that, like on 9/11, everyone was reaching for their cell phones at the same time, jamming the network.
We had no TV and no Internet, of course, and it took quite a long time before somebody got a battery-powered radio out — I didn’t even think of radio as a source of information, in fact, until someone mentioned it. :) Even so, it quickly became clear from the glut of traffic, the honking, and the sirens that were visible and/or audible outside our windows that something was happening beyond just our building. The extent became clear when I finally got through via phone to my dad: in what one of my co-workers later described as a “surreal moment,” I repeated aloud the names of affected cities that my dad was reading to me from a CNN article: Detroit, Cleveland, Boston, Albany, Toronto, Ottawa.
Naturally, we speculated about terrorism a bit, and some were more worried than others. But for the most part, the mood in the office was quite light — someone quickly suggested that we break out the liquor, before the ice melts. We joked about price-gouging — Richard said he would drive any of us home for $10 per quarter-mile, or something like that — and looked on with amazement as an incredibly long line of buses began to back up further and further down Sixth Avenue.
Eventually we realized it was possible to go up to the roof, above the 17th floor, and so the employees who were left — most of Richard’s people had already walked down the 13 flights of stairs and headed for one of their nearby homes — headed up there. It was a beautiful view, and we could really see the chaos: a line buses stretching from Canal Street to Ground Zero and beyond, tons of helicopters flying overhead, pedestrians everywhere.
After that, we headed outside to try and get some food. The nearby stores were closed, so this was an abject failure. But we did get to hear some radios blaring information along the street, and I took some pictures of the remarkable scenes all around. We headed back up to the office, but eventually decided to head for home — or for somewhere — and walked back down again.
Scott, Will and I sat around outside for a while, eventually concluding that we would head toward the Greenwich Village apartment of one of Scott’s friends. On the way there, though, we stopped at a grocery store where — as someone carrying a bag from the store informed us — they were giving away all sorts of perishables for free or very reduced prices. We got a ton of free milk, several salads, and a bunch of other stuff for a total of $1.90.
We then headed over to the Hudson River, where we sat for a while, drank milk, and marveled at the incredibly long line of people waiting for a ferry to New Jersey. We also poeple-watched as the seemingly endless line of people walking south, presumably from jobs north of Canal Street towards homes on the southern tip of the island, streamed by.
Finally, as the sun began to set, we started walking in earnest toward the apartment in the Village where Scott and Will stayed over last night. But I decided I didn’t want to hole myself up inside just yet: this was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and I wanted to really experience it. I had always wondered, somewhat jealously, what it must have been like for New Yorkers in ‘65 and ‘77 to see this city in the dark, and now was my chance. So, without any clear idea where I would be sleeping or what I would do once it got fully dark, I started walking toward Times Square.
Along the way, I passed through the heart of Greenwich Village — which had turned, as one passerby put it, into a huge block party — and walked right past Penn Station, where literally thousands of people were just milling about, waiting for transportation or for the lights to come back on. All up and down Seventh Avenue was a remarkable scene, until finally I arrived at the darkened Times Square. Now that was incredible. I barely even recognized it, and had trouble finding my bearings — how do you know where you are in Times Square when you can’t see the neon lights?
After I had taken that scene in, chatted with some other folks who were doing exactly the same thing as me — they just had to see it — and taken some pictures, I finally started considering more seriously what to do next. The sky was completely dark by now, though I actually felt much safer than I thought I might, given the number of cops out on the streets, and even more important, the sheer number of people — there can be strength in numbers in a situation like that when the vast majority of people are harmless.
But anyway, the real question was where to go: north to my 190th Street apartment, roughly 150 blocks away, or south back to Scott’s friend’s place in the Village, roughly 30 blocks away. I was torn; part of me really wanted to get home, but I was hearing all sorts of nasty rumors about crowded buses and really long lines, and the Village was obviously walking distance, whereas my apartment clearly was not.
Eventually, my mind was made up by faltering camera batteries. They’re AA rechargables, but I couldn’t buy any new AAs because I had only $1 cash, and I knew it would drive me nuts to spend any more time out in the city without being able to take pictures, so I figured my best bet was to catch a bus home, where I could install spare AAs.
It didn’t seem like my bus, the M4, was running (though I eventually ascertained that it was, just very sporadically), so after waiting for quite a while, I finally hopped on the M2 — filling what very little space there was in the extremely crowded bus — which I knew would drop me about 25 blocks from home; I was willing to walk the rest of it. The bus took us through Harlem, where we saw several garbage cans on fire, but for the most part things seemed quite calm. There were people on the streets, but they were mostly just sitting around with candles, enjoying the outdoor breezes. Cops were everywhere, with flares at every major intersection (and some minor ones).
On board the bus, a group of multiracial, multiethnic, multilingual riders did their best to help each other out — at one point, a white guy who clearly spoke no Spanish successfully managed to convey to a Latino family that clearly spoke no English that they needed to cross the street to get on the bus to the Bronx.
When I arrived at the bus’s final stop, I started my walk home — through a veritable street party, all up and down the Dominican areas of Broadway. People were outside with their battery-powered boom box, listening to music, talking with friends, even grilling some food. Some shops were open, though most were closed, but the street was very much alive, and again, there was cops everywhere. It was really pretty cool.
Anyway, I was very glad to eventually get home, walking in sometime around 11:15. And that’s my blackout story.
your storiesWhat’s yours?
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Categories: Blackout of 2003, New York City
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August 15th, 2003 at 3:33:30 pm
At work, watching the news, and laughing.
August 15th, 2003 at 5:45:01 pm
Beautiful account, Brendan. / New Yorkers — and most others affected — surely responded very. very well.
Andrew, you’re in good company. They were laughing in Baghdad, too. And for the same reason: “serves ‘em right”. :)
Leanna & I were at home in Newington. At around 4:15 or so, maybe 4:20, the was a *momentary* power outage — or surge, not sure which. Surge, I guess. The TV flickered off, then came back on. The computer shut down & rebooted itself — with that automatic hard-drive scan business with the yellow bar-graph percentage thingie. The air conditioner shut off & did NOT come back on — I think. (?) The lights went off & came back on. One clock went to 12:00 flashing, but another didn’t. (!!)
The wife & I immediately commenced an argument nowait a debate ahem a discussion, of the nature of this Event. Herself advocated Internal to the house, affecting some circuits but not others. I propounded external, something in the neighborhood, squirrel on the utility pole or something, affecting all circuits but transitory.
At about 4:25 an email arrived from Leanna’s sister Patty Loomer Ash at work in Windsor CT, with link to a Reuters Breaking News very item about a reported widespread power outage. I think I turned on the TV then & saw nothing about it. I wwas skeptical (like Brendan, at first). Patty’s husband John is a high-level executive at CT’s Northeast Utilities power company. I replied to Patty to the effect that she has a Highly-Placed Source & could she ask him what’s going on? :)
Then, we started to see the reports come in, on NBC. // Then, Brendan got through to us via his cellphone. I read him reports off CNN website, which he relayed to co-workers. He asked me to Post to this site on his behalf since he couldn’t (cell wasn’t working for that purpose). Then I hung the phone in front of the TV speaker for a while & he listened to NBC & then CNN that way.
His Aunt Patty, with her email alert, sure was on top of it. (Later she called from home to see if he was OK, & very glad to hear he was.)
So. We experienced the blackout vicariously, via our Talk-About-The-Boy from New York City. :) We were lucky here: much of CT, especially the southwest Panhandle & the shoreline east of there, was shut down. We weren’t.
Looking back later on, I’ll find my greatest challenge in the Blackout of 2003 will have been: to concoct a credible answer to Brendan’s trenchant & annoyingly reasonable blog-essay deconstructing my kneejerk anti-Gnosticism. :)
August 15th, 2003 at 6:44:49 pm
I must commend Brendan here for his outstanding live coverage of the blackout, given his lack of access to the blog. I actually listened to the Audioblogs at work! My coworkers were relying on Fox News, but I on the other hand had a much better source. ;-) I tried calling him, and a couple other New Yawkehs I know, but obviously couldn’t get through–everybody’s cell phones were busy. Thanks for still managing to keep us informed though!
August 16th, 2003 at 8:28:04 am
August 14, Newington, CT. I sat at my mom’s computer, busily turning 23 and playing something called an RPG. (My fellow nerds know what I mean.) We had a quick brownout, and I thought nothing of it. Later, I watched the news and learned that it was actually a widespread blackout. They informed me that it was not a terrorist attack. That’s great, I thought, I never thought it was. I watched the news sporadically, and even ended up watching a Very Special O’Reilly Factor dedicated wholly to the blackout. As everyone proceeded to treat an annoyance like an end of the world scenario (”Waa! Waa! We need electricity to SURVIVE!” No you don’t. Suck it up.), I just thought, “Wow. What a bunch of whining pussies.”
As you can see, I was less than sympathetic. >;-)
August 16th, 2003 at 9:09:10 am
Where was I, sez you? I was basking under the cooling influence of my ceiling fan in my well air-conditioned home watching television and toodling around on my computer while using my microwave, dryer, washer, and the vacuum…all to mock people without power. MWAHAHAHAHA! And people say we need to conserve energy! Posh!
August 16th, 2003 at 9:09:17 am
Well I wouldn’t want to be the Loy.commer who didn’t say where he was that fateful day…
Much like Andrew, I was at work, reading the news, and heard from MSNBC. Then, (not making this up) my first two thoughts after “is this a terrorist act?” were 1.) say, Brendan works in NYC, but it’s a bummer he can’t update us on his blog; and 2.) oh wait, lack of access to a computer hasn’t stopped him before!
Unlike Andrew, as I work in the Central time zone, I was only at work for not quite 2 hours of the whatnot.
If you saw the powergrid map of the country, you prolly noticed (to much Texans’ mirth) that there’s the Eastern grid, the Western grid, and the TEXAS GRID! That’s right, we have our own.
August 17th, 2003 at 4:58:18 pm
Chris - yeah I DID see the Texas Power Grid on the tube. I knew you were formerly your own Nation, and that several of your elected officials are reportedly Their Own Gram-Paws; but your own Electrical Grid Region! I’ll BET you cowpoke chaps were laughin’ right up yer chaps, ya bastards. :) East, West - & Texas. Cripes.
“There were half a million people there, of all denominations:
The Catholic,
The Protestant,
The Jew,
*and Presbyterian*.”
–from “Galway Races”; The Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem
(Hi Sean:)
August 17th, 2003 at 8:53:53 pm
I’m posting this on behalf of Mike Wiser, who e-mailed it to me:
I was on the phone with Goodwill, trying to find out if the drop-off site I used to use was still operational. It turns out that it isn’t, and I found out the closest location just as the power died. However, our phone company still had enough power that the lines were working.
My brother immediately assumed that it was just us affected, and went to go check the circuit breaker. I, however, embraced the fact that with a laptop, I still had internet access, and went to check my mail. When my brother realized that our breakers were fine, he walked outside and realized that all of the air conditioners in out apartment complex were down. So I took to trying to find things out online for a short time (I wanted to conserve some of my battery power for later), while he dur up the battery operated radio.
Not much happened for quite some time. As our stove and over are electric, we ordered out to a gas-powered restaurant, where we were told it would be an hour to and hour and a half for our food. A little before sunset, I rounded up all of our candles, but we realized that we had no way to light them, or the hurricane lamp my brother bought as Y2K protection. So I walked down to the plaza at the corner (and had ever so much fun running across a major street with Thruway exits where people took the lack of functional stoplights to mean that there was no reason to slow down just because they weren’t on the Thruway anymore), and bought a grill lighter from the local hardware store where I had worked a few summers before.
We had a pretty calm early evening, with food arriving eventually, and us sitting around in candle light listening to the radio. We heard, of course, Bloomberg’s initial response that it was the fault of Niagara Falls, and the report shortly after that Chretien (sp?) was blaming a lightning strike at an undisclosed location. About 20 minutes after that, AP evidently decided to believe both, and declared that lightning struck the Niagara Falls plant. Thankfully, the local news media retained at least some sense and got in touch with the local branch of the national weather service, who told them that the closest radar indication of anything that might be lightning was in Chicago, so the story was absurd. Around 8:20, a friend of ours came and took us to her house, where we sat out on the porch enjoying the relative dark (her section of Kenmore had power again, but the nearby city did not) and talking with the family. It had been an amusing ride over, as our street was evidently the fist street North of the city without power at the time. Around 9 there was suddenly quite a lot of light from the city, so we gathered that they had their power back. We got back home around 11:30, with the power back, but our clocks showed that the return to power had been quite recent.
August 18th, 2003 at 10:47:33 am
I feel like all of our stories sounds lame after reading Brendan’s. Nevertheless, I’ll contribute my story. I was at work (UB) and at four the power flickered a few times but stayed on. I thought nothing of it. My boss began perusing cnn.com because he was bored, like we always are, and discovered that areas all around the Northeast lost power. I was curious what had caused this but didn’t even think about terrorism until one of my co-workers mentioned it. Even then I had my doubts.
At five o’clock I left work not realizing that when I got off campus there was no power. There were police at major intersections directing traffic. Of course, only one of the intersections I go to is major, so I was stuck in a line of cars playing four-way stop sign at the other lights. I was amazed with how patient and well behaved people were. Very few people abused the fact that there was no traffic light. A drive that normally takes about 15 minutes took me 35. When I reached my house I was delighted to discover that we had power. After dinner I went down Main St. and was amused to discover that sections of lights were on and others were off. I saw many people outside walking or bike riding. It was nice to see people enjoying the beautiful weather. By around 11pm everyone had power again. All was well with the world in Buffalo.
August 27th, 2003 at 11:08:05 am
I was on my way to Trinity College in Hartford, where I was to be handing over the reigns of tenure of the Chief Engineer’s position at their radio station, WRTC. As I made my way through Maple Ave. on the Wethersfield/Hartford line, the traffic lights all went crazy, and then came back up.
I walked into the studio of the station, to find the DJ panicing because he had nothing on the air. The brief interruption of power had caused the mixing console to reset, so I had to explain how to bring it back online. Then, I noticed that the transmitter had lost all control of the power output, causing the station to be over it’s licenced power.
The transmitter is on the top floor (9 stories) of the building, and myself and the new engineer had to trek up 9 stories TWICE because the elevators had become confused and got stuck on the 1st floor…..
When I finally left to go home (8PM), I placed a phone call to my friend in Northampton, MA, who asked if Hartford had power. I had no idea of the magnitude of the problem till just then.
August 29th, 2003 at 8:15:29 pm
I was in Canada blaming America. No just kidding…most Canadians were enjoying a
pint.
September 7th, 2003 at 1:17:44 pm
Great story Brendan, ours won’t be as long or elegant. Mr. Stone and I were celebrating our 27th anniversary at our cottage in Old Saybrook when the lights went out. We had planned to go out for a nice dinner and to go Long Island the next day, but changed out plan when the lights went out. We switched gears, took frozen shrimp out of the freezer, heated frozen corn on the gas grill, lit many candles and celebrated with Tom’s sister Peg and our daughter Kim. We made several calls to our friend Anastasia who was in West Hartford trying to get in touch with her parents in Smithtown, LI. (The people we were going to go visit the next day.)
Our lights were really only out for 42 minutes, but we loved the idea of being without power for our celebration, so we left the lights off, had our supper and played our annual Bonanza tournament with Peg by candlelight. She had a great story to bring home to California and share with her family. Our trip to LI was postponed to the Fall, and we had a great day in Newport instead.
Aren’t New Englanders and New Yorkers wonderfully adaptive people?
September 9th, 2003 at 11:49:30 pm
hey brendan,
recently read my other new york friend’s blackout account, and thought you might find his friend yale’s comment interesting- here’s the link: http://www.avantbard.com/blog/archives/000411.html