Welcome to your new normal as our infrastructure fails. Read, "The Fifth Element," and be scared. The drama in the WH is a distraction for the unraveling of everything U.S. Bye bye baby.
2
I recall an adventure of a blackout in NYC in the 60's. Fun for kids.
Meanwhile the Lincoln Center Business Improvement District had no emergency plan for the neighborhood. Does anyone know what exactly Monica Blume the Executive Director does? All we know is she's been bought and sold by REBNY, as her entire board is REBNY members. NO emergency planning for the neighborhood so what's the point of this BID?
3
Ok folks. Seriously. Most of you are making way more of this than you should, As a power systems engineer, let me assure you theses things happen. Yes, even in the Big Apple. Power was restored quickly. Transformers fail at end of useful life. Good companies like Con Ed replace them quickly. Nothing nefarious here. Wow. You are acting as if the whole NE grid went down. The real issue is why more facilities in NYC don’t have adequate back up systems. Oh, wait. I know. Cost. Aim your ire at them....
13
Con Ed is blaming a fire in a manhole.
The old fire in the manhole defense, when it was clearly a defective app.
An app, Con Ed, even children know how to deal with them.
Admit it!
1
Of course we’ll be told if this was a Russian or Chinese hack, right?
I won’t hold my breath. I wonder how long until the next one?
1
There is no excuse for these incidents. On July 3rd there was a blackout affecting part of Queens and the Bronx due to,the same issue; a substation fire. Con Edison, who services NYC, is a monopoly as we have no choice of providers. They charge outrageous service and delivery fees! When I use $25 of electric in a month I am charged over $90 because of the Con Ed service and delivery fees. In addition, the CEO was paid $8,015,654 total compensation and Mr. Cawley was paid $2,085,654. The infrastructure should be repaired ASAP with all the money they are collecting from New Yorkers and paying out to executives.d
5
Get used to it. As the criminally under maintained infrastructure starts to implode in on itself, blackouts like this will be a regular occurrence....along with broken sewer mains and gas leaks. Then we'll see how plucky everyone is as New York becomes the newest memberlof the Third World.
7
As this blackout, the recent NYC and Boston traffic jams/train delays and the catostrophic flooding in LA demonstrate we need a government that cares about and addresses infrastructure and climate change. Instead we have a twitter twit who makes claims about being a builder and a protector of the environment but, in fact, is neither.
9
How about the big black out in the mid around 1966 or was it 1967? I was working in the Graybar buiding above /grnad central and I had to walk down 19 flights of stairs with an older lady who had to stop and catch her breath on every floor....
Yes there people who with their white shirt were directing traffic.
I walked back home toward Madison & 79 and a group of drunken young men circled me pushing me this way and that way among them. I decided to make a run for it and smashed right into a parking meter as it was getting really dark....At home I could not remember in the darkness where the candles were etc
@Kate 1965.
And these people are the ones calling for doing away with fossil fuels? Where do they think their electricity comes from? I supposed they think solar and wind power is going to replace the amount of power they consume on a hourly basis. Got news for all of you... it is not going to happen. If the liberals have their way you will not have the lights to use the stairs in your buildings, get used to sweltering deadly heat during the summer and freezing temperatures the rest of the year. It is amazing how low the IQ is on both coasts and how high it is in between. Gotta love it!
@RUMoron. What's your point? Presumably, the type of power generation (coal, nuclear or hamster) had nothing to do with the cause of the blackout. There was no shortage of power in the area. It just wasn't being delivered to a few dozen blocks.
This blackout was much worse ---"https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_1965
Looks like a rat was electrocuted inside a transformer.
I wonder how much coverage the NYT would give if an outage of similar size had occurred in the Bronx?
2
The failures will be catastrophic as connectivity replaces mechanical systems. Capitalism requires the best use of resources. A drone. Emergencies require skills learned from experience, tedious verification and microscopic detail. Drones help too. Rescue work takes lots people. Emergency work is almost always done unplugged. That’s why it’s an emergency. You get called to service when there’s nothing to plug into. It doesn’t take a hundred certifications. It does, however, entail spending money.
1
Heading upstairs to visit my hospitalized friend, I spent the first 45+ minutes of the blackout trapped in an elevator car at Mt. Sinai Hospital West and hearing the cries from an adjacent elevator car. Hospital medical personnel were finally able to rescue my fellow occupant and me using crowbar-like apparatus to pry open the doors to our car. I saw no firefighters on the scene.
Back home and with power restored, it was interesting to see footage of firefighters rescuing those stuck in hotel elevators; hospital rescues, not so much.
Then, minutes ago today on NY1, there were FDNY Commissioner and NYC Commissioner of Emergency Management commending their departments' timely response to the emergency. I would think conditions at the only hospital in the effected grid would have been given priority. Kudos to the heroes at Mt. Sinai who sprang into action.
7
We enjoy something like 99.99% reliable power. I'm one of the many millions who wants five or even six nines rather than four but still appreciate the fine work done by utilities.
How many of us would pay ten or twenty percent more for power to gain another nine in reliability?
4
@gc. Four nines reliability (99.99%) translates to an average of about 53 minutes of power loss a year. I imagine that most of Manhattan has a better record than that. As you point out, how much more would customers be willing to pay to reduce that to 5 minutes per year (five nines)?
Out here in the suburbs, with above-ground utility lines, 99.99% reliability would be a wonder.
I understand why you need ads on the video. But why is every ad at 10,000 decibels? Those of us over 60 have sensitive ears. Please lower the volume in the future.
BTW, I am glad the City survived The Blackout of 2019 and that there appeared to be no loss of life!
2
@ROBERT DEL R A suggestion from an audio professional - turn the sound off on your computer at the beginning and end of the session, every day. The auto run ads won't bother you then. Take charge!
1
Multiply all the problems by thousands and you have what life will be like in America when the grid goes down.
3
Although Mayor de Blasio, in Iowa, declared this power failure unrelated to terrorism or criminal activity, isn’t Con Ed’s eternal instability in supplying power a kind of omnipresent terrorism, no?
4
No
1
Will herstory be our guide and inspiration?
A baby-boomlet in 9-ish months, children named Jennifer-Lopez_____, Dinero and, of course, Barry, Barrie and Bari.
2
Columbus, Ohio had a power outage at the same time, for similar duration on same day. Go figure.
@What. Considering the size of this country, I imagine that there were a lot of power failures on the same day.
@Barry, at same time for same duration on same day for same cause (equipment)?
Doesn't this event underscore how fragile our infrastructure is? And why is government at all levels doing nothing to fix the problems we have and anticipate forthcoming ones? Oh, I know - let's have a study to study whether or not to have the study and then think about it for a while until the data is too old to be useful and then launch another study. Sadly, that seems to be how government at all levels is working these days - which is why it isn't working - and situations like this will continue to happen with increasing frequency.
6
Con Ed’s record for reliability is good (I’m neither an employee nor a shareholder) so I’m sure this is an anomaly that will be explained. I hope. But it is a reminder that regulators and the company need to focus on infrastructure and reliability. In recent years, the focus has been on renewables and conservation, both necessary but also, both politically popular and therefore easy to pursue. Has infrastructure been pushed to the rear because it’s less popular and even opposed? We all like to blame the utility - an easy target and often deserved - but rare is the politician who supports utility infrastructure projects.
6
@MWR. Opening a new bridge is a great photo-op for politicians. Compare that to replacing an underground transformer? Which do you think is more popular?
Our basic utility infrastructure is maintained by private, regulated companies. That means that rate payers have to understand the need to raise rates to replace aging equipment, and politicians have to exhibit the courage to allow unpopular rate increases. There's no such thing as a free lunch. That's applies to reliable electricity, too.
2
'This is a test of the emergency broadcast system, if this had been a real emergency you can rest assured that the system will not be utilized'-----wasn't tonight, and wasn't on September 11th....
3
NYPD was not responsive early enough. MIA. An hour after the black out, cars barrelled down Columbus Avenue southbound. Pedestrians couldn't cross. Finally, a bold pedestrian finally started to walk into the intersection forcing cars to stop. This was repeated throughout the area. Biking around the affected area--- not a single PO or traffic agent to be seen, block after block. Highly dangeerous, a few near misses.
There MUST be a planned response for when we are hit with something even more challenging and widespread. NYPD: Wake up!
12
Always call these things “power failures.” The term “outage” was invented by Con Edison back in the 1960s blackout as a way to soften the blow of the reality: They “failed” to deliver power. NY Times is good at caking it what it is - a failure - but in the lead photo it’s called an outage.
4
@Jax : You are very much right. Outage means planned shutdown. This is not at all a planned shutdown but failure. Failures can never be called outages.
Seriously? In looking at the photos in accompanying article, “The 1977 Blackout in New York City Happened Exactly 42 Years Ago,” one could mistakenly believe that New Yorkers, that is minus looters (? sarcasm), were almost entirely white; no blacks (one guy), Hispanics, or Asians, just whites.
That doesn't reflect the reality of the rich ethnic tapestry of the city at the time.
NY Times, you can and should do better.
1
@Oceanviewer. Maybe the failure to reflect diversity didn't occur in 2019, but in 1977? The editors could only choose from the photographs available in the archives.
Deblasio was in Iowa?? Can he stay there?
9
Ahhhhhh, progress. Recall the black out in the 70s?
1
Russians or China?
Let’s see its 2019, 16 years after the 03 blackout and 42 years since the 77 blackout.
Let me guess zero investment in infrastructure since, why?? Yea the people come together but when will the city get it together? I’m sure the mayor is on it.
4
The image from the AP photo of the Brooklyn Bridge and NYC skyline is reversed. From the base of Brooklyn Bridge in Brooklyn, the Empire State building should be on the right.
Apparently the picture will printed with the negative reversed.
3
Regarding the image of the darkened skyline shot under the bridge: has anyone figured out what the square building is (near the UN) that is completely lit up?
@Wendy Darby
The U.N. campus isn't in the photo. (And neither is the Empire State Bldg.)
Welcome to 1970's NY. Its only been 6 years since Bloomberg stepped down and deBlasio took over and NY is already looking like the "glory days" of the "70's and '80s'. A few more years of his his leadership and housing prices should start to decline.
1
Wishing for a bay boom again. Like it happened in 1960's.
Our cities are empty of children.
Good
Really? On the same day as the 1977 blackout? Coincidence?
1
Wouldn't Mitch & Trump fill their coffers and put country in debt vs helping the real citizens and revitalize our old infrastructure.
Oh.. wait - they spend money only for red state(who votes GOP), blue states don't get funding.
1
I was trying to get home to New Jersey at 10 p.m. and Penn Station (which is NOT in the 40s, for those keeping score at home) was dark. Trains were not running. NJ Transit closed its gates. Oddly, no one seems to have noticed that. We got home at 2:30 a.m.
2
I lived in the city for a brief period forty years ago. That is when
I came to the conclusion the city is NOT fit for human habitation. Ugh!
1
@Gateman. They never have power failures where you live?
2
Electricity is the basis of modern civilization. Everything depends on electrical power: water, sewage, refrigerators, elevators, banks, supermarkets, gasoline stations, subways, traffic lights, etc. After two weeks without electricity civilization collapses. Sooner than that in a big city. Research The Olduvai Theory.
4
Shades of 77....
1
AOC would know what to do.
3
Yep. Blame Speaker Pelosi .
1
Absentee, phone it in (Mr. Bill) DeBlasio.
Isn't he being paid and was elected as the mayor of NYC as a fulltime job?
4
If this is what can happen with a single accident, imagine the chaos a dedicated saboteur could create. Time to step up your game, Con Ed.
5
The power is off in our part of Kenya right now, but as it doesn't involve pirates, terrorists, dictators or neocolonial Chinese investors I guess it has a low chance of making the NYT. Do hurry up and find a new East Africa correspondent though - we've got plenty of disasters to cover. We won't disappoint!
6
@Christopher Haslett
Interesting, but from I have been reading, there is more, much more of interest to cover in Kenya than just disasters. The West's African focus, Kenya included, is almost exclusively an unbalanced one covering disasters.
Here’s a sampler of other topics that have been ignored by Western MSM:
Kenyan University Students Beat Harvard Law Students in Global Competition
https://www.africanexponent.com/post/10337-kenyan-students-beat-harvard-law-in-global-competition
EAC leaders meet in Tanzania Friday
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 1, 2019 13:20
https://www.businessdailyafrica.com/news/EAC-leaders-meet-in-Tanzania-Summit/539546-4961634-c7uxukz/index.html
Uhuru visits Magufuli amid tensions over MP's remarks
https://www.standardmedia.co.ke/article/2001332644/uhuru-magufuli-meet-amid-tension-between-nations
1
On the one hand, I had tears in my eyes as I watched some of the clips of the performers singing on the street.
On the other hand, after reading other news, including the British cables, I had a major pang of sadness, that there just seems to be an inevitability to war with someone, maybe Iran, just because our President is incapable of...being a President.
I think these times match the late 60's and early 70's for brash, in your face, corruption and stupidity.
Hugh
5
So what happens in a Supertall building when the power goes out? 70, 80, 90 or a 100 stories or more.
1
@Justice Holmes
Generators.
@Justice Holmes
Elevators take a lot of energy to run, so not all buildings have elevator service even with backup generators. Luckily this was a Saturday night, so most office buildings weren’t fully occupied and many residents may well have been out-of-town or out to dinner.
And even if the elevators were working, who wants to take the chance of getting stuck?
1
I think that it is not an accident that it was the theatre district that was hit, and just before shows were about to start.
This may have been a test cyberattack on our power infrastructure.
5
@unreceivedogma. If someone or some country were conducting a test, they wouldn't have chosen a target that is so high-profile. Unlike a failure in a suburb somewhere, this failure WILL be investigated. If there's a flaw in the software (assuming that the failure is related to software), it will be found and removed. A hostile actor would get one shot at exploiting the flaw or backdoor, so they'd go for a big payoff ... not a few dozen blocks in the early weekend evening when it is still light outside and the city is relatively uncrowded.
1
I disagree. It’s already known that Russia allegedly has the capability to knock out our nuclear reactors and potentially the entire grid.
The city is very busy on a summer evening. This is a very visible and therefore a good way to send a signal to ... someone.
1
I was working a 4-12 shift at 1 PP (not a cop but worked in the building) back in 1977. Lots of things didn't function as planned back then, so I hope that if anything unexpected took place with the city's infrastructure anywhere in the city, people in charge were at least mentally taking notes in order to bring them up on Monday. This may have been a good unplanned dress rehearsal for an event when some bad actor messes with the electrical grid, so it is likely there some lessons to be learned.
2
42 years ago I was at a Boz Scaggs concert at Lincoln Center and lived in the Bronx at the time. Never did tell my parents about my scary, adventurous trip uptown witnessing the looting and craziness going on.
I now live 2 blocks from Lincoln Center. Last night the lights went out while I was on my couch watching TV. Much more boring than 42 years ago but a heck of a lot safer. Different times and a different city...
8
But,despite it all,a much more alive and interesting city then....
8
NYC certainly was more interesting in the 70s.
After living in the city for 45 years, since 1972, my wife and I decided to leave 2 years ago.
The city has become too corporate, too sanitized. And if you are an artist, as I am, too expensive, not enough class and cultural diversity. Manhattan especially is like a suburb for the rich.
4
Stranger things season 3 is all I’m sayin...
1
Major Blackout... but no Mayor....
4
Mayor blackout?!
2
@Sherlock Lab. It is terrible optics for him to be on a campaign jaunt, but would his presence in Manhattan have made a single bit of difference?
2
I live in the middle of the blackout zone and was not in my apartment when the blackout happened. NY'ers were calm and took in it stride - but for over an hour no one knew what was happening. News websites on phones just spun and if you did get through no information on major news sites including NYTimes. So I wonder why didn't we get "amber alerts" on our iphones. Last night seemed to be the perfect reason for local government to send an alert. Does the NYTimes have recommendations good services to subscribe for alerts - so we can get timely information for the next time?
9
Deer New Yorkers, Sorry for the inconvenience. My emergency power system also went bad. But it won't happen the next time. I promise you. Thanks.
1
Used to be in a blackout people lit candles and made babies. Now they ask Facebook what’s happening and take selfies. Sigh.
6
I was at PJ Carneys on 57th and 7th yesterday when the lights went. We continued to drink, talk and have a good, no great time, under candlelight (but mostly darkness). And for a short time afterwards, I felt transported to the Miraflores Peru nightlife scene circa 1998 when brown and black outs were the norm and people just continued to dance / drink through the temporary outage.
But it's 2019 NYC.
Shouldn't we expect more from our city, state, and federal leadership to avoid such occurrences?
4
Fortunately, the power failed when there were still some daylight hours left, so people in general weren't quite as disoriented as they might have been. Fewer mishaps, as well. But I'm not confident this will be a lesson learned in terms of ensuring multiple redundancies into the electrical grid.
Scary to think that we are so vulnerable. Turn off the electricity and everything comes to an end.
3
We live on 38th near 10th. We didn't lose power in the initial outage, but at 10pm (when ConEd said they restored some power), we then lost power. We could see from our balcony that people even a block (perhaps a few) south of us lost power. While some buildings north of us (and Times Square) had power again, most did not. (The sight of the ESB lit up with all dark around it was eerie!) This fact hasn't been widely-covered and ConEd's outage map under-represents the impact. We did get power back again at about midnight, so it was out about two hours for us.
Fun anecdote: a few minutes after we lost power, it started "raining" on us on our balcony -- first lightly, then a deluge. It turned out to be a malfunctioning emergency water pump on the roof. Yes, this can happen in NYC!
5
Funniest comment yet was in response to the video of that red-shirted man directing traffic in the intersection. Someone said he had done more work in that short time than de Blasio had done in years.
18
And yet he was far more presidential this morning than failed president Donald Trump, who declared four American congresswomen should “go back where they came from,” based on their ethnicities, even though all four are Americans.
"Unfortunately, there is an American tradition of telling people to go back where they came from. But you don't expect to hear it from the president of the United States.” New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio said Sunday during an interview on CNN's "State of the Union."
Your president is a humiliation to America and an utter failure as a leader.
1
Give me a break. 5 hours without power. Pedestrians had to direct traffic and horror of horrors, others had to finish their drinks by the light of their phones. Broadway shows cancelled. How on earth did you survive? A bit overdone, don't you think?
8
@RNS Re-read the masthead of this paper. Also, there were probably way more people in those theaters than live in tiny Canadian towns.
6
@Scott And your large tiny towns have more people? And what point does that prove? Just wondering.
@RNS The NEW YORK Times covers a newsworthy event and you seek to diminish that event. Why? Those shows have thousands of customers. The restaurants and bars nearby thrive on Saturday night crowds. Service industry personnel lost a lot of money on what would be their biggest night. I predict the economic loss will supersede the entire annual budget of Piedmont. People were trapped in elevators and subways without any knowledge why. Just because there wasn't death, destruction and mayhem doesn't mean it's not newsworthy. It certainly is to New Yorkers.
6
Con Edison is the worst company. ConEd wants to build dozens of gas powered electric power-plants in locations all around the cities. Lots of pollution!
3
How odd that it happened on the same day back in '77. Kinda creepy. Wonder if it was someone's idea of a joke? I can't imagine being stuck in an elevator in the heat would be very amusing.
6
It probably is a sign of the times in which we live that, upon reading of a substation explosion in New York and resulting blackout on the exact anniversary of the famous 1977 blackout, the first thought of many people outside New York was terrorism.
New Yorkers, however, seemed to handle the event in stride.
1
It seems awfully coincidental that this happened on the anniversary of the 1977 blackout. I hope this wasn’t an act of terrorism to see how this worked on a small scale (remember 1993 bombing?) or Russian hacking.
2
The cable news networks overreacted to this, preemptinh all regular programming. Further proof that New Yorkers consider themselves the center of the universe. At the same time 72,000 New Yorkers lost power, so did 100,000 in Louisiana and no one said a word about it.
Ridiculous.
1
@maitena I read about both in this newspaper. And we are the center of the universe.
7
@maitena one of the many reasons I don't watch cable news.
Well, Providence RI certainly isn’t.
1
Exactly 42 years ago. ?
I don’t believe in coincidences. !
1
Those Russians are cleverly ironic!
2
What was so touching for me was that my wife called me from her nursing home to see if I was OK as soon a sit happened , I missed this blackout by 4 blocks distance from the outage , I had already on the computer seen that her nursing home neighborhood was lit up and fine on the Con Ed power outages map. Till my wife called me I was unaware of a blackout.
2
This happened on the exact day as the ‘77 blackout and we’re meant to believe it’s a coincidence?
3
Where was Mayor DiBlasio? Then again, where has he been for the last six years?
6
This article may create the impression that 1977 was the last time NY City experienced a blackout; there was a blackout that affected the Northeast including NY City in 2003.
6
If as article says the outage stretched from Forties to Seventies why did MSG go dark? It’s on 32nd
4
Maybe we can forego the next few foreign wars and use that money to upgrade our infrastructure. How has Trump got us to 23 trillion in debt?
7
That was a cute little blackout. When's the next one?
4
No surprise. deBlasio was nowhere around (in Iowa I believe) when the City actually needed its Mayor).
Nor did he lift a finger to return once the blackout started.
4
Totally oblivious to this out in brooklyn.
1
The Yankees experienced a power outage of their own earlier in the day.
3
The question is..does anyone north of 38th street know who the Beatles are? @yesterday
It's now called the Paul MCartney band
My mother always blamed me for blowing fuses back in the day. The only way I could convince her at the start of the big 65 blackout was to have her look out at the darkened street lights. Fuses back then had a base size resembling a 60 watt bulb. Some fools put a Penney in their place until they burned their house down.
I was always blowing fuses “doing experiments” , obviously not only electrical. Twenty five cents each, big money! Finally in 65, I was the good son, we had Con-Edison to blame!
3
We were in the middle of it! Got off the #1 Train at 66th in the darkness. Citizens were directing traffic as people figured out a way to get where they intended to go. Everyone was friendly and sweet and good natured. I love NY! For real.
10
Does this blackout count as a "blackout"? What I mean is because it didn't hit the whole city, but it did effect the most famous part of the city, if it hit just Staten Island or Queens, would it be covered as much as this was? Not so much I'm thinking. So everyone's thinking back to '65 and '77 and either 03 or '04 can't remember which year, but 1977 was the worst, fortunately my family missed it because we were on the road to Maryland that evening and my dad had the Mets game on the radio, then you heard the whole crowd go "ooohhhhhh", then the news broke through, when we got to the hotel we were able to see what the folks here couldn't, all the looting and so forth, I remember they had to open The Tombs jail in lower Manhattan that night to hold all the folks they caught stealing
Meanwhile, De Blasio was campaigning in Iowa.
Hey Mayor, if you want another job, quit and hand the job over to someone who cares.
3
Wow and it‘s not even really hot yet. So much for our decrepit infrastructure.
2
A major problem takes place, and de Blasio is in Iowa campaigning for a nomination he cannot possibly get.
Maybe we should be re-directing some of our anti-Trump venom to that corrupt fool. We Democrats have a Trump of our own.
3
ConEd charges $800 to deliver $300 for electricity
to small businesses. Cringy.
1
Perhaps Russian squirrels in the substation? Will we get a NYC baby bubble in nine months just like 42 years ago?
1
No...people aren't having as much sex now..too many devices to play with instead of your partner
3
I slept through the whole thing.
The entire US stopped while NYC lost power.
No worries; it's probably just Russia or N. Korea performing a little grid test
prior the 2020 elections!
5
Firstly, glad that all in the affected area have their power back. Being located very downtown, I still remember being without power for days after Sandy - scary.
I couldn't help notice that the affected area included "Billionaires Row" - West 57th Street. Did the lights go out there as well? I wonder how that 99th floor penthouse felt once the lights and elevators stopped working, or did they keep going?
3
It's odd that the blackout of 1977 occurred exactly on the same day of the month. Big difference now and then like day and night.
So, is Cuomo the one on top of the situation?
Not for nothing, as I am now officially a senior and could be missing more than a few cognitive cells, but I vaguely remember being aware of the mayor running things during the '65, '77, and '03 blackouts.
Is this the new way?
4
If I could afford it I would retire in a heartbeat to Lower Manhattan or Brooklyn. What a fabulous place, NYC. But people who pay through the nose to live in a place like that should be entitled to great urban infrastructure, in particular a great subway system. From everything I've read in the NYT, the subway systems in many other global alpha cities function better and people get what they pay for. Yes, New York's runs 24/7, but I wouldn't be doing much in the city at 3 am.
As for South Florida, forget it. Shortly after I retire I'm getting the heck out of this place. The only thing that's kept me here for two decades has been a great job and workplace.
12
Florida is highly overrated. Not to mention the weather is awful and the southern culture (the bad parts of it). Was born in GA and lived half my life in FL. I now live in NYC and it’s leagues better- culturally and weather wise. For some of the same reasons as you- good job or family would be the only 2 things that would cause me to even consider moving back.
4
@Steve Times Square is a mess. It looks like Tokyo. Too much neon.
3
Florida WAS great but now is a crowded,dysfunctional mess....and let's not forget the bad weather and strange bugs!!
1
According to the article
Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was in Iowa campaigning for his presidential bid, ruled out terrorism or criminal activity.
Glad to see where the Mayor’s priorities are. They’re certainly not with running the city.
5
It’s great to see New Yorkers coming together on this, and it’s interesting to juxtapose this against the looting and arson of the 1970s blackout. What caused the profound difference in behavior between now and then? There are many contributing factors, probably too many to name. But I would like to think that one of them was the horrors of 9/11, when countless New Yorkers behaved selflessly in the face of unthinkable adversity to help one another. An event like that makes a life long impression on people, and a lifelong change in attitude, even when a minor adversity like a blackout occurs at a later date. We always hear about how “the terrorists won.” I think not. When you look at how New Yorkers treated one another last night, I think the terrorists lost worse than they ever thought possible. I think the attack burned an indelible subconscious sense of togetherness into the minds of many.
13
when the power went out a laundromat on West 54th became the hub of an amazing new social movement called "Wet Clothes are Cool."
people of all colors and persuasions banded together to don soggy jeans and wet blouses and squishy socks and then went out to dance in the dark street until dawn.
several couples decided to get married at the laundromat; when they announced their plans to the delirious crowd they were showered with quarters. bruised quite badly, actually, some of them.
one young woman decided that the plunge into darkness presaged her own dim existence from then on, unless she became a sidewalk chalk artist as her parents had wanted her to. so she threw away her briefcase and embraced the dusty pastels. she should have kept the briefcase -- her lunch was in it.
and a homeless man caught in the power outage was mistaken for Tom Cruise. he was given tickets to a Knicks game, fed persimmon comfits, and photographed with Sade Baderinwa -- before being trampled to death by paparazzi.
6
That was a cute little blackout. About 5 hours, confined to a limited area. No looting.
After some experience with more extensive blackouts in the past, nowadays New York does Blackouts right.
7
What is remarkable about this is that there was not one report of malfeasance in this piece.
How NYC has changed. My wife was in Manhattan from the ‘77 blackout through the end of the ‘90s and she was worried sick for our daughter who walked home through the area last night, believing bad guys would take advantage of the darkness - she can’t quite accept that NYC is not the dangerous place it used to be.
6
73,000 costumers affected seems a significant under-estimation. My building alone (w. 60th St.) has over 500 customers. There are A LOT of apartment buildings between 72nd St. and 47th. They need to redo their math.
8
Having been through a couple of rolling blackouts in Los Angeles, what is so eerie is the complete silence that follows. It is the hum of electricity that disappears. Having said that, a power outage in NYC on a warm summer night...sounds like a time to party to me!
7
Join the club. In Texas we go through blackouts when storms blow through. Some can last for days. It's a systemic problem that client change deniers are doing nothing to alleviate.
11
@JH Climate change is not responsible for power outages. Put your lines underground.
@JH: I really like what you wrote here. No doubt you had intended to write: "...CLIMATE change deniers..." but your accidental change of lettering making "CLIENT change deniers..." spoke volumes. Yes, we do need to change our clients to only those which practice business models that only use renewable, non-carbon-based energy sources!
So it wasn’t because of too many renewables and not enough coal plants? Or a terrorist attack on a gas pipeline? Because I thought that was going to be the reason we’d had blackouts from “experts”.
I was at Lincoln Center for last night of Mid Summer Night Swing with my grandchildren. The lights went out but the band played on and we just kept dancing! When we left , my “grands” saw lots of people on the street directing traffic and helping each other out. They figured out quickly what to do and held up their hands to help and wave thanks to all the cars that stopped to let us cross the busy intersections! What a great lesson for them: spontaneous resilience, making the very best out of a bad situation, people pitching in to help each other without regard for race, religion, size, age, or immigration status! Yet another organic and valuable NYC lesson for them about just how great the world can be if we just let it!
28
What a wonderful story! Thank you. Americans can be such kind compassionate people.
8
As an EE with many years experience in this area, I find some of the reactions naive. Especially that of Governor TV. Transformers have a typical service life. Usually 40 to 50 years but it varies. It depends on many factors. Then they fail. They were replaced quickly. Smart building manager owners had back up systems. This is the 21st century after all. The utility fault system isolated the problem area so it did not propagate. All in all it was handled proficiently and quickly. Do systems exist to predict failures and the preemptively replace equipment? Yes. Do New Yorkers and the politically driven TV governor want to pay for preemptive replacement? Hmmmmm. Let Con Edison do the root cause analysis and the let’s see if the flashy governor who can’t stay off being in front of any tv cam offers for his administration to pay for some preemptive replacement. Hot summers, high loading due to AC units both contribute to these situations. Frankly, it is to the credit of the power systems engineers that such issues are not more prevalent. Cuomo should not lecture about things he does not understand or pronounce something is unacceptable until he knows all the facts. Oh, he might also want to consult with the Mayor. Just a thought. Be part of the solution, Guv....
16
@Wilmington Ed
I think the NYC situation may have worse potentialities, because so much in all the infrastructure is antiquated - and rarely fixed except when there's a crisis. The actual outage last night was pretty well contained and quickly repaired.
Yes, Cuomo does have a tendency to lecture, loudly, about stuff he is no expert on, whenever there's a chance he will get headlines. DeBlasio is cut from the same cloth; that's why they can't occupy the same space. Or speak to one another.
Wouldn't it be nice if the engineers who come up with emergency solutions could be heard for planning ahead?
1
Believe me, management does not want the public to hear from the engineers. These engineering guys know all the vulnerabilities and have told them to management before. Works the same in all major corporations. It’s all about cost and playing the odds. Every now and again the odds turn against you.....New Yorkers will forget all about it in another day or so......
3
@Wilmington Ed
ConEd said it wasn’t a load problem. They also say they replace old equipment. Cause is still unknown.
This was not Cuomo’s first blackout. Not his first rodeo with ConEd. They kept extending their time estimate to him for restoration of power.
It sure is unacceptable, and he was right to say that.
New Yorkers didn’t know if this was a terrorist attack or not for hours. And the lack of credible info from the public officials in charge didn’t help the situation. Thankfully it happened while there was some daylight left, and half of Times Square was always on full power. So tourists were not immediately thrown into total darkness.
Oh, as for Mayor DeBlasio? He was MIA, stuck in Waterloo, Iowa campaigning for President. Still trying to get back to NYC this morning. Priceless.
2
I remember living on 105th Street at the time and climbing out the window to sit on the balcony and watch the looters on Broadway. That was 1977. A lifetime ago it seems.
Yesterday as I called my daughter to see if she was okay, there was no looting. Just New Yorkers rising to the 'occasion' to help each other. Glad it was only 3 hours. I love NYC.
18
This person is by far my favorite New Yorker of the black-out:
Ellie Shanahan, 23, was on the A train between 50th and 59th Streets when the train stopped unexpectedly. She waited with the other passengers for nearly 20 minutes before an M.T.A. worker announced that there was a power outage and that there would be no train service between 59th and 163rd Streets.
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After evacuating the subway station, she said, she noticed police officers trying to monitor the frantic crowds at 50th Street.
She got on a Citi Bike and rode it to 125th Street.
“What was craziest to me was there were no traffic lights,” Ms. Shanahan said. “I was in shock, but people still seemed to know what to do. Everyone was being polite, even though there were no lights to tell us when to go.”
5
Has everyone forgotten that all of Downtown Manhattan was in the dark for several days after Superstorm Sandy in 2012? I lived Downtown and eventually had to leave the City with my family until the power was restored. During that time, in Midtown and Uptown, it was business as usual, and our friends who lived there had no idea of what we were going through Downtown (spoiled food, no elevators, pitch black stairwells, cold apartments, no running water, dangerous traffic due to no lights, eerily dark streets at night). Why has the media forgotten the blackout of entire Downtown Manhattan after Sandy?
11
Imagine what it is like for those in Baton Rouge, New Orleans, etc. We deal with flooding, no lights, refrigeration, air conditioning etc. because we have too. And, it’ll be like this for days if not weeks. I’m not on a pity pot. Just want to put things in perspective. There are other places in the world in even much more difficult circumstances.
5
@NYNY1234 I haven't forgotten! I was without power for 5 days in my LES apartment and for the last 2, I was the only person remaining in my 5-story walk up. It was unnerving but I never felt afraid. People were looking out for each other.
2
@NYNY1234, gaahhh. Remember it all too well. I was in New Jersey and the outage lasted for two weeks. It was freezing cold; we kept pots of water boiling on the stove; had to throw out most of the fridge food I just bought—and my neighbor patrolled the street with his gun. nd we had tons of leftover Halloween candy because there was no Halloween.
1
Several thoughts:
1) This should act as a reminder of how dependent we are on stable sources of energy, water, and food in our lives - which we take for granted until they disappear.
2) Give thanks for the thousands of unseen utility workers who do their best to keep our country running 24/7/365. Thank you for your service to our country.
3) When utilities' management is taken over by bean-counters replacing engineers, and proper equipment maintenance is deferred, then we can expect more and more of these utility outages to occur. Reductions in maintenance and restoration staff only provide cost savings until big expensive equipment fails in catastrophic manner.
4) Everyone should have provisions in place to live through at least 72 hrs. of utility outages. With strained staff and lack of equipment spares in the warehouse, sometimes restoring utility service can take a long, long, time.
12
The power failure extended way below 34 Street, as well as'Times Square! I live on 9 Avenue near 38 and had no power.
No street lights didn't seem to stop hundreds from walking on sidewalks and crossing streets! A perfect NY night! Courtesy prevailed.
8
Handled in admirable fashion as only New Yorkers can do.
As for the lady who waited her whole life to see Jennifer Lopez, hmmm.
13
In a very dark, possibly terminal, time, it's surprisingly/not surprisingly moving to see people rise to an occasion. We will have plenty more opportunities to do so, I fear.
But, hey, like Richard said in The Lion In Winter about how one falls, "If the fall is all there is, it matters." Always liked that bit of existential ethics. I thought I'd be applying it solely to my own death, providing I had more than a half-second before, say, a bus hit me.
Now it looks like I may very well need it for more than just my own personal mortality.
Yeah, believe me, I'm rooting for the very same thing you are, Dear Reader: that I'm just some kind of depressive, and things'll work out OK.
Thing is, I keep asking people if it's me...and they keep telling me, annoyingly, that it's not--or rather, whatever my mental predispositions, it's indeed as dire as it seems.
Which is rather disappointing.
8
As a lifelong New Yorker, my first thought is never "terrorism" in these situations; I always think "it's Con Ed."
Blackouts allow us to find out which entities (companies, buildings, hospitals, etc.) actually have their emergency plans in place AND that those plans are functioning, versus ones that claimed to be prepared but were not.
18
Has everyone forgotten the big blackout in 2003? It was initially terrifying since it happened not long after 9-11. At that time there were still local shops on Broadway before the banks and pharmacies took over. We all sat on our stoop with other tenants in our building eating the free ice cream that one of the local shops gave out.
I’m wondering how someone was able to unlock a Citibike as stated in the article. I’ve tried to unlock them when there have been electrical problems along Broadway in the 50s and they didn’t unlock.
9
@Susan B Maybe the Citibike was not locked -- someone just left it there at the end of a ride because it couldn't be locked in again?
3
This is the failure of the electric company to maintain their equipment and NYC is not alone with this problem.
Gas, water and electrical grids need to be kept up on a regular basis or you will have the power outages, gas explosions, water pipe breaks or contaminated water.
This is country wide.
7
Keeping Manhattan dark for more than three hours is a very serious issue even though it occurs rarely. It costs huge business loss. It might cause deaths to people that include patients. In addition It causes too much of chaos. People get stranded in local trains and lifts, which is a serious problem as well. Hope nothing untoward happened.
Preventive maintenance is the key rather than the breakdown maintenance of electrical installations. Moreover there should be a provision for alternate electric supply arrangement to Manhattan in the event of any problem with the existing electric power supply so that power supply can be restored as soon as possible.
In the event of a grid system, if there is a problem in some other area, then Manhattan should be immediately isolated from the faulty area so that cascading can be prevented. Hope such a system already exists.
3
When the Great Northeast Blackout began, I was on the 12th floor of Hunter College on Park at 69th. We saw the progression of lights going out from uptown to downtown. Professors with candles stood on landings as students walked down the staircases to ground level.
Those of us who lived in Brooklyn walked downtown and over the Brooklyn Bridge to the bus terminal to get rides home. Motorists stayed at intersections with their headlights on to help pedestrians. There was no looting or other crime. It was an exciting time for me.
12
So it happened in 1977 - so NYers have fond memories of their romances or whatever. That's nice...but today, in the US cities where political corruption (and those are very few) has not eaten up the 'maintenance budgets' (remember those??) and the profits, yeah utilities are profitable, and where modern technology can prevent huge outages, this should not happen. Now, I don't believe in coincidence - exactly 42 yrs. ago today - and I'm not a pollyana pie-in-the-sky person, as is the 27th Democratic Candidate NYC Mayor: but I'd take a close look at either political sabotage or terrorism. I'm with the Governor - not acceptable.
2
@Pauline Hartwig
Most improvements to the Utility infrasturcture is financed by rate payers who HATE rising prices.
The money has to come from some place. It just doesn't fall out of the sky.
I live on W 82nd, but was on W 46th when the blackout happened. I walked up Broadway all the way home. The lights were out, no traffic lights, eerie but, amazingly and reassuringly, everyone I passed was calm and I felt completely safe the whole time. People were making their walk north since the subways were out of service, folks were sitting in the park in front of Lincoln Center chatting and seemingly unruffled by the events. When the lights came on, the whole street let out a roar and then everyone went on about their lives as if nothing had happened. I've lived in New York four years now and I finally feel like a New Yorker. I love this city and I'm crazy about my fellow New Yorkers.
40
What a difference 40 years makes, both good and not-so-good.
I was 20 and living on the Upper West Side that Wednesday in 1977. Serial killer Son of Sam was still on the loose and his victims had all uncannily matched my looks and age; walking just on the edge of Morning Side park, even during the day, could be a death wish.
So when the city blacked out it was terrifying! No cellphones or Facebook to learn what was going on and I didn't have a battery operated radio. From my closet bedroom, I wondered if it was time to transfer from Columbia.
This time there was apparently no looting or riots other than of the partying variety. And that is good! However it reminds me how much gentrification has sanitized the city, with box store replacing moms and pops at more and more corners, pushing "those" people elsewhere to make Manhattan safe again...and a good deal less exciting.
12
You nailed it,the "Character"(and characters) that existed in 77 is gone...I was there to.
2
@James
Thanks, James! I used to love walking down Amsterdam Ave. and stopping in hole in the walls to have a cafecito and Cuban sandwich.. It felt like I was in my old country. Sad, too, how the West End cafe on Broadway vanished along with the legendary old timer jazz musicians that'd play nightly, as I recall, while I listened and did homework on the well wooden tables, carved with memories. And I could go on and on and on...
5
I was 16...working a summer job on Wall st....and partying way too much!! Such fun then....
2
I saw Shelley Silver sipping a cocktail at a closed restaurant in the West side. Probably came for nostalgic reasons. He seems to have a lot of time on his hands. He had on a new cashmere scarf, was laughing away, telling stories....
5
@Marjorie Summons who is he?
You would think that a popular and high end area such as this would have a very sophisticated electrical grid monitoring system (monitoring only) for that area and back up generators for some facilities.
3
Inconvenient to be sure, especially for those stuck in elevators or train cars, but the power going out for 4 percent of the population of Manhattan for two and a half hours does not quite reach the level of crisis.
I once lived in an area that went without power for several days after lightning struck a major transformer. It was fine. Work was canceled, and I had candles and books.
9
Not mentioned was the fact that all the subway trains going into Manhattan were held up. I, personally, was on an E train stuck for almost two hours in Queens with no idea if we would be spending the night there. And when it did start up again, it did not take its intended route and was taking me who knows where. At that point I just wanted to get into Manhattan so got off at the first stop once we got there and walked east in order to get a bus home. Not so easy for an elderly person traveling alone with luggage, having already been on the LIRR for three hours and then getting on the subway in Jamaica. Crazy evening!
13
How could self driving cars ever handle a situation like this. Completely self driving cars are complete fantasy.
11
Why not? They use Lidar and darkness is not a problem.
Mayhem in Manhattan
Today I refused to read the news and didn’t turn on the news on television or radio, so I didn’t have to hear anything about Trump. Wouldn’t you know my daughter who lives in NYC, was in the dark out and I didn’t know about it until she texted me later in the night. Happy to know she and all the New Yorkers are okay.
9
@BB
This is the problem with letting your emotions about Trump rule your life.
2
I remember 1965. Just a child, but it felt so good to have my family around me and my godmother was visiting, but had to stay the night because the trains weren't running. In 1977, I was on a date with my now-husband, and we had just gotten out of evening class at NYU. Was saddened at hearing all the reports of looting, as I remembered a peaceful city as a kid. Seems like the city is once again peaceful and lively deapite the horrible political situation we are now in. I pray for my Latino brothers and sisters. No one should face this indignity.
11
I really think ConEd and their workers deserve some thanks. I know everyone loves to hate them, their rates are very high, there always in the way digging someplace, there customer service is rough but just look at the size of what they do. I find it amazing the whole thing works at all and the fact they can fix it in such short order is something. Thanks.
21
Jumaane Williams, NYC’s Public Advocate, was introduced at the press conference given by NYC Emergency Management, but they didn’t let him speak. We all know he has a stuttering problem, but then why was he there?
If the Mayor is incapacitated, or out of town for more than 8 days or so, doesn’t the Public Advocate become acting Mayor?
3
There was an element of fun in this blackout.
3
Wow! Exactly 42 years to the day after the '77 blackout.
I can hardly wait until August 14, 2045!
6
Let’s see if De Blasio is on time for the meeting to discuss the outage. We should be grateful he was in Iowa or the outage may have lasted longer.
8
It’s not an outage, it’s a failure. Never let con edition off the hook for their “failure” to deliver power.
2
I sure wish the power had gone out on my block; it's after 12:30 AM, and there's still the remnants of a loud party going on beh8ind my building, with no end in sight.
8
Latest tweet from the White Castle - This would not have happened if NYC still relied on CLEAN COAL !
3
Just imagine a zero day attack on that power grid...
During the 65 blackout my mother was convinced it was caused by a "communist plot." She wanted all of us kids to get under the beds, kitchen table, and anything large enough where little girls could hide. We didn't because we were too nosy. And we were waiting for the tv to come back on.
4
The fact that a mere brief and localized power outage is front page news (the top headline in fact) on the NY Times, just goes to show how vulnerable New Yorkers are to infrastructure impacts.
I live 35 miles from where this power outage occurred, and a 2 hour power outage here would be a non event. No one would be stuck in elevators. We use our own vehicles to get around. Generators are everywhere. Our intersections work just fine when the lights are out.
There is nothing worse than population density when dealing with a natural disaster (like Sandy) or an infrastructure failure like a blackout.
Good luck, New Yorkers. One day you will really need it.
4
@Baron95
Do you want us all to live in Westport? It's not clear what the point of your post is. If you think it would be better for 8M New Yorkers to all be driving their own vehicles around in a situation like this.... I'm not sure you thought this through.
1
@Baron95 You know the Times, among other things, is also one of our local papers here in NYC? What do you expect a local paper to do when a blackout hits a highly populated part of the city? Not cover it?
2
They really wanted to get those epstein files to be destroyed while there were no cameras didnt they.
3
They pay millions for their apartments, thousands in monthly maintenance yet NO EMERGENCY GENERATORS in those posh apartment buildings. That's a real rip-off, IMO.
8
Some of the pictures/films accompanying this report are phony. or not attributed to past outages/events. For example, the Twin Towers -- predating 9/11 -- are visible.
@David The Twin Towers themselves are visible in one of the black-and-white photos of the 1977 blackout.
But in the video from yesterday's blackout, of the man directing traffic on 9th Avenue, the towers in the distance aren't the World Trade Center. They are the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle and 59th. The video was taken facing NE at the corner of 9th Ave. and 48th .
1
No doubt, a large majority didn't even notice or care as their respective eyes were fixated on their cellphones. For those who did notice, it was just another reason to post to Facebook about what insignificant thing they were doing when the blackout struck or send some inane text ot tweet about how dark it is or what a major inconvenience to not have electricity. Unless you were performing brain surgery at the time, no one cares what you were doing when the 2019 blackout hit.
2
@Jeff The irony of this comment is remarkable.
2
"With signals not working, a group of men in shorts and T-shirts were directing traffic at the intersection of 10th Avenue and 47th Street." Pure New York! When things get tough, we step in and get tougher. By the way, the effects were not confined to Manhattan. I finally got back from Salif Keita's show at Celebrate Brooklyn in Prospect Park; took me an hour and a half, via four redirected subway trains, to get home. Sheesh!
74
@AEK in NYC If you got to hear Salif Keita, you had enough positivity and energy to take you through this long ride back home and get a good night's sleep ! Weekend subway service in Brooklyn on week-ends is such that it may take an hour and a half and a few trains (even a "shuttle bus" too now and then).
3
An import note:
Verizon has destroyed our emergency communication infrastructure
They refused to maintain the copper wires that historically have enabled landline phones to work during power blackouts—-this is especially important as elevators and water pumps stop working leaving people, including I’ll and elderly, with no communication
( except perhaps, for those who have the , what’s left at the end of the day on a cell phone battery )
When I and others were forced over our objections (due to this very concern re power blackouts) off of copper onto FiOs phone lines, we were told that there would be battery backups.
Verizon lied.
There was no battery backup.
The very same landline phone that kept working through previous power failures on the copper wire network stopped working immediately when the power went out this time
Verizon should be required to restore and maintain the copper wire emergency communication infrastructure they destroyed ( my preference) or to install the promised battery backups—without charge as it was their choice to profit by failing to maintain the legacy copper emergency communication infrastructure that they inherited and now have destroyed )
32
@Lynn
Yes. My mother fought Verizon for years to keep her copper wire landline on Staten Island. She even contacted the governor's office. She finally had to give it up and still laments it.
8
I guess I was about 17 when a blackout occurred in my busy neighborhood and a cop on the street -- after asking to see my driver's license -- turned to me and said "Direct traffic."
Which I then proceeded to do with great style and panache
until the lights came back on.
I have a hard time these days finding my wallet and keys in the morning, but some things you never forget.
16
It's not a blackout unless there's an increase in the birth rate 9 months from now.
And, today many Chinese (who have rolling blackouts in many cities) are walking around saying, "what's the big deal?"
Have fun, stay safe.
2
I lived in NYC during the ‘77 blackout. Thanks NY Times for the video and coverage of this blackout. Typical New Yorkers; directing traffic, performing musicals and rolling with life in the City. I miss my hometown; even in a blackout.
10
Is this a result of years of neglect in improving the country's infrastructure and social programs from state and federal levels? Seems the politicians are more interested in getting re-elected, campaign money, approve weapon contracts and power grab than overall quality of people's life. As long as Americans continue to accept these kind of practices, overall life quality in America will continue to decline.
4
Be that as it may, you may be interested to know that Russian and Chinese hackers have infiltrated our utility system grids...
In '65, I had just gotten out of work and was meeting a boy friend for dinner when the lights dimmed and then went out. I think we did have dinner. Then we walked the mile to my family's apartment, trekked up the 9 flights (folks had put candles on the landings). My sister was home with her boyfriend and his younger brother. My mother was home, too. Somehow, everyone slept over -- we had a 7-room apartment, with 3 bedrooms, a large living room, and a dining room. Some bargains were struck, and my sister and I each have lovely memories of that night.
13
The 1965 blackout happened a few months after I moved to the US as a permanent resident. When the lights went out, I was at work on the 30th floor at 1260 6th Ave. The 30 flights of stairs did not scare me nor did the walk home in the dark all the way to Woodside, Queens. I remember feeling a bit tired but my Swiss alpine roots came in handy.
I'm sure that people offered to help me along the way, but being the independent person I still am today, I just kept on going!
14
New York is very lucky this blackout didn’t have far worse outcomes.
Governor Cuomo responded appropriately, called up state police and the National Guard to assist as needed, and was on the scene with Con Ed in a timely manner. City Council Speaker Corey Johnson was helpful getting info out to the media via phone, even as he was enroute back to the city from Long Island.
But Mayor DeBlasio gets a complete fail. NYC needs its Mayor on the scene quickly during any crisis, but where was Mr. Bill? Out in Iowa in his hopeless quest for a job he is wholly unqualified for.
This is not a phone-it-in job, Mr. Mayor. Do your job that we elected you to do. It’s full-time, not part-time.
27
@Vicki--Mayor De Blasio has more important things to like figure out his next career move which to be elected the next President of the United States.
1
@Vicki
"Mayor Bill de Blasio, who was in Iowa campaigning for his presidential bid, ruled out terrorism or criminal activity."
1
@sharon5101
Yeah right. I’m watching him spin his absence on CNN this Sunday morning...from Chicago. Jake Tapper gave him a softball interview. NYC media won’t be so gentle.
3
In the 1965 blackout, I was walking up Broadway between 34h and 42nd Streets, when suddenly all the Times Square lights seemed to flicker for a moment, and there was a general friendly roar from the crowd. Then about 10 seconds later, everything went kaput. I turned East on 42nd Street and was amazed that some of the store owners were already out in front of their shops selling flashlights and batteries. I just kept going and ended up walking over the 59th Street Bridge into Queens and then into North Brooklyn.
In the 1977 blackout, 3 friends and I were celebrating one of their birthdays at the old Le Marmiton restaurant on East 49th Street. They stuck someone at the door to make sure no one dashed off without paying. One friend, who owned a truck and made short haul deliveries, but whose wife was scared to death of driving with him, stuck her on the floor of his empty truck, covered below and above with canvas tarps so that she could just close her eyes and pray on their long ride back to Whitestone. I then lived at the Ansonia, and walked home, but on my way, when I hit the big Lincoln Center intersection at 65th and Broadway, there was a opera-loving friend of mine, at least in his early 80s, and he had taken it upon himself to walk right out into the middle of the chaos and start directing traffic. And everybody stopped and/or started in conformance with his directions. It made perfect sense and "Monty" may have actually saved a life or two.
12
In the many years I have lived in Germany, I have never experienced a power outage of more than a few seconds. My Germany friends are shocked when I tell them stories from my childhood of being without power for hours or even days — a situation that my US relatives and friends continue to experience on a regular basis at tremendous expense to the economy.
Wake up, USA! Your infrastructure is far below par.
23
@David D. Yes, I can guess things in Germany are all rather new since the place has been rebuilt from the ground up because of WWII. As I look back we would of been better off spending our money here at home.
7
@David D.
I was going to comment that NYC - and indeed the upper East Coast seem particularly vulnerable to electrical failure until I remembered that this sort of thing happens everywhere. London has suffered two recent memory major blackouts - one in 2003 (defective trip relay) and in 1987, when a massive storm took out the HVDC distribution link between England and Europe. Note, we don't think we have an 'infrastructure investment' problem in the UK power business.
Ah, yes. The Marshall Plan. We have a different and somewhat less grateful view over here. Germany's economy was already recovering strongly by the time the cash arrived. It's estimated that the American dollar contributed about 3% to the GDP of Western European countries that received it. Three per cent. So, hardly rebuilt from the bottom up.
Strangely he largest recipient of aid money was actually Great Britain - and much of that money funded the nuclear weapons development programme over here. It was (and still is) felt that the US had behaved entirely dishonourably in embracing cutting edge British nuclear tech for the Manhattan project - promising that GB could expect an equal share in everything that derived from that - and then shutting the British out in 1946 on grounds of 'national security'. Spending American money on our own nuclear weapons seemed an appropriate response.
1
@Thomas Renner wait you’re saying it would have been better not to join WWII or not have implemented the Marshal Plan?
I lived in NYC for 10 years (2007-2016) and frequently wondered how prepared the city would be in the event of a considerable emergency. Even without blackouts, the everyday support for services needed to carry on your daily responsibilities of commuting to work became more and more uncomfortable and unreliable due in large part, in my opinion, to the weaknesses of the public transportation services. So, when I read about blackouts like this, I wonder about the public information and support...what protections do we have, what warning and backup systems initiate immediately to deal with communications, panic, health emergencies, etc. That's what I'd like to learn from articles like this. How did city services respond, who did what and how effective where the responses. Because we live in a time, more than ever, when it matters.
5
@Lisa.......good for you Lisa! Bienvenidos a Nuevo York!
I was a freshman at Wagner College in 1965. From the walkway to the Towers Dorm you could see the amazing skyline of Manhattan and at night it was all aglow. The night of the big blackout we looked north and the city had disappeared! Fortunately it was back at sunrise and has been there my whole life. My love affair with it continues.
7
Ours is a City that has it all wrong. We coddle the plutocrats. Fund via tax payers obscenities like Hudson Yard. Make museums and theater unaffordable due to perverse real estate values and a profit motive in the arts. Make parks not for enjoyment, but to increase real estate value (Westside) Private wealth can do what it wants, is untaxed via loopholes and can run roughshod over anyone. But we deny any real invest in common good; have a public infrastructure so miserably defunct it reminds one of Mumbai. Streets and a subway that befuddles any visitor from Europe or Asia. This will continue until the worship of the super rich in our public and in media stops, they are taxed like everyone else and second homes that are not primary residence or are rented out at rent stabilized price are double taxed.
22
It must be very scary to be stuck in an elevator for more than just a few minutes...
Do elevators not have back-up power systems, like hospitals and banks have?
6
I’ve visited New York many times and even had my honeymoon there at New Years in 1967.
I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve flown through the airport on the way to Europe or Israel.
New Yorkers know better than anyone what it’s like to live in the city including the frustrations of the subway, blackouts, terrorism, congestion on the sidewalks, and so forth.
After retiring as an expatriate in the Provence area of the south of France I fell in love with the rural beauty of vineyards, olive trees, and lavender. I heartily encourage New Yorkers who have tired of the inconveniences of the city to reinvent your life in a beautiful rural area before climate change wrecks everything.
19
Bail while you can? Kudos to you.
1
Nice !
this situation is not unique to our fair City. Remind me again why we need a borer wall instead of improved infrastructure?
32
@Bill DelGrosso We need both.
You would think there would be backup power in many of the places impacted by this outage
12
It was a stroke of luck it was only a partial blackout. It was another that it didn't last long. It was a cruel reminder, nonetheless, that the city's infrastructure is quite vulnerable.
Thankfully, everyone is OK. They will have something to talk about at the next cocktail party: "Where were you when the lights went out?"
4
1965 blackout: I was 22 years old, studying last minute for a Masters Degree exam in the Brooklyn College basement cafeteria. I was totally unprepared for the exam and hoping for a miracle. The lights flickered, flickered again and then darkness. It was the first New York blackout. No cell phones, no way to get home, no exam.
Somehow, a friend who had a little Volkswagen found me, drove me back to the lower east side in Manhattan to his apartment which had a fireplace. All the way there, volunteers with flashlights helped at intersections because there were no traffic lights. The kindness of New Yorkers who appeared from nowhere and the firelight still stay with me now as I remember that night so many years ago.
34
I was missing having left working in Manhattan and moved down to Miami, FL... until this happened. Good thing I wasn’t there for this, otherwise I would have been stuck in the D train.
3
I blame everything bad that is currently happening now on President Trump.
This saves me a lot of time and energy from investigating the causes of major disasters and more times than not I eventually find that my hunch was right.
34
@A. Stanton The sky was blue today. I guess that was Trump’s fault as well.
1
@Olivia
Blue skies and sunny days are hard to predict under Democrats, but they rarely -- if ever -- occur under Republicans. And never under Trump.
This is widely known.
1
We just blame it on space aliens and move on!
1
I had the misfortune of getting stuck in Midtown in my car, attempting to get to the upper Westside from Canal Street. It took 2 1/2 hours to complete the trip. I crossed westbound from 6th through the Times Square area on 41st and up eighth Avenue to 42nd St and then headed west. I saw a great many police officers along the snail’s pace journey but I did not see a single one attempting to control the intersections which were utter chaos and completely clogged. Considering the large number of police that I saw all over the place, I found this hugely frustrating and mystifying.
21
Lets hope there is a lucid detailed explanation of this tomarrow. With clear public knowledge of the causes of this it might be possible to avert this and worse in the future. We all can count ourselves lucky. We don't want a repeat performance of the Northeast Blackout of 2003
11
2003 blackout caused by our wonderful Ohio utility First Energy
2
Except my parent lost power south of 40th, just to clarify this has been informative to help them out but the boundaries that you state can't be true.
3
Here we go and it wasn't all that warm today. The problem of the vulnerable electric grid is IMO perhaps the major problem that needs to be resolved pronto. Remember what happened to many people during Sandy? Remember previous blackouts? an not in the summer. Better get those electric panel arrays on the roofs if only to run the elevator... .(in th3 ow many stories are they now bldgs.?
And the temperature hasn't even been up there yet.
10
Not even one fifth of Manhattan went dark and it's being covered like a major event.
But yeah, there's something about blackouts. In my twenty years in this town, one of my fondest memories is of the 2003 blackout.
10
These situations expose the dark underbelly of New Yorkers -- that in truth, we are polite, caring and exemplify grace under fire. But please, don't tell anyone: We have a reputation to uphold.
76
Exactly. We may appear all sangfroid but in an emergency no one jumps in to help faster than a New Yorker.
7
After a lifetime in NYC and 30 years in Chelsea, I no longer live in NYC, BUT, thanks for the sweet memories of the 1977 Blackout which occurred a bit later in the evening. I was in an off-B'way theater in mid-town and wound up walking downtown, part way to W.21 St in the enchanting darkness and strange quiet of a pitch black West Side and 9th Avenue, before finding a taxi..it was hot and humid, I recall. No City Bikes in those days. New Yorkers generally rise to meet the demands of the occasion and they did then, as last night. It is the best place to live and I still miss it everyday.
22
I was there on the upper East side..it was hella hot!!!
There were plenty of NYOD around, they were just parking their cars in bike lanes, on sidewalks,crosswalks, etc. You know, fighting the real crime.
8
OTOH, The city probably paid the ransom quickly, and decided to play the mechanical failure card.
11
I just heard Cuomo say the power failure was not due to overuse and then he said, "we're not in the middle of the summer and we don't have too many air conditioners on." I know that wasn't the cause,but it sounds like something Trump would say. I almost believed him but I think we can all agree it is the middle of July and we have had consistent high temperatures. I'm sure most air conditioners are on.
15
In 1965, my dad finally got home from his restaurant in Inwood to our our apartment in Fort Lee, NJ. He was delayed because of the blackout. I was glad he finally got home, but was bummed that there would not be any TV that night. The entertainment my dad provided, however, was even better. He took my sister and me up to the roof of our fourteen floor building and we looked out onto the eerie, but beautiful city. One side of the lights on the GWB was on, the other, whose power was provided by NYC was off and the the only other lights we could see were the headlights on the cars streaming along the West Side Highway. The glow, golden and warm is an image I have never forgotten, even after all these years.
347
@SNA Beautiful memory.
37
@SNA I remember the blackout in 1965. My dad led all 5 of us in dancing and singing in the living room in the dark because there was nothing else to do. It is one of my favorite memories too.
13
Breaking News?
There was an equipment failure and a small part of NYC was without electricity for two or more hours.
Such failures occur often, in many places in the US.
Is that also news?
9
@Jack Krogman:
There's no other city in the U.S. that approaches NYC'S density and population; consequently the scales of such blackouts is other cities are by and large not nearly as consequential.
29
73,000 people lost power, people were trapped in dark subways underground and stuck in elevators, the way that most people get around the city - the subway - stopped working and lots of people had to walk many tens of blocks to get home, yeah it was a big deal.
32
@James: While NYC is the most populated American city, it is #6 on the list of most densely populated American cities.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_population_density
Hoboken is more densely populated than NYC.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
Welcome to what we call load shedding here in the third world; rationing of power in different areas of the city at different times. Believe you me, make the most of it. Switch off your gadgets. Disconnect from tech. Reconnect with people in the little time you have. Gaze at the stars. It's worth it.
30
@Mopitimop
That's not the solution to these failures. Improvement and good maintenance of the infrastructure might be a better idea. And for sensitive devices, install adequate backup power systems. Solar arrays with sufficient battery banks are the answer, imho.
6
It be nice but probably not gonna happen sadly
NYC does actually have a load shedding program but this wasn’t it
The strange thing is I only found out about this from the New York Times and I'm just a few blocks away from the area that was affected.
84
@N. Smith I'm in the W. Village, and I only found out about it a few minutes ago--1 a.m. 3 hours for that seems pretty long to me.
6
@N. Smith. yup...where is the emergency broadcast thingy, they practice it frequently, it was never used on September 11th either.....would this not be the perfect time use it!
3
@N. Smith. It was even more stark after Sandy: If you lived north of 14th Street, it was business as usual. If you lived downtown (no power, no services whatsoever), it was back in the Dark Ages for many days!
3
So nice to know that when the Westside of Manhattan was blacked out, Mayor de Blasio was trying to decide if it was important enough for him to leave Iowa. Talk about a Mayor in the dark. We did just fine without him.
24
Either de Blasio is mayor or he’s not. Campaigning to be President? Really?
17
Remember to always use the bathroom before you step into an elevator.
71
@Venice
Tourists: Remember to carry a cell phone charger with you if possible.
4
This was a different sort of blackout from 1977. Back then there was a lot of looting and rioting snd the city was in chaos. Tonight there was calm and the people were civilized. It is a different city today. In 1977 you avoided certain neighborhoods whenever possible during the day and definitely at night. Crime was high and people were afraid. Today there are few neighborhoods that are to be avoided and you can stay out late and not worry for your safety. How times have changed for the better in New York.
169
@KMW—-yes much is different, for many reasons, but i’ll Give a lot of credit to the Giuliani and Bloomberg administrations. Talented men, they had established excellent reputations outside the political arena. Not your typical in house political resumes.
8
Truly profound observations. Well done, really.
7
@KMW I live on W 82nd, but was on W 46th when the blackout happened. I walked up Broadway all the way home. The lights were out, no traffic lights, eerie but, amazingly and reassuringly, everyone I passed was calm and I felt completely safe the whole time. People were making their walk north since the subways were out of service, folks were sitting in the park in front of Lincoln Center chatting and seemingly unruffled by the events. When the lights came on, the whole street let out a roar and then everyone went on about their lives as if nothing had happened. I've lived in New York four years now and I finally feel like a New Yorker. I love this city and I'm crazy about my fellow New Yorkers.
27
HIGH-CHARACTER PEOPLE OF THE WEEK: New Yorkers who rose to the challenge and made the best of a trying situation. Many directed traffic; others helped out in whatever ways they could. Tonight Manhattan was what the late ethicist H. Tristram Engelhardt, Jr. would call a peaceable moral community.
Should it take a crisis like this to bring us all together?
21
It always does.
My wife and I moved to New Jersey and retired 6 years ago. We're always having to deal with electric outages due to storms as the power lines are above ground here unlike Manhattan.
Now I don't feel so bad moving.
3
@Alan Klein
I moved from NYC to CT during that time; began to drive in to see exhibits after Metro North dropped people off at subway stops. Gangs wandered through cars snatching purses; I found protection on one trip when a gang entered the car; I got up and moved to sit next to two very large Black gentlemen who moved so I could sit between them. The gang looked and decided to walk on. My mother came to visit from CA; I drove her to Greenwich Village, and to an Italian fair; We drove to the Frick, and to the Met which had parking. I took her to see Phantom of the Opera. Then I took her to Central Park which was fine until we got in a cab to leave and heard the popping noise of gunfire. I told my mother the sounds were backfires; she had already seen a doorman duck into a building; she had lived on a ranch for years; she knew gun shots; she pretended to believe me. Still, she talked about her trip to NYC for a long time; she was thrilled to be there. I was thrilled to have brought her there to great museums, to the Village, and to see a wonderful Broadway play. My mother grew up in San Francisco, 4th generation from an Irish mother and from an English father who left England to join a symphony orchestra in S.F. after leaving Charleston, his first stop. CA was the last stop for many from the East Coast. We had some old NE family landholders from the first migration West.
6
@Linda Miilu
Sorry you had problems. I think the city is a lot safer today and you're always welcome. I posted with tongue in cheek, a little, I still visit NYC often and really love it blackouts and all. It was just time to try a different place.. NJ farm country is lovely too in is own way. So I have the best of both worlds.
1
Most coped just fine until they realized their cellphones died. At that point, many looked up for the first time and realized that the lights were out, their subways had stopped or they were stuck in elevators. Their first reaction was to do a Google search. That's when they panicked.
24
@micjas:
No real surprise there: we as a species have taken the "convenience" afforded by our "smart phones", access to an unfathomable spectrum of information (often incorrect or blatantly distorted), laptops, "smart cars" etc., etc. to such a degree that in a very real sense we've nearly entirely enslaved ourselves to these devices. The consequences of the failures of systems large and small can have global consequences, with the vast majority of us without direct recourse.
This is very much akin to the nature and impact of addictions, a massive vulnerability designed and orchestrated by ourselves.
This begs the question: are we REALLY the most intelligent species on the planet? It seems to me that engineering ourselves into such a tenuous situation isn't characteristic of advanced thinking to the degree we like to believe.
(Don't get me wrong: I'm just as guilty to being unreasonably dependent on these ubiquitous technological miracles -- and shortcomings.)
Dolphins would seem to still have a solid lock on being the smartest organisms . . . utterly lacking in hubris.
5
@James
As I see it, many individuals are addicted today to CONVENIENCE, and are willing to instantly surrender privacy, peace of mind, and personal choice to the constant demands and costs of being always available, interruptable, traceable and answerable, 24/7...lives run by the demands of sometimes questionable sources, time and energy automatically handed over to a faceless internet.
How perfect a subtle segue to the oncoming era of robotization. Hoping the dolphins know better.
'
1
@michjas
That's funny. I could see myself panicking too.
Trump .... what should be done? Our electric infrastructure needs work! Our roads & sidewalks need to upgraded? Our immigration needs help. The deficit is too high. Our medical field and those helping the disabled & elderly needs more employees. O'my America needs an upgrade!
11
I think you should ask your mayor who’s in Iowa trying to become president.
12
@Dan Fletcher:
Yeah, all those "MAGA" hats have really made a great improvement in our . . . our? Our what?
Mmmmmm. Maybe there's a flaw of some kind relative to those slogans?
1
THis is yet another example of the neglect of the public components of our society, via inadequate taxation, affecting schools, universities, hospitals, and infrastructure. We have neglected our public sector to the point of no return.
28
Of course the talking heads Willis come out to blame Con Ed as opposed to working with Con Ed to prevent this from happening again.
I remember all the blackouts from 1975 forward. Now I live on the Jersey side of the Hudson. The city look strange.
3
We experienced some strange behavior from the 4 train while headed, luckily, to a friend’s birthday party rather than home to our upper west side apartment: if going home, we would’ve been stuck underground for 2 hours, as we got on the train just before the outage. Serendipitously, we missed it entirely and spent the evening drinking wine and having birthday cake on the Upper East Side!
12
The NYT mentioned “62 thousand ConEd Customers” affected by this blackout.
But isn’t Madison Square Garden considered merely “one customer”?
Therefore, the actually people affected are in the hundreds of thousands, if not more.
Let’s not underplay these “62 thousand ConEd customers” confusing figures!
18
The concertgoer could be from out of town and thus not a ConEd customer.
1
Watching interviews with cheerful tourists on local news channels gives you the impression that we organized this brief blackout so visitors would have a good NYC story to tell when they got home.
25
No mention was made here of the other trains that were not running to Queens - the E, F & R. The electronic signs showed the real outages while the phone app was giving misinformation about the extent of the trains not running. A poor grade today for the MTA app.
14
I’m confused by your reporting- how did the lights go out at msg if - as you reported - the outages were between 40th and 72nd streets. Did msg move?
5
@Jeff after 2 hours lights went out down to 35th and sporadically beyond...I watched MSG empty from my blacked out 25th st windows
1
Fun fact: On this date in 1977, Bruce Springsteen was working on the song "Badlands" at the moment the power outage hit, which is most likely where the song got its opening line, "Lights out tonight!"
19
Why the headlines for 60k without power for hours? When a tornado or severe storms hit a metro area in the midwest, there can be hundreds of thousands of homes without power for days
9
Guys: it’s the New York Times, not the Midwest Times!
48
@Glinda Goodwitch Because it’s unusual in a city of millions, plus tourists!, with an immense transit system and countless bars, restaurants, and world-renowned theaters relying on power. And this paper is the New York Times, after all! Plus; they do report on those occurrences as well.
25
@Glinda Goodwitch Excuse me, but New York City is home to 8.3 million people. When an area from Times Square to West 72nd has a power outage it not only affects the residence, but millions of visitors, tourists, workers in those buildings, stores, businesses, theaters and commuters. So, it is newsworthy to us and to our local paper, which is New York Times.
71
This is what privatization and underinvestment looks like.
28
@NathanNo it isn't.
5
Come on people, it was just a little power outage, something that rural America puts up with on a regular basis. As the Rootbeer Lady from Ely MN use to say "Kwitcherbeliakin"
3
@osavus It's different when it occurs in a dense, heavily populated city. It affects a lot more people and the businesses that are located here. No traffic signal with heavy traffic can lead to chaos, congestion, and accidents. Most people here aren't driving and rely on the subway. The subway wasn't fully running making getting home difficult. It took me 2 hours to get home when it should have taken me 40 minutes. No electricity in tall buildings means walking up many flights of stairs unless the building has a back up generator.
8
Can I please have another option than Con Ed? This is basically an identical situation as the MTA.
10
A"relatively short time" for the power to come back on? By midnight is "relatively short?"
5
Rusher, if you’re listening, next time please remember to wait until Hamilton reaches the final act. Spasibo.
12
The Times article was commensurate with the importance of the story with no incitement to panic. CNN's coverage - predictably - was not.
CNN - the Chicken Little cable colossus that never met a catastrophe it didn't like - tried feverishly to fashion a mountain from a mole-hill. It hurriedly slapped some makeup on Ana Cabrera, shoved her in front of the camera, and flashed its well worn Breaking News banner across the screen. A tedious Saturday night rerun stopped running.
Ana - no doubt kept in a nearby closet for just such occasions -was almost breathless in her angst over the loss of power. Viewers could almost smell the desperation when she managed to get absentee-mayor Bill De Blasio on the air. De Blasio offered the usual assurances based on the usual modicum of facts. A transmission malfunction, Con was investigating, the outage ought not be long, and emergency services were busy rescuing people from their elevators.
Unsatisfied - and with so much time to fill - she persisted. Over and over she asked the same questions - slightly rephrased - over and over getting the same answers. The estimate of those deprived of power had escalated from 20,000 to 40,000 or more - how is that possible? Repeatedly she raised the spectre of terrorism - repeatedly he assured her this was likely a technical glitch. But why then - Ana pushed on - did it come on the 42nd anniversary of the last great power outage?
I put it down to geocentric journalism and intellectual fatigue.
22
Take a moment to reflect on the fragility of our modern, high-tech developed world society, and how radically reliant we are on our energy sources unlike just over 100 years ago, a blip in time.
We don't take time to think about our circumstance as being in a constant state of risk, indeed, our power comes to us at nearly the speed of light, and it goes away -- blacks out -- with the same intensity. So much more than the lights, are the water and sewage pumps, the fuel pumps and all the refrigerators and freezers. The mind boggles at the thought of a prolonged power outage over a large area in a city with extraordinary density: what is there to do but wait and worry about who will take care of you?
We have come so far into the future with our energy supplies (petroleum is not accessible after a short while with now electricity) we cannot ever imagine living without it -- never. This is not hyperbole, and if ever there was a time to bring the giant down, it will be done with the flick of a switch, and I'm not even thinking about the nuclear button.
Sure all the power in the nation will never go out, not all at once, and not forever. That will never happen...well, because we just know that's impossible. 1) couldn't imagine it, 2) it was unprecedented, and 3) if only we had seen it coming.
15
Before power was restored, I walked from West 70th St. to West 64th Street, along West End Avenue. Although I saw dozens of policemen standing around West 64th St., I saw none directing traffic on the Avenue.
10
@Arthur Me too. Ridiculous idiots. Standing around doing nothing.. On 62nd and West End.. Two cars, four cops, blocking off half the street going south with their randomly parked cars.
4
Listening to CBS AM, it was said both a transformer and some underground cables were involved. That would indicate a big short at the end of the cables opposite the transformer. This afternoon I was thinking about how everyone should have some solar panels and batteries to charge. I'd consider foul play.
Driving down the West Side Highway, traffic lights were out from 59th St to 42nd St. Traffic was orderly, drivers unusually cooperative, but I wonder at the complete absence of communication. Nothing on satellite radio, no alert on my cell phone. Amazing really how long it took to find out what was going on.
23
Seems now is a good time to review building codes for high rise buildings where elevators are truly a critical system.
NYC has led the way in fire safety for generations given the tragic fires from years ago (Triangle Shirtwaist Fire - 146 dead). I'm surprised NYC doesn't have a code item that tall buildings have a source of backup power sufficient to run the elevators for a set period of time so that no one gets stranded.
FDNY assets must be available for more critical needs than getting people out of elevator cars. That they have to be used for such purposes tonight seems almost silly in this day and age.
When I worked for DoD we had mainframe computers that were mission critical top secret sites. Our backup was a room full of very large Exide batteries that would run the systems for at least 20 minutes so we could perform a graceful shutdown of the beast before we lost data. This is not rocket science.
Beyond building codes I've a hunch aging infrastructure below the streets may need upgrading and a review of vulnerabilities and safeguards for transformers and cables.
34
The amount of energy required to operate an elevator up and down in a very tall building is enormous. There would be no way to ensure that by instructing residents to utilize the elevators, you wouldn’t just be inviting more people to get stuck in them when the alternate power source no longer has the capacity for them to operate. Backup power is used to operate the relatively low power requiring emergency lighting to ensure that persons can exit a building safely via fire stairs. There still exists the issue of disabled persons being unable to descend the stairs, but safe havens are required at the entry points to fire stairs for them to wait for help to arrive.
6
@Sean
I'd love to see stats on electrical draw for high rise elevators. Elevators are counter-balanced, motors don't have to lift the total weight of the cars, they only need to deal with the over / under difference in weight. I've seen 10 HP electric motors raise and lower million pound railroad bascule bridges which are highly balanced by weight.
8
The Triangle Shirtwaist fire occurred in 1911! What is the cost-benefit analysis of imposing building code regulations for events which rarely occur? Even if there were a major blackout for say four hours every 10 years would it be cost effective to impose building code requirements that would dramatically increase rents? How about spending one tenth of that amount to ensure every child has at least 3 books in his/her home? The return on investment would be dramatic!
2
Well, New York will never, ever be dark in spirit! It’s light will always shine.
24
This is just a minor preview, folks, of what can happen when there is a major cyber-attack on our electrical grid. Be forewarned and prepare for it!
34
@Groucho's Mustache Inadvertently ,what do you think this is.The key program of Marxism ,such as preached and practiced by all the leftist politicians in NY,is in effect chaos. With chaos ,whether from uncontrolled crime ,or breakdown of services and borders the public loses all control of their lives and is ruled by the politicians ,or in this case Marxist socialists ,who deem what is right for the public ,not what is right for them .Socialism is for the socialists ,by the time everybody realizes this fact ,it is already too late. As in NY.
3
The fundamental question is why should this happen anywhere in the US in 2019, let alone Manhattan? Why do we have an antiquated power grid? Why are we so worried about super rare terrorism but storm preparedness and the power grid state are at 3rd world levels? This is absurd.
581
@MJG: Here in Hell's Kitchen, where the stricken power substation is located, many residents have spent years fighting new substations - even as building construction soars. That's partially why it happened.
If, overall, you expect machines that do not malfunction simply because the year is 2019, good luck with that.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
41
@MJG -- Here too.
Those with the influence to get it fixed instead get private emergency backup generators, and just accept that things don't work.
21
@MJG
Granted, you might be right that they should be doing a much better job, for all I know.
But if you think this is Third World levels, you don't know a lot about the Third World.
"Intermittent" power and "load shedding" don't mean that there's a blackout once in a long while.
22
Power just came back at 10:34. Lots of cheering on my block! Thank you Con Ed for working so quickly to get it fixed.
192
Darn it, I knew I should not have run the microwave and hair dryer at the same time....
91
Take today’s problem as a critical wake up call.
It could be that NY needs, among other things, a trained network of volunteer block captains as a first line of defense during an emergency.
25
@Oceanviewer you are aware that if a citizen thru directing traffic or offering any kind of assistance can be held personally liable if they cause harm or injury to another?
I would leave that to the ones who are trained to handle it.
1
the city did not close the affected streets to traffic for ~2 hrs, during which time pedestrians were at great risk in the darkness with completely unregulated traffic and road rage/low visibility.
5
@skater242
I saw a video of a civilian directing traffic. He has no protection from liability. That means the present system is not working.
Volunteers could be trained, with Indemnification, in the basics of public safety.
A variant of this sort of thing is already done in countless communities around the country.
For example, where I live in Southern California, in addition to our police force, we have patrol cars manned by unformed trained civilian community officers.
I don’t doubt that they would assist, if need be, in the event of a large scale emergency.
6
Power grid hacked????
11
Wasn’t the President of Taiwan just on the west side of Manhattan?
4
A couple of hours before the blackout, our lights dimmed substantially, and our fans slowed down with a screech, so we saw this coming and got out candles, flashlights, and an old-fashioned transistor radio. We were ready.
They say it was trouble at a substation here in Hell's Kitchen. In the last few years High Rise residential and office buildings have gone up like crazy here - outside the protected Special Clinton District Preservation Area, of course - but unfortunately many in the community have spent years fighting new electrical substations. Some of us have warned them that blackouts and brownouts would happen. We cannot have such development draining the system without more substations. It's simple math.
The governor says the blackout is "unacceptable," and will now waste money on an investigation. How about praise for this getting rectified so swiftly? Machines break. Big deal.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
14
Thank God here on the upper east side we are ok and i can watch my Netflix and enjoy my protein shake.
8
Did Russia hack the power system?
13
Can someone blame Trump? He is on the hook for everything else!
Happy Anniversary!
19
I don't know what the big deal is. Yes, its inconvenient but critical places have backups. I live in New England and we have power outages the effect 100's of thousands. Some loose power for a week or more - that means pipes can freeze and you can lose a freezer full of food. If your toilet requires a pump to pump out the waist it can be nasty. What about medical equipment or heat for the elderly. Just think of the people effected by Barry.
NYC I am sorry your favorite restaurant or play is closed. But front page news.
Larry
7
Well, it is the New York Times. Not the Anytown times.
80
Exactly.
11
Happy 42nd anniversary!!
103
@Dave S.
Aww, it's the blackout's birthday, and it blew out its candles!
6
I was a child during the NY blackout in 1965. For me, it was lots of fun. I watched my older sister put on makeup by candlelight. She had a date to go to a place called The Action House where they allegedly had their own generator so they were able to stay open.
I wrote a school report on Abraham Lincoln and remember writing something about both of us using candlelight.
I know that my father was stuck in Manhattan, not sure if he was stuck in an elevator or what, but I know he didn't get home until nearly midnight. My mom and other younger sisters stayed up to greet him and hear about his adventure getting home...
Then we all went out and looked at the stars....
56
@sfdphd
and I learned (from my mother) that if you put the candles in front of a mirror, the light doubles! Who knew (at age 8)
16
“leaving drivers to fend for themselves at intersections with no traffic signals“
Here in Portland, when a power outage occurs, the affected traffic lights turn to flashing red and effectively become stop signs.
14
Many NY buildings have water towers on the roof. Why not windmills and solar panels and great big batteries?
I lived in NYC from 1979 until 1999. (Midtown west.) Not one blackout ever. Good thing, too, because I lived on the 37th floor.
11
@ejb
See if your can run anything now dependent on your home electricity off those big batteries in the basement.
3
MTA's communication was terrible. It took me 2 hours to get home on a normally 45min ride. No announcements, no info anywhere. I was waiting for 20min, then running around for 30min just trying to find a working train. Didn't know there was a power outage until hours later. It would have been helpful if they could've announce which lines were affected.
I understand it's a rare situation, but the MTA needs to be better prepared to be able to communicate widespread problems like this. Every delay is compounded. Can it really be that hard?
35
@nyc333
Shhh. You're giving them excuses to raise rates.
So, de Blasio is campaigning in Iowa tonight. Will he be back tomorrow when ICE descends on the city?
325
@Mary Frances Schjonberg Please run more scenes of socialist Venezuela ,or ,in other words the De Blasio Cuomo and AOC model for NY city.
14
AOC represents me. Anytime a politician speaks up for what people need, instead of cozying up to the rich, it’s dreaded “socialism,” which works great for the rich.
81
@Alan Einstoss NYC is one of the great cities of the world, so whatever else you can say about it, it works. If anything it's not progressive enough. The great cities of humanity like San Francisco, Toronto or Auckland or Amsterdam or Tokyo or Bangkok for that matter are even more progressive.
20
Remember to check on the elderly or potentially shut in. Heat kills.
474
@pjc
Thank you for posting this. Many people forget the elderly and vulnerable.
4
@pjc
Many poor and old particularly black and brown Chicagoans died in a heat wave back in the 1990's. And there was no power blackout.
3
Get ready for a big uptick in babies early April 2020. When I went into the hospital to deliver my baby in early August 1966 (9 months after the November blackout) the staff was heard saying “oh here comes another blackout baby.”
100
@Ellen Lewis People will have had to work fast; the blackout is basically over.
7
@Ellen Lewis
I wondered the same thing then thought "in November, baby it's cold outside but in July, could it just be too darn hot?"
6
My heart goes out to all of the agoraphobic straphangers stranded on the train in between stations without air conditioning. Gives me anxiety just thinking about it!
49
42,000. What is that? Five blocks? Oh my!
6
@NorthernVirginia Yes, I was thinking that 40th-72nd Sts west of 5th Ave should be more than 40,000 distinct addresses.
7
@NorthernVirginia: Each "customer" is an entire building - not individual people.
https://emcphd.wordpress.com
13
42,000 CUSTOMERS.
1 rental building with 200 apartments is considered 1 customer.
16
"Ladies, this is not the time." Perfect.
64
@Witness There are going to be a lot of comments about this.
4
It's not good that the Mayor was not in NYC bur was out campaigning for president in the midwest - where he's polling at 0%.
Think he's learned anything?
Nah.
45
@ fast / furious - I think this may be “lights out” for De Blasio’s presidential run.
1
Take advantage look up at the stars tonite.
296
@Sherarae
And there's a beautiful moon tonight!
31
@Sherarae
Doubt they were able to see anything more than normal if only part of Manhattan were blacked out.
You'd normally have to drive way beyond New York City to to see more than a few stars.
3
@Sherarae
You might see 10,000 stars but more likely, 100,000 phones.
7
This will be good . A direct indication of the reluctance of the new socialists to modernize the power grid through clean natural gas energy which all other states now have in tremendous quantities.Their future for NY is,unfortunately ,the present plan of catastrophic failures like Venezuela and Cuba. Talk about dictatorial regimes ,NY ,you've accomplished that at the voting machines and that's how viable civilizations are ruined.Would be nice and easy to blame the President on this one ,but the truth is Trump would have the NY city power grid ticking like a clock by now.
5
Alan, really? Tell us how Please
13
He doesn’t even know how to use a computer. What makes you think he knows anything about how electricity works?
31
@Alan Einstoss
"the truth is Trump would have the NY city power grid ticking like a clock by now."
Yeah. He'd have the NYC power grid ticking just like it did during the Revolutionary War. MAGA
23
NYC at Over Capacity every Summer. It sucks.
5
To get some extra exercise, I walked from 42nd Street to 57th to catch the N train to Queens. That's when I found out about the outage. After walking around for quite a while, I finally ended up taking MetroNorth to Harlem 125th Street and taking the M60 bus that stops a couple of blocks from my house in Astoria. Of course, it took me a couple of hours to think of this Plan B.
27
According to Con Ed, 42,000 customers does not mean 42,000 people as reported here. One customer can equal an entire building. We don't know how many people are effected.
47
@If it feels wrong, it probably is
"Affected"...but I completely agree with your comment.
11
@If it feels wrong, it probably is:
Each one of those customers probably receives an electric bill. In addition the the building itself. Only in the case of a hotel does the customer not assume the light bill.
who ya gonna call?
9
I cant help but notice that a lot of you New Yorkers are complaining and upset that your mayor is out of town campaigning. Do you think if he was there he would be the one to personally fix the substation? Would you feel more relaxed and reassured just by seeing his face? I don't get it.
36
@Zobar neither do I !
6
@Zobarwe Obviously we know he can’t do anything about it, but instead of mayoring, he’s choosing to be in Iowa feeding his ego in a waste-of-time vanity project.
52
Because we elected him and pay him to do a specific job. And he should be here doing it.
52
Does everyone still remember the Beatles?
41
Brilliant. Everybody who saw Yesterday is chuckling.
37
@Lydia
The greatest R&R band that ever lived!
1
The sky view on midtown now showing on CNN is really striking. Along with obvious safety issues, I’m thinking of the financial loss to all those restaurants and theaters. My sympathy to all.
17
I work in a restaurant in the theatre district. It was mayhem, between disappointed customers and the all-hands attempt to save the food in the powerless fridge. Big hit to the servers and bartenders who needed the tips from a Saturday night shift. We'll see what happens tomorrow...
45
@sparrow pellegrini Hope good things happens tomorrow. Will Bill return and reimburse them. I hope so.
6
@Passion for Peaches Thanks Passion for Peaches I also worry about all the rich owners of restaurants and theaters.Shall we endorse a bail out for them. Elizabeth Warren how can you help.
I just got a text from NYC saying all lanes of traffic from 72nd to 42nd are closed. The mayor is off on a futile vanity project in Iowa. He should be in NYC being mayor.
28
@Rls. Doing what? Directing traffic?
1
Now off down to 35th street....
3
1977 was so much fun!
8
@DH94114
Not if you were in Harlem, the South Bronx, Bushwick or Flatbush.
18
@Bob Previdi
Are you the same Bob Previdi who used to take charge in the subway at times like this?
3
It was fine on the upper East side,not so fine elsewhere!!
DeBlasio said, via tweet, that it was a manhole fire that caused the outage.
3
I've seen the lights go out on Broadway
I watched the mighty skyline fall
The boats were waiting at the Battery
The union went on strike
They never sailed at all
Billy Joel Miami 2017
16
I’m hearing outage now extends to west 34th street
4
Time for another infrastructure week!
10
As usual, two of NY channels don't have any answers but their news departments manage to jabber incessantly about this blackout. They are stopping random people on the street for their thoughts. Who cares. Until they have some real information from ConEd, they should shut up.
54
I’m one of the affected. It’s pitch dark on 55th. Civilians are helping regulate the traffic.
People are dancing at Alvin Ailey in the dark :)
Meanwhile in the horizon you can see the lights of Hudson Yards beaming in supremacy.
248
@Al
Hudson Yards has new infrastructure, including electricity.
3
@Al
Hudson Yards was on emergency generators. Restaurants were cleared out do to lost power.
7
Hudson Yards lights went out too. Dragon Spring Phoenix Rise halted their show partwY through due to the blackout.
2
It might be useful for the NYC to have emergency plans posted all over the city, including inside each school, office building, subway car, train station, store, restaurant, park, etc.
Instituting a cellphone emergency alert system, if it’s not already in place, might be helpful.
Finally, would it be possible for the elderly and disabled, especially those who live on high floors, to signup for some sort of special notification/ “welfare check” system with the fire department?
27
@Oceanviewer ....but nobody could read them, alas
2
in 1977, i turned on the air conditioner and ... took a minute to figure it out.
really, president jimmy carter was calling for science based energy conservation decades ago. but like trump denying facts and obsessed with undoing anything obama approved of - i think it was reagan who took carter's solar panels off the white house.
and then there's cybersecurity and 'the grid'.
really knowing stuff and acting on it - in time - is a good thing. do i really have to say that?
46
This is indeed a major disruption and quite worrisome given people in elevators, on trains, traffic lights, etc. We may be grateful for the visibility steady assurances of intrepid leaders like Borough President Gail Brewer, New York City Council speaker Corey Johnson and Governor Cuomo. As for that worthless Mayor of ours who cares he should stay lost.
28
I once lived in NYC, but now live in a small city in Southern California. Here, we are constantly reminded to have an earthquake kit, and to make disaster preparedness plans. We are also supplied with printed materials which show disaster exit routes.
Additionally, many of us have signed up for cellphone emergency alerts, which also come in handy during wild fires.
It’s been a while since I lived there, but I hope that NYC offers similar reminders and alerts. This could be especially handy for the elderly and disabled.
I wondered about this since a friend who works in the apartment rental industry and lives in the West, told me she had been fielding frantic calls from NYC, including some from stranded elderly individuals.
21
A manhole fire should not be able to shut down half to almost all of west midtown.
I am not a believer of any explanation thus far.
27
@Alexandra Brockton
Absolutely it can. When a sub-station fails, others need to pick up the slack. If the surge is too great, as a safety measure, those sub-stations take themselves off line. How far this ripple effect goes is based on many factors. In 2003 the effect rippled through the entire northeast. Those of us in Manhattan who have power should consider ourselves fortunate.
18
You’re right. Jack Ruby, Lee Harvey Oswald, J Edgar Hoover, Fidel Castro and the Cosa Nostra did it.
6
Just walked over the Queensboro Bridge to get back to Queens. As I approached land at about 9:30, I was delighted to see Manhattan-bound N and 7 train’s departing Queensboro Plaza.
This is one of the rare times I can sincerely say, “Good job, MTA!”
42
On this day in 1977 I was a freshman at Fort Lee (NJ) High School. “Star Wars” had just opened up and I emerged at the end of the show with friends to the amazing sight of a completely dark horizon to the east, as opposed to the accustomed orange glow! Second incredible sight of the day.
66
I always carry a flashlight! Of course I just came back from camping out here in California, but, seriously, living in earthquake country, we have food, water, flashlights and phone chargers in our car, and some travel with us. We have all become so used to power companies, and relying on something, that really, can become quite fickle. Hope your power is restored, New York! Make friends with the people next to you!
49
Would this be called a "brownout"? California had them for about a decade or even longer.
Welcome to the world of old infrastructure and massive electricity by users.
16
@Don Juan
Brownouts are when power is reduced but not shut completely off. So, for instance, your refrigerator may end up cooling things only to 55 degrees instead of 40.
7
New York City, meet the ghost of Christmas future.
Several years ago, Gov. Cuomo made the understandable decision to close the Indian Point nuclear generating station, located north of NYC. Indian Point generates about 25% of the city’s electricity. There are two remaining reactors at Indian Point, one will shut down in April, 2020, the second a year later. The original plan was to substitute other sources of power, largely natural gas.
The problem is that the environmental movement has blocked the construction of new natural gas pipelines; a major pipeline was denied permits just a few months ago. There is abundant natural gas nationally, but there is already a natural gas shortage in the NYC region. Con Ed is no longer allowing new gas hook-ups in much of Westchester County and parts of NYC.
Renewal energy might be of some help, but in a densely populated area like NYC, it is of only limited use. Further, it is difficult to store renewable power, for when the sun isn’t shining or the wind isn’t blowing. Pumped water storage is probably the only large scale method feasible today. Con Ed wanted to build a pumped storage system at Storm King Mountain in the Hudson valley during the 1970’s, but it was blocked by environmentalists.
It takes years to build a gas pipeline. New Yorkers should hope that their elected leaders have done the math, and that the present blackout isn’t a portent of many more to come.
70
@Alex
This is not a brownout and therefore not a power generation issue. It seems like a disteibution SNAFU.
36
@Alex This isn't a generation issue. The problem appears to be with the distribution of power. All the generators in the world won't help if the power can't get to the people who need it.
21
I power failure that has nothing to do with supply issues is suddenly be used to criticize environmentalists and their opposition to a new pipeline that I’m not even aware of. Having an old nuclear plant operate within 50 miles of the city isn’t worth the risk. 15 million people within the area would have to be evacuated if there was a Fukushima type meltdown.
Claiming we shouldn’t use wind or solar to generate power because they don’t always generate power is nutso talk. We can incorporate battery tech to manage generation and usage. The entire new power economy is so massive and important that it would absurd not to lead it. But according to these people we should avoid it and not take a leadership role. Crazy. Don’t let these ever hold positions of power. Real or otherwise.
38
My husband and I were at the Time Warner Center to see a 7:30 pm Mark Morris dance program. We and others were held in the lobby til about 8 pm, when we were told there would be no performance. I had hoped he would take his troupe and dance on the plaza or at Lincoln Center outdoors. That would have been neat.
47
@Karen Arenson I love dance myself-how disappointing. Yes, this is a great stage for street theater--have all the events outside. Out of a mini-disaster, a new event can be born!
9
@Karen Arenson
I was in NYC during a power failure some years ago when I had tickets to a Bob Dylan concert. A number of disgruntled ticketholders were hoping Bob would play in the venue by candlelight.
However. These are basically emergency situations and the idea that an artist should move their performance from an indoor venue somewhere outdoors in the midst of tens of thousands of people having no power, no traffic lights, people stranded in elevators, stores quickly closing & likely thousands of people roaming the streets with no clear idea what to do - trying to find a way to move an indoor performance outdoors nearby is a bad idea. The ideal situation is for people to go home as rapidly and safely as they can, not hang around in midtown waiting to see what happens.
23
@Karen Arenson
Yes, a Mark Morris performance on the plaza would have been neat, but if there's no power or light out there either, it could be a safety hazard. And that would make it a liability problem for Lincoln Center.
15
I think the people need to demand for more power/energy alternatives. This seemed minor but think of the difficulties and potential devastation this could cause in the future.
What about the vulnerable like the elderly, disabled or parents with children? It’s clearly more difficult for these people to cope with this if they were stuck in the subway tunnel, elevator, or heaven forbid this would happen in a hospital or nursing home.
Consider this a wake up call New York.
31
@CG:
Hospitals and Nursing Homes are usually required to have generators.
Being stuck in an elevator would be another thing entirely!
9
@RLiss Yes, being stuck in an elevator would be the worse. Hard to imagine anyone would emerge sane if a few in a few more hours, the power remains off.
5
About a half-hour ago I tried to go to WNET PBS television from my computer here in New Mexico--got an error message that that address couldn't be reached.
Thank you The New York Times for putting this story on the front page of your online paper. Now I know what's going on as to why WNET was unreachable and will patiently wait for its restoration.
In the meantime, we're thinking of you out here in New Mexico, and best of luck to you in getting the power back in those areas where its out!
P.S. I'm a subscriber to both WNET & The NYT.
117
I was there during it. There’s nothing more eerie than New York City without power.
I was leaving the building I was in when the power went out. I had wanted to take the Columbus Circle subway station but when I got there it was completely dark- I started to go in with my iPhone flashlight on before I thought the better of it.
There weren’t any signs saying the station was closed, so I was baffled by it, but I decided to just walk instead of finding another subway entrance with lights.
As I walked to Grand Central I had to just dart across streets because all the traffic lights were out and so were the walk signs. So I pretty quickly realized the power was out everywhere at that point.
All you could hear were sirens as the cops tried to break through stopped traffic and get to street corners to direct the traffic by hand.
A few people on the street were taking pictures, one woman was crying saying it was a terrorist attack (nobody even stopped to talk to her or paid her any mind), and everyone else was a typical New Yorker- they acted like they weren’t even aware the power was out!
I was 3 years old when 9/11 happened and I’ve grown up in the cultural aftermath. My aunt and grandparents called me, asking if I was okay because they knew I was in that area for an appointment. I said I was fine, and I couldn’t see any evidence of a terrorist attack.
Then I walked into the part of the city that had power, suddenly it was all completely normal.
Weird.
310
@L Brown, that’s the big difference since 9/11: people will assume it’s terrorism, even if it’s only for a moment. I was in San Francisco for the Loma Prieta earthquake (1989). Power was out everywhere. People were so shellshocked from the quake that calm prevailed, for the most part.
26
I saw that performance. Remember who played Dunyasha the maid, whom you couldn’t take your eyes off of whenever she was on stage? It was Meryl Streep.
68
@L Brown in the blizzard of 96 I was working for NYCT covering 1 police plaza the OEM overnight. At 6AM I was off duty and was going to take the subway from Chambers st to my apartment in Chelsea. The city was so quiet, covered in snow. there was nobody on the sidewalks, only a path down the middle of Church St that only a few people had taken, so I decided to just walked all the way home, up 6th Avenue. It was surreal.
45
Blackouts happen. Hopefully no one gets hurt. However would it not be nice to have a Mayor who actually spends a bit of time in NYC rather than flying around the country auditioning for his next job. Last I heard we are paying his salary, not the people of Iowa or South Carolina, etc. BUT on second thought you folks in those other states can keep him. We’re better off without him.
73
@John I don't necessarily care for our mayor, but stop to actually think about what you're saying: What you honestly feel better if he were here? On one hand, you're complaining about him being gone. Then, on the other, you're essentially saying he should remain out of town. Baffling.
6
In August, 2003, the entire city and areas beyond lost power through the night. The city was still recovering from 9/11, and I lived downtown. It was an extraordinarily peaceful night; people were sharing food, setting up grills, and having impromptu parties.
I walked outside my building at 3-4 am. Families were sleeping in Rector Park; a guy walked by with a case of cold beer and offered one. My recollection was that there was virtually no crime anywhere in the city and that it was an amazingly gentle night of kindred spirits looking out for one another. I hope that prevails tonight.
714
@say what
that was a wild day... worked in Tribeca @ citi building and it was dark inside when power went out and then when we went outside, sunny and hot...walked home over Brooklyn Bridge to apt in Cobble Hill - hot, but eerily peaceful night...next morning, only place open was diner on Court Street -- can't believe it was 15+ years ago....
60
Not just cities! It affected Canada. I lived in Ottawa and we were without power for three days. It was wild.
59
@say what
Those were still somewhat 'gentle' years in NY post 9/11.
People a little kinder and less agitated, etc.
Hope vestiges of it linger if the lights stay off.
Good luck to all there / affected.
52
I remember the 1977 blackout well. I was a medical student living on the UES. No elevators, no AC.
It’s sad these events still occur. I feel badly for people with medical problems who cannot tolerate heat/humidity and for people who’ve waited months to see shows like Hamilton. 😕
I hope ConEd fixes this soon.
139
@Adrienne
During the 1977 blackout my brother was trapped on a stopped escalator for almost eight hours.
12
@Hank
Are you pulling our collective legs? Trapped on an escalator?
38
@Hank Why didn't he walk down (or up)? In what sense was he "trapped"?
11
My fiancée and I had dinner near Flatiron. We went down and caught a 6 to Union Square to get the Q back to Brooklyn. All of a sudden, no trains are coming to Union Square. We wait forever. We finally get a 6 downtown to Bowling Green. We get off at Fulton. We catch a Brooklyn bound 2. The two isn’t running to Flatbush Junction. After 2 hours and 20 minutes, we are on a 2 train shuttle bus to Flatbush Junction. There will be a 10-15 minute walk back to Ocean Avenue. Total commute from Flatiron will top out around 3 hours. Atrocious.
5
So sorry you were inconvenienced by a serious blackout and had a long commute home. Poor you.
3
It's great to see a blackout without widespread crime as a result, and it's a reminder of how far we've come as a society. I was a small child for the blackout in '77 but I can easily recall the breaking glass, gunshots, and screaming that went on all night long. So kudos, NYC, great job handling this.
I suspect the cause was simply Manhattanhenge stirring up some old pagan goddess that turned off the lights on a whim.
The other notable thing about this is the absence of our mayor. He's off in Iowa on his senseless, hopeless quest to be president. He's useless to us. But who is taking charge of the situation, and letting people know what's going on, is Corey Johnson. He's my choice for mayor in 2021, truly a terrific, honest guy who has the best interests of NYC in mind.
123
@Dan Stackhouse
From the ‘77 blackout...to your congratulations to New Yorkers...to Manhattanhenge (lol!) ...to the Mayor and Cory Booker, I love everything you say here!
7
@Dan Steakhouse -- the reason is that the blackout probably caught the criminals by surprise!
3
@Valerie. I like Cory Booker, too, but he’s talking about Cory Johnson, the City Council speaker.
10
Give it nine months. Than name the baby.
29
It just goes to show how utterly dependant on modern amenities urban dwellers are. That this is a top news story is laughable to those of us whose power often goes out (relatively speaking) during typical stormy weather.
Leading such a precarious and dependent existence probably explains why big city urbanites tend to vote for big government to take care of them.
18
@Mark It's notable due to the sheer number of people impacted, and all the public services such as transportation upon which these people depend.
72
Wow, funny how you use the internet to express your contempt of those who rely on technology.
150
@Mark and yet you read the New York Times.
44
We are unacceptably vulnerable to our addiction to the grid. Most of us have no Plan A, let alone Plan B. Like an earthquake, there's no warning. And with climate change upon us, we need to prepare for disasters with or without warning.
20
Dear A. Goldstein,
Speak for yourself, I wasn't affected by this power outage but if it had hit me, I'd have been fine. I've got gallons of water set aside, canned fish, food for two weeks if I stretched it, candles, flashlights, a hand-cranked radio, and if the zombie apocalypse breaks out, I've even got a katana. Not a disaster prepper but I'm ready for anything minor. And from what I recall of the last major blackouts, from hurricane Sandy and in 2004, everyone actually managed to get through it just fine.
23
I envy your storage space.
19
@A Goldstein
Here in Northern Virginia, a year and a half ago, a storm knocked out our power & the outage lasted 5 days. It wasn't the first time this area has suffered a weather-induced power outage - there had been one a year earlier that lasted for 48 hrs. I learned then to have water, food, several lanterns, batteries & a battery powered radio. We're talking about severe thunderstorms. The idea that the power company couldn't clear downed trees and debris quickly enough to restore power to tens of thousands of people for 5 days shows you how vulnerable we really are.
8
Is Trump Tower in the area without electricity?
11
@IowaMimi No, it’s on the East side of Fifth Avenue, which wasn’t affected.
3
Trump tower is on the east side but there are west side Trump properties.
What about “Sandy’s blackout it happened not to long ago
The inept mayor has done nothing except ensure he can't personally be blamed.
29
it took me 3 hours to get home, nothing was being updated as to what working and what wasn't, waited long times for trains that never came and ended up on the long island railroad. I think as one of the more iconic cities, we should have been better prepared, I'm just glad the threat wasnt more dire otherwise who knows where many New Yorkers would be
25
@sohyla I said the same thing! Where is the communication? I looked to social media, and the info was lacking. Walking from a cancelled Broadway show, I saw lines of people standing around waiting for information on how to proceed, the city can do better!!!
14
@sohyla The MTA website did have a list of affected subway lines. However, they ran a little behind changes in the field. For example, the 7 and N are now running into Manhattan and the website's front page doesn't reflect that yet. (I'm on the platform at Queensboro Plaza.)
3
I don’t know much about power grids, but it’s crazy that there is (seemingly) no redundancy system (at this scale) for these types of scenarios. In tech, there are fail safes, and back ups of back ups - clearly an apples to oranges comparison, but it seems crazy that an incident at a single substation caused an entire grid outage for a huge chunk of one of the busiest cities in the world.
59
@Sarkis Kalashian
As an EE, let me mention: A substation cannot have a backup. The nature of electric power grids makes that technically impossible.
31
@Austin Liberal As another EE, let me counter that: of course there are backups. Substations have multiple transformers, and parts of the grid are connected through multiple substations. Loads are highest on the hottest days, and we don't know what was near capacity or down for maintenance or what degree of redundancy there was.
But there was surely redundancy and we saw a failure. Was it an extremely unlikely event? Was the redundancy inadequate (almost certainly; but would the cost of sufficient redundancy have been worth it? without a lot more info we can't say)?
3
@John Hawkinson
But a local grid's power, distributed from a single substation, is not backed up by power from another. That would require the grid have dual feeds and switching apparatus that can select the one that is powered -- except they likely would both go out if the failure was more widespread.
Multiple transformers at one substation back up only local failures. Reconnecting the local grid to a different substation -- if one not affected by the outage is even available -- is non-trivial.
Per another post of mine: I was stuck in an elevator near downtown Oakland for over five hours due to a power failure, about ten years ago. Surely the SFBay area is among the most sophisticated around, and it didn't switch our 15 story building to another source.
2
I was there tonight. We were on an A train about to depart from 34th street and thankfully we got out right before the outage happened.
18
It could have been worse. I could have been there.
Interest rates are the lowest in my lifetime, and its been a good long life. We should be borrowing trillions to rebuild America. Instead, it just slowly collapses into a pile of its own rubble.
I worked in power distribution. Transformers should last for 80 years or more if they get proper maintenance and attention. But they don't. The quest for short term profits puts preventive maintenance on the back burner. They call it "deferred maintenance". A mice name for no maintenance.
332
RM,
My husband was a lineman. He talked about the same things. Almost glad he’s not here to see what we’ve become.
My prediction - it’s only going to get worse.
28
@RM
Borrowing trillions? How about correcting the absurb tax policies to generate some of those trillions so they don't have to be paid back by future generations?
26
Take it from the rich
Maybe not the best night for that sharing-a-corn-dog selfie in Waterloo, Mayor Bill.
192
"Russia, if you are listening" !!
30
One lesson from blackouts: You don’t know what you got til it’s gone. Nothing is more eerie than a power failure at dusk.
I feel for all the theatergoers, some of whom have most likely been waiting for this night for a long time.
Here’s hoping things get back to normal sooner rather than later.
45
I’ve never had a panic attack. I’m pretty sure being stuck in an elevator would do it.
78
@Josh
Not if you keep your head. I was stuck, at about midnight, with a neighbor and her child, in an elevator, as a result of a power outage. The emergency phone in the elevator went to . . . an answering machine!
We toughed it out -- the emergency light worked-- and I invented a game to play with the child. After several attempts to use my cell phone -- no signal inside the box -- I managed to wedge open a gap in the doors and, much to me surprise (I'm an E.E.), my cell phone found a weak signal!. One call, 911, relief arrived.
Keep your head, take action. Not all that terrifying.
44
What seems truly an example of bad planning is to see that there is no emergency system of lights in subways stations. How is that possible? Especially after 9/11...
263
You can see the emergency lights in some of the photos.
22
@Michael
Mentioning 9/11 is not an argument. All emergency lights would do is create another make work program for the MTA. Emergency lights wouldn't do any good when the train is stuck on the tracks.
3
@Chris, emergency lights would help people waiting in the stations and on the subway platforms, which are often tightly packed.
And certainly, having emergency lights would be a huge relief to people stuck on the trains.
They also would help transit workers who may be in the stations or in the tunnels as well as on the trains.
What we really need is emergency power throughout the subway system - at least enough to get all trains to the next station and allow people to exit.
15
How is it that the electrical grid in Manhattan is still so vulnerable to a single-point-of-failure scenario?? Has Con Ed learned nothing, and done even less regarding prevention such as a failure plan?
126
@David R If they try to raise rates $0.01 to pay for such upgrades, the howls of outrage can be heard in outer space.
46
Actually this looks like the infrastructure is more robust then in the past where a single failure would cascade throughout the entire system and eventually shut down the entire East Coast for instance.
I seem to remember reading that in the old days the left handed lightbulbs in the subway were independent of the power grid and stayed lit because they ran on direct current.
17
@David R Um - it isn't. This is restricted to a single subnetwork, from what I can see.
7
A transformer caused the outage, other sources are now saying.
6
The transformers: more than meets the eye.
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@Dan Stackhouse, booooooo. :)
2
The infrastructure crisis in America is getting worse. One wonders if anything will ever get done about it; we need roughly $4 trillion investment to fix it.
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So send the money in!
1
@Border Barry
Infrastructure in NYC is getting worse despite high utility prices.
When a state decides to issue a renewable mandate, utilities are forced to buy 20 year take or pay contracts with the renewable producers, which causes utility rates to increase. The next step is to refuse to grant rate increases for maintenance and repair.
Electrical infrastructure is always financed by local utility rates which are determined by the government utility commission.
Participants in the Regional Greenhouse Gas Initiative, which includes NY and Massachusetts, raised utility prices to implement their anti-global warming exercise. They took a tiny amount of the money to fund various energy efficiency and home solar projects but diverted the balance of the ever increasing state revenues to other delightful government spending instead of devoting it to worthwhile things like infrastructure.
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@Marcus Aurelius
Because of concentrated urban areas, far fewer cars which are used less, smaller dwelling units with common walls use less heat or A/C; etc.
Everyone knows urban areas are far more energy efficient.
10
Interesting how today is the 42nd anniversary of the 1977 blackout. They haven’t mentioned either 1965 or 2003 (which I lived through). Be safe and careful y’all!
75
Nobody mentioned the 1965 blackout? I must be getting old.
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@Joloto
My father was working in Manhattan when the 1965 blackout occurred and had to walk down many floors in the skyscraper of his office. He actually got home from work early that night. Recognizing that the subways and LIRR were not going to be operating, one of his coworkers who had driven to work from Queens loaded up his station wagon with pals and chauffeured them home.
28
@Joloto, in 1965 I was sitting in my high chair yelling, “What happen the lights?!” while my mother peered out into the air shaft to figure out whether it was just us or the whole block.
25
I was an 11-year old in the Bronx in November 1965 and had just finished my piano lesson with my very strict teacher, one who would take out his pen when he heard wrong notes and tap the miscreant fingers.
My sister also took lessons from this man and, fed up with his finger tapping, carefully bandaged each of her ten fingers individually as a protest.
An ad hoc conference was held right on the spot between our mother and the piano teacher where it was decided that my sister's short-lived "career" as a pianist was now over.
Literally as my sister was jubilantly proclaiming, "Hurray, no more piano lessons!" the lights suddenly went out.
Since the streets were now dark, making it too dangerous to drive, my mother decided to invited the teacher to stay, wait it out and, eat dinner with us.
My mother lit the one candle she could find. While I happily enjoyed my pasta, my mother and the teacher chatted in Italian.
However my sister, depressed that she would now be dining with her sworn enemy, refused to remove her bandages. She therefore was forced to grip her vermicelli using a pair of metal vegetable tongs, all the while sneering at the evil man in the darkness.
70
Lucky day. We had dinner reservations at a place on W 72d and power is on starting at W 71st. UWS north of 71 must be off a different substation.
9
Well, I guess the sunset got to shine with less competition from Times Square lights. But that video of people milling around and the sirens screaming makes me happy I live in the woods. And own a huge generator.
15
This is also the forty-second anniversary of NYC's total blackout
41
Yes, and it says so in the article, did you read it?
19
@JWinder Snark!
7