This Day In History

I'll bump this thread up from time to time as it falls off the board or is near the full bottom of the screen. With a new day in history. I was hoping for something cool like the Hindenburg. I got the East Coast Blackout.

If you want to see the video and 10 second commercial. Mine was for Tide. Otherwise you can read.

http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history


On this day in 2003, a major outage knocked out power across the eastern United States and parts of Canada. Beginning at 4:10 p.m. ET, 21 power plants shut down in just three minutes. Fifty million people were affected, including residents of New York, Cleveland and Detroit, as well as Toronto and Ottawa, Canada. Although power companies were able to resume some service in as little as two hours, power remained off in other places for more than a day. The outage stopped trains and elevators, and disrupted everything from cellular telephone service to operations at hospitals to traffic at airports. In New York City, it took more than two hours for passengers to be evacuated from stalled subway trains. Small business owners were affected when they lost expensive refrigerated stock. The loss of use of electric water pumps interrupted water service in many areas. There were even some reports of people being stranded mid-ride on amusement park roller coasters. At the New York Stock Exchange and bond market, though, trading was able to continue thanks to backup generators.

Authorities soon calmed the fears of jittery Americans that terrorists may have been responsible for the blackout, but they were initially unable to determine the cause of the massive outage. American and Canadian representatives pointed figures at each other, while politicians took the opportunity to point out major flaws in the region's outdated power grid. Finally, an investigation by a joint U.S.-Canada task force traced the problem back to an Ohio company, FirstEnergy Corporation. When the company's EastLake plant shut down unexpectedly after overgrown trees came into contact with a power line, it triggered a series of problems that led to a chain reaction of outages. FirstEnergy was criticized for poor line maintenance, and more importantly, for failing to notice and address the problem in a timely manner--before it affected other areas.

Despite concerns, there were very few reports of looting or other blackout-inspired crime. In New York City, the police department, out in full force, actually recorded about 100 fewer arrests than average. In some places, citizens even took it upon themselves to mitigate the effects of the outage, by assisting elderly neighbors or helping to direct traffic in the absence of working traffic lights.

In New York City alone, the estimated cost of the blackout was more than $500 million.

Such damage estimates are woefully exaggerated.
Any complex system that can't deal with trees growing along power lines is absurdly unprotected.

On that day, I was tearing up a house in Dunkirk, NY, not even 2 miles as the crow flies from the Niagara Mohawk coal fired powerplant. That was a spooky day. “Just like that”, our radios died, our tools died, and it sounded like hell had begun.

I assume the plant had a number of safeguards, one of which must have been pressure releases. The sound was deafening; even at our location 2 miles away, it was incredibly painful to the ear. I almost fell off the blasted house, it was so bad. You couldn’t get away from it; even inside the house you had to shout to be heard. Outside… you couldn’t go outside. It was like standing next to an 80gal air compressor that you just uncorked. Insane.

It lasted several minutes. When it was over, there was nothing. No house power, no street power, stores were unlit. That was before anyone had smartphones or anything like that; hell, I was still 5 years away from my first flip phone. We had no idea what happened, and with 9/11 still on the surface memory, it was very disconcerting. No TV for news, no radio for updates. Everything was dead. Soundless. Powerless.

Work quit, obviously. I was too weirded out to move far. I ended up going just down the road to the pier next to the plant, smoking a bowl in my car and just waiting... for something. The plant to blow up? I don’t know. But I wanted to keep my eye on it, glaring at it suspiciously, as if I could intimidate it into revealing its true intent. I don’t know what I was thinking being there, like maybe I could hop in Erie and swim to Canada if shit got hairy lol. I just sat and waited for the all clear to be heard on my car radio.

Weird, weird day.

Quote: wroberson

Despite concerns, there were very few reports of looting or other blackout-inspired crime. In New York City, the police department, out in full force, actually recorded about 100 fewer arrests than average. In some places, citizens even took it upon themselves to mitigate the effects of the outage, by assisting elderly neighbors or helping to direct traffic in the absence of working traffic lights.

It became clear 9 months later what everyone was doing to occupy themselves during the blackout.

The following day the media could hardly hide its collective disappointment at the civilized behavior of the large majority in the areas affected during the blackout.

I was delivering pizza and beef sandwiches on the west side of Chicago. It's almost 3 months to the day of my false arrest and false imprisonment.

I admit I was kind of surprised that very little civil unrest took place. Of course I don't expect the average American to loot and riot, but there is a criminal element that will merely out of necessity.

I was consulting for OLG (Ontario Lottery and gaming) in Sault Ste. Marie, ON at the time and just stepped out of the office at 4pm. The lights blinked as i was leaving and thought nothing of it. My wife was with me and we had rented a car that week for the 8 hour drive back to Hamilton where I was living at the time.

We heard about the power outages on the car radio and realized that our problem was going to be gas. Virtually all gas stations run their pumps off electricity wso they were closed. Luckily for us, there was one gas station that was an old-style pump that did not run on electricity. We were able to fill up. It was a pretty fun drive. All lights were out, including streetlights and traffic lights, but we managed to get home safely. We were without power for 3 days if I recall and did alot of Barbecuing. Our freezer did not truly defrost until the third day but by then everything was bad. I think we fled to Niagara Falls on the last day -- they had power pretty early so it was normal down there.