There are a few lights out in Manhattan, 42 years later to the day.....

gilded

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I bring it up because I was running an elevator in a building at 97th and West End Ave when the 2nd black out hit.

Anybody got any stories??

gilded/harry
 

silverfox103

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Don't have any stories about that one Harry. But on a related note, I remember in 1965, 54 years ago, when a black out hit in the Northeast and Canada. I was @16 at the time, we lived in the Boston area. I remember it was a fault in a power switch in Canada that caused the domino effect. It showed how vulnerable our power grid was. Now with all the foreign hacking that goes on, it's hard for me to believe we're in better shape.

Tom
 

gilded

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Here's my story. It's a long one.

On July 13th, 1977, I was living in Manhattan, sharing a big, family-sized apartment with '6 musicians total' on West End Avenue & W. 97th street. We lived in a 15 or 16 story apartment building. Some of the musicians were great, some were just measly students (like me).

We had a deal with the landlord. In exchange for running a completely old-school manual-elevator 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, we got free rent of an apartment on the 15th floor! It was the Barter System and actually worked out pretty well. There was always someone who could run an elevator shift, because, believe me, the 6 of us never had 6 gigs at the same time.

The Elevator:

The elevator was old. It had a handle that moved in a semicircle from 9:00 to 12:00 to 3:00 The handle was located on the face of the elevator control panel. There was also a really cool brass-alloy folding gate instead of modern solid elevator doors.

The handle's default position was 12:00, at the 'stop' position. You pushed the handle to 3:00 clock-wise to go 'down,' 9:00 counter- clockwise to go 'up' and again, 12:00 straight up to 'stop.'

The elevator was fairly easy to run. There was only Big Rule; never jump from 'up' to 'down or 'down' to 'up' without stopping first at 12:00 'straight up.' Why? Because you could blow out these really huge fuses in the basement (they were the size of antique 10 gauge shotgun shells). None us had ever tried to change out one of those beauties and it looked dangerous as hell.

Back to Big Blackout Number Two:

I'm on duty, and I'm running the elevator downstairs to the Lobby to pick up a tenant. Then, the buzzer for one of the doors went off really close to my ear and without thinking, I flipped the elevator from 'down' to 'up' without stopping at 12:00. Boom! The elevator went dark and the automatic brakes kicked in, bringing the whole contraption to a stop.

There was no light on inside the elevator and I had no idea which floor I was on. My first thought was, 'I am so fired.' My second thought was, 'where the heck am I?' I opened the gate and stuck my hand out in the dark. I couldn't feel concrete, so I knew that I hadn't stopped between floors. I moved my hand around some more, up and down this time and deduced that the elevator had stopped fairly close to the ceiling of one the lower floors.

Still in the dark, I jumped out and landed on my feet on whatever floor I was on. It became apparent that there was no light on at all in the hall-way of whatever floor I was on. I remember thinking, 'man, I didn't just blow the elevator fuse, I blew the whole building!!!'

I started moving around on the floor in the dark. I walked into a corner where I knew there would be separate front doors to 2 apartments and I started knocking on both doors.

A scared voice came out of the darkness from one of the apartments, "Who is it?"

I said, "It's the elevator man. What floor am I on?"

One of the apartment doors opened and a tenant I recognized by voice said, "You're on the 2nd floor."

All the apartments had the same floor plans, so when the tenant opened the door, I could see that the interior of the apartment was completely in the dark.

Because I knew the floor plan, I knew how to look past the guy and check through the outside windows of his apartment for any signs of light across the street. I did so. Through the dimmest of outside light possible, I saw that street lights were out on both sides of West End Ave. I could even see some of the buildings on Broadway, 600 feet away, had no lights on!

I was actually pretty happy at this point, because it hit me that if the lights were out all over other blocks on Broadway and West End, It Couldn't Be My Fault That The Lights In The Building Were Out! Big Relief!! I was no longer The Culprit!

I made it down to the Lobby and out onto the Street in front of my Building. There were a few of us from the building and we could hear glass windows being smashed up on Broadway. In front of our apartment house, lots of people (voices in the dark, really) were running up and down the streets screaming and yelling. It was unnerving.

[The next day we found out that people had been looting the big stores on Broadway. The 'smashing sound' was big plate glass storefront windows up on Broadway]

Car Lights:

Cars would go past us on West End Ave, but the buildings were so high it looked like they were traveling by flashlight deep down inside the Grand Canyon. The headlights barely made a difference, as if they had been replaced by tiny, tiny flashlights. It was incredible.

The Last Story:

My younger sister, a student a Juliard, lived 10 blocks away, straight south on West End Ave. I was scared as I could be, but I knew I needed to check on her, so I walked south to her building, avoiding all the crazy people I could by moving close to buildings when 'the screamers' ran by. I could also hear the sounds of people slamming their shoes to the ground as they ran past me and believe me, I would move out of the way for those folks, too.

I finally made it to her building. I knocked a few times on her ground floor apartment window to check on her. She eventually answered me (Everybody Was Scared). I found out she was okay, so I travelled back through the mayhem, the screaming and the foot-slamming mob one more time and hung with my impoverished musician-friends until Sun-Rise. The End.
 
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F312

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Sounds like that job had its ups and downs.

Ralph
 

Nuuska

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There is already an Aerosmith song "Love In An Elevator" - so perhaps a name like "Horror in An Elevator" could do...
 

merlin6666

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I lived in Ontario during the Northeast blackout of August 14-28, 2003. Most did not get their power back until two days later. In other areas, it took nearly a week or two for power to be restored. At the time, it was the world's second most widespread blackout in history, after the 1999 Southern Brazil blackout. I think we were without power for two or three days. While we were worried about crime, all was peaceful. But food was issue. We did not have an alternative energy source. It was possible to eat some of the refrigerated food without cooking (I will never voluntarily eat raw broccoli again), and miraculously all the frozen stuff survived. Water was still coming out of the taps. I checked the news on the car radio (didn't own another radio anymore already at that time). Played a lot of guitar in the dark and at candlelight, as there was no media distraction. I thought about getting a generator to be less dependent on the grid, but even that would not be solution for very long blackout.
 

gjmalcyon

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We were without power for 60 hours after the South Jersey "macroburst" event of 2015. I ended up picking up one of last Generac generators available in a 50-mile radius, which was enough to keep hot water, freezer, fridge, and FiOS router up and running for the duration. The cell network stayed up for several hours until the backup generators at the cell sites ran out of fuel. Between the generator, my grill with a couple of propane cylinders, and camping lanterns, we got by just fine. The lack of artificial light really reset our circadian rhythms - we were ready for bed by 10 pm.
 
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