sdelmonte | My Tale of the Blackout

4:11 pm, Thursday - We are having a farewell party for someone in the office when the lights go, and the emergency lights come on...

Everyone else shrugs it off, but in the eleven years I’ve been in the building, I’ve never seen this, so I figure it’s not just us. I leave the party, and go look out the window. Something feels off, and I try to call machine at home. When the fifth ring comes, I know it’s not just the office, not just the neighborhood. A call to my mother confirms this, as we both realize the city is suffering a blackout.

I find the office radio. Luckily, I use a battery-powered fan and have a small supply of D batteries around. Just as I’m getting the radio out, my boss checks on me and I tell her that it’s not just us. Truth be told, I was scared. While the rational side of my brain put “terrorism” low on the list of possibilities, I am never one to let rational notions deter fear. At the same time, though, I have read enough on the topic of the Grid to know how fragile it is.

I turn the radio on, and bring it to the party. They stop having fun about now, as we hear about other cities also going dark. One or two people suspect terrorism, but as I hear that Washington and Boston are fine while Cleveland is not, I feel oddly relieved. Still worried though. My efforts to reach Batya at her office in Passaic don’t work, as first her phone goes to voice mail, and then as our office phones go out. (I figure that there was enough emergency juice in the Audix network to make a few calls initially, but no more than that.) I say a prayer that Batya was not on the bus home, listen to some more inaccurate news reports - “Eastern seaboard” is totally wrong given how few cities on the coast were affected - and then the office workers as a group decide that we’d all best be going somewhere else.

I know what to do. After 9/11 I had Emergency Plan 1 in place for times I couldn’t get home (and as much as it scares me to think this way, it’s good to do this, as we’ve seen): my friend Gabe, followed by [Bad username or site: ”dotsomething” @ livejournal.com]. Both live in the mid-60s, about a mile from the office. I grabbed Gabe’s address and phone number from the phone book, and set off.

Along the way, I hear many car and portable radios, and the word that it was simply the Grid doing what antiquated Grids do is spreading. Mayor Bloomberg is going on all the radio stations, sounding totally calm but not at all paternalistic. Rudy, as magnificent as he was 9/11, would have been too stern in this case. Bloomberg sets the right tone. (I’ve decided I like him, despite his choice of party and his shortcomings as a manager. He doesn’t panic, and that helps a city stay calm).

I beat Gabe home, and not remembering his office in only in the Times Square area - he used to work further downtown - I go to dotsomething’s place to wait for her or to talk to her mother. Her mother is home and tells me dot is not too far away. So I wait what turns out to be an hour, but which point I look as forlorn as she has noted in her journal. I say “Hi. Was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by,” echoing a classic moment from Nightwing. She calls Gabe for me to see if he’s home, and as he is, I turn around and go back to his place. Dot and I are both a bit concerned about the potential for mayhem after dark, and even for the opportunistic terrorist attack. At some gut level, the latter never seemed likely, but the former? Well, I recall the looting of 1977. Blackouts have on occasion brought out the worst.

I make a quit stop at a grocery store before moving on to Gabe’s. For some reason, I am not exactly thinking about real food, and am happy to get a bag of pretzels, a box of cookies, two bottles of water, and two bottles of from-concentrate non-fridge-needed orange juice. At the time, the price tag of $14 seemed high, but later I did the math and decided that it was pretty much what I’d always pay in a Manhattan grocery.

Over to Gabe, to settle in. I try to call Mom to let her know where I am, but she’s not home. I reach Batya’s parents, and make sure they know where I am so that Batya can call me there. We start schmoozing, and try to get some news from the only transistor radio he has. It’s a freebie that Bloomberg Radio gave out last year, and it only gets that one station. It’s an all-business news station, and as a source of any other news, it stinks. We switch it on and off, occasionally hearing something new. Con Ed is hoping to have power restored by midnight. I believe it for some reason.

The evening sinks into night. Gabe lights a couple of tea lights, left at his place by his girlfriend Sa for times when she’s there for shabbos. Her brother Yoni calls, and will soon be joining us as his bus has just arrived in NYC. Some time for a trip from Boston. Gabe touches base with Sa, who it turns out has been with my mother at her usual Thursday night Bible study group. (Note: I’ve known Sa a good deal longer than Gabe - for the most part, bringing her in Batya’s group of friends has hugely altered her life. So it’s not so odd that she’d be hanging with my mother.) Sa tells him to tell me to call Mom. I do, and we agree that even if power returns before I go to sleep, I’m staying the night.

Somewhere around 9 pm, Batya calls. She’s okay, and staying in Passaic at neighbors of her boss. She’s been fed, and will find her way home the next morning. We speak just a bit, as to not tie up her hosts’ phone - at this point, cell service is still all garbled from whatever garbles it at times of network anxiety - and we say our goodnights. I knew she was in good hands with her boss, but just talking to her puts me at ease.

At 9:30, Dubya finally speaks. As usual, he fails to impress me. Apparently, once terrorism is ruled out, he and his drones see fit to let the states handle the events. The largest blackout in US history - maybe in world history? - and he acts as if it’s not his concern. Let’s ignore the fact that it was not impossible for this to have been the result of cyber-sabotage, and therefore worthy of a lot more scrutiny. ( I do believe it was really just one of those things, but why were the Feds so quick to say that?) Instead, let’s just think about how many millions of Americans have been forced into darkness, how many billions of dollars are being rerouted into emergency services and extra police and wasted food. And Dubya seems to regard this as a blip, less than a blizzard or a hurricane. Meanwhile, he continues his fundraising trip in California. The failure of the Grid, and how it relates to our national security and economic well-being MUST be treated as a major issue in the upcoming campaign, It’s too serious a matter now.

Anyway, my anger vented at Dubya, Yoni arrives. We chat a bit more about the blackout, about the recall election, and about how Gabe's boss expects him at work early the next morning. He works in the financial sector, and since the stock exchange has sworn it will be open, Gabe has to go to work. I myself decide that even if the lights are back on, I am not going to work. I know I will not sleep well in the heat, on a wood floor, in need of a shower and a hug from Batya.

At 10:30, I officially conk out. But I barely sleep more than four hours. At 2 am, I awaken and try to figure out if power has been restored. I decide it has, as it’s not pitch black outside, but when I get up for good at 5:30, the truth is revealed in the form of a bathroom light that doesn’t work. I still haven’t figured out why the night didn’t seem so dark. The moon, I guess, combined with the haze and with whatever light the millions of candles and flashlights and headlights made that night.

We turn on the radio, and learn far more about the Nikkei Index than we need to know. We also learn that Con Ed is not setting a timetable anymore for restoring city power, that most of Long Island and New Jersey have power, and that the small swath of Manhattan with power includes Gabe’s office. More incredibly, there was no looting, no disturbance of the peace, only goodwill and thousands of stranded New Yorkers and tourists sleeping outside.

At 7:45 am, we leave, Gabe for his office and Yoni and I for a bus that will take us across Queens to Forest Hills that leaves from near Gabe’s apartment. The line for the bus is very long, but we only wait till 9 am for a bus that will hold our part of the line. We leave Manhattan, the lights still out, the subway still not running, but the people in fairly good cheer.

On the other side of the Queensboro Bridge, there are working traffic lights, as the radio had reported. But as we get further from the bridge, the lighted path remains lit. Power is coming back to Queens ahead of us, a carpet to home. At 10 am, we arrive in Forest Hills, one more bus from our destinations, his parents’ home and my apartment. The ride was crowded but fast, and as we get off the bus, the sun feels nice and the air feels comfortable.

Now the last step, and the hope that power is back at home. As we cross Flushing Meadow Park, I cannot help but smile as the traffic lights glow red and green. Shabbos will not be ruined. Indeed, neither will the contents of my freezer. I say goodbye to Yoni as he gets off first, and feel a certain degree of triumph in getting back. Through my head runs “100 Miles,” though this time I did not have to walk that far (as I did that horrid day in September 2001).

As I get off the bus, I feel a momentary swell of pride in my city. We did it. We made it through the night without the worst emerging as it did in ’77. Maybe we’ve grown up, gaining perspective from 9/11 and maturity from the passage of time. Or maybe ’77 was the fluke, a night of pent-up anger during a fiscal crisis and a summer dominated by the Son of Sam. Either way, I was home.

And not long after, Batya arrived, having made it back to the city by bus from Passaic - where power was restored the night before - and then from the city on a fast express bus. We hugged for what didn’t seem long enough and seemed like forever, and caught each other up on the night we were apart.

The rest of the day was spent listening to updates, to Governor Pataki angered beyond words that this happened, to Mayor Bloomberg warning us to conserve, and to the signs that things were edging back to normal. It wasn’t normal yet - and with the threat of rolling blackouts, normal may be days away. We slept without air conditioning on shabbos, not really in comfort, but I was so zonked that by afternoon nap time, I didn’t care and napped three hours. We caught up with more friends at shul.

And Friday night, after dinner, before sleep, we looked out at the skyline. On Thursday night, it was dark. On Friday night, the Empire State Building was illuminated, a sign that the engines were running again.

Let me end with a trivia question: what 90s TV show offered a rather odd explanation for the 1965 blackout, which affected less people but which followed the same path of blackness?

Be well everyone, no matter whether you’ve been in the dark, or just feel a bit light-headed.