I was at work. Our power kind of buzzed on and off a few times and it looked like strobe lights. My co-worker and I dashed into the server room to make sure the UPS's had done their jobs and we manually shut down the servers. We hung out for a few minutes until a co-worker said that she called her kids about 50 miles away and they didn't have power either. We decided to just leave. Apparently our building's emergency generators run on water pressure, which also was gone so the emergency lights didn't stay on for more than a minute or two. A co-worker of mine and I both had to use the restroom before we left, so we propped the door to the restroom open, but it didn't help us see in there at all! It was pitch black in there. Then we went to flush and nothing happened.. it was freaky. We got out of there and headed into the pitch black stairwell. It was hard to find where the steps were. One of our security guards was standing at the bottom of the stairwell with a flash light pointing up, so if you tried to look down to see a step, you were blinded by this flashlight
Finally got down the stairs and started to head out of the building and someone else said that the blackout extended coast to coast and there was all kinds of speculation about it being a terror attack.
My mom is on oxygen so I was very worried about her and was trying to reach her on my cell but the circuits were so busy. With downtown Detroit completely emptying out all at the same time, the freeways were jammed. It took forever to get home. I crossed a bridge in an industrial district and just after I passed it, saw huge flames behind me. From looking in my rear view mirror, it looked like all of downtown Detroit was on fire. It turned out it was the factories burning off the gases in their smokestacks. It was definitely scary at the time though. Finally reached my mom with my cell and she said she had enough oxygen in cannisters for at least 2 days so from that point on, I was far less worried. My neighborhood felt like a big block party after that!
Dee