The Black Out, One Year Later

[Taualumna]

Tomorrow marks the one year anniversary of the big black out. Where were you when it happened? I was sitting in front of my computer, trying to post a message on a messageboard, but the power was cut before I could hit the post button!

[PM_Mama00]

Home. The power went out for no reason, so we went outside to see what was up. Our cell phones weren't working, and when our next door neighbor told us that a family member of hers was on the phone with someoen from NY when it happened, we kinda freaked. Tried calling our family in NY and couldn't reach them.

So we did what everyone in my neighborhood did... went and got tons of water and gasoline for our generator. One nite we sat in front of our garage with our neighbors and lit a huge Citronella candle. It was kinda fun!

[PhiPsiRuss]

I was at home, on the web. After being irate for 10 minutes, I decided to make the best of it. i walked down 13 flights of stairs, and headed over to Battery Park City. Everyone was talking with everyone. After the sun went down, I headed back to my building. All of the elderly and disabled people were already attended to. I walked up 13 flights, got some beer from my fridge, and walked back down. I hung out on the streets in my 'hood, and had a blast.

I would love a repeat of the blackout, but only if the weather is as nice as it was last year.

[Peaches-n-Cream]

I had just walked in the door after being stuck on the subway unrelated to the blackout. I grabbed a drink and sat down to watch Oprah. The tv went out. I realized the whole entertainment system was out so I went to flip the switch on the circuit breaker. It had flipped off a few days earlier so it seemed logical. I flipped the switch and nothing happened. Then I heard the sounds of traffic and honking. I realized it was a blackout. I opened the door, and the power was out in the corridor.

I did not enjoy it. It was hot, and I couldn't sleep that night. I was happy when we had power.

[CSUSigEp]

I was in California, laughing at the news, with the lights on.

[PhiPsiRuss]

Originally posted by CSUSigEp
I was in California, laughing at the news, with the lights on.

We didn't need electricity to laugh at California. Without power, we had a crime rate lower than that of any California city with a population of 50,000 or higher. And we have over 8 million people.

[AOII*Azra-elle]

Originally posted by CSUSigEp
I was in California, laughing at the news, with the lights on.

*l* I was doing that too---only in Colorado with my A/C and my sisters thinking how lucky we were!

[IowaStatePhiPsi]

I was out camping in the woods. When I came back and heard there was a blackout I laughed because those city people are wusses when it comes to power outages.

[Shima-Mizu]

I was at work at the Grocery store I used to work at.

I was cashiering, and all of a sudden our machines reset. About half of us were able to log in, but only able to stay logged in for about 10-15 minutes before we too were completely down. We were speed scanning items for customers and people were bagging them quickly. After the rest of the computers went out, we had to hand write out what everyone wanted, and what the total was. We made a decent chunk in tips since people would just give us a large bill and say to forget about the change, this they were that desperate to get out and back home. We didn't realize it was a HUGE thing when it happened though, as we had a generator, which turned our lights back on. Later we slowly kept hearing more and more though... Our stockers ended up having to put all of the ice on top of the meat so it wouldn't go bad... I had to drive back that evening, and on the drive back, I noticed people directing traffic at intersections because there was no traffic lights working anywhere.

It was distrastrous, but at the same time very unique and fun. I came home to a house full of candles, and a very boring and dull night of nothing to do but lay in bed and wish I was tired...

[kateshort]

My husband and I were vacationing with my parents last year in Germany, and they'd gone to sleep while we were watching CNN International edition and chatting. So we saw it just as the news was breaking as they kept saying, "Oh, and now we're getting reports that _yetanothercity_ is now without power" and "We don't believe that this is a terrorist attack but we're still looking into the situation."

We spent about fifteen minutes trying to figure out whether it was a big enough deal to wake my parents up.

After about an hour of news reports, it was clear that it was just a sucky evening for y'all and that nothing else was happening. We were relieved, because we were going to fly home in just a few days and didn't want to have to miss a flight due to power outages along the east coast!

[Kevin]

I was in Oklahoma enjoying my A/C.

[aephi alum]

I was at a client site. We'd been having brownouts all day, which was annoying because the computers kept going down because the idiot was too cheap to get UPS's. So at 4:15 when the power really went down, I figured everything would be back up in a few seconds... didn't happen. Since I couldn't do any work without a computer, I went home.

All the traffic lights were out. When this is the case, you are supposed to treat the intersection as if there were a 4-way stop sign. I appear to be the only one in the area who knows this. Most people didn't even slow down!

I got home and tried to get hold of my husband only to discover that our land line was down. So I tried my cell, only to discover that my husband had pulled my cell off the charger in order to charge his, and my battery was now flat. So I plugged my charger into my computer's UPS and recharged my cell that way.

When power goes out in my house, we lose everything - water, A/C, stove, oven, etc. are all electric. So we had tuna salad for dinner (thank God for manual can openers!).

We got power back around 2:30am.

One of my current coworkers has the best blackout story... he had a bunch of his neighbors over and used the charge in his UPS to power a blender so he could make margaritas.

[AGDee]

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

[mmcat]

new yorkers have a way ot coping with craziness. my hat's off to them. i was back at school with air conditioning.

[mmcat]

new yorkers have a way ot coping with craziness. my hat's off to them.