I mentioned in another thread, it took me 7 hours to get home to Brooklyn from Hicksville, Long Island. Most of that time was taken up walking the 5 or 6 miles from the East New York bus depot.
Lights went out at 4:10 and did not come back until about 5 am. It was an adventure, alright. Thousands of thousands of hot, tired yet intrepid people helping each other out. People taking it upon themselve to stand at heavily travelled intersections to direct traffic— and the drivers actually listening to them!
It didn’t get really bad until about 9 when it got very, very dark. But I was with a big group of people. The streets were filled. Residents were out in front of their houses with flashlights and candles.
Clothing stores closed the second it got dark but bars, restaurant and grocery stores were open until well past midnight giving away food and ice cream and ices (but selling water. For the original price! No price jacking at all). Some storefronts were giving glasses of water to all of us hoofers.
Drivers were stopping and loading their cars with people. Charter buses were opening their doors and yelling things like “I’m going to 5th and 60th-- get on!”
I think 9/11 prepped us New Yorkers. We knew it was going to be rough going. We knew there was a whole lot of walking ahead and word filtered down rather quickly that it wasn’t a terrorist attack. Yes I wondered-- no, feared-- that it was terrorist briefly.
P.S. Every bone in my body aches. I wish I had some beer. Send beer!!!
When my power came back on and I was able to check the news, they were into the “what happened” game. (Answer: we don’t know.)
Gov. Pataki said something to the effect of a problem with the power supply from Canada. I have no idea how he reached this conclusion. Probably just another way of saying “Hey, don’t look at us.”
The Canadian response, IMHO, was better:
“A Con-Ed station is on fire.” It wasn’t.
“Lightning hit a Niagara substation (on the US side!)” It didn’t.
“An entirely different Niagara substation caught fire (on the US side!)” It didn’t.
“There’s a fire in a Pennsylvania nuke plant!” There wasn’t.
“Whatever it was, the Americans did it.” Well okay, that’s likely.
The hysterical finger-pointing just struck me as funny.
Does anybody know what actually did cause the cascade?
Still wondering if the cause has been found yet. My digital TV is still out (but my cable modem has been back since this morning. Yay!) The radio is not being helpful on this subject at all.
Maybe I’m paranoid, but what if Al Qaeda has been working on disabling computer networks of electricity grids, water supply, etc.? If so, this would be a great victory for them. Would a knowledgeable Doper weigh in on my observation?
By the way, Biggirl, make your husband rub your feet. I said so.
The BBC was reporting on some spontaneous street parties here in Toronto where people used car lights and stereos to dance at night. Around my neighbourhood there were steel drums and lots of big hand drums.
Beer and food was really cheap for a bit. And ice cream was really cheap, since it was getting ruined.
Twerpy Eaves said “only essential staff goes to work”, so we got a long weekend.
Our power came back on at 5am , but died at 7:30ish again. Back on at 10:30ish (am). We went to an air-conditioned restaurant (not using any unnecessary power at home) and mid-meal, power went out. The collective “awww” from the restauranteurs was pretty funny.
It was over 24 hours before the power came on at my pseudo-FIL’s. His dinner last night was an entire gallon of ice cream he was afraid would melt. (We had cold weenies and beans!)
Well, I got my power back around 4 or 5 pm today (I was out of the house at the time). It was rough yesterday, my bus took two hours to get home with all the traffic in downtown Ottawa (normally takes twenty minutes).
I ate a sandwich yesterday for supper, and today for lunch. This morning I went to a local restaurant who had a gas grill going so I enjoyed a good breakfast (but bread, not toast was served). Reminded me of the 1998 ice storm, what with the cold showers and all. I live on the 18th floor of a condo building, which had a generator. Good thing! It was running to keep one elevator running, and the water pumps.
Would have posted sooner (I have a PowerBook with a battery, after all) but Earthlink’s switching stations for modem connections were offline, Verizon’s DSL was out, and it didn’t occur to me for quite some time to try AOL and use it as my TCP connection. We got power back here on the East Side / midtown around 4:30.
My girlfriend is making fun of me because I was starving last night and insisted on frying chicken and making rice and steaming up some green beans via flashlight and gas range during the blackout last night.
They recently announced 85% of NY residents had electricity again although they don’t want us using air conditioners or other heavy amp-eating devices, so we’re making do with electric fans.
As far as I can tell they are still clueless as to what actually went wrong in the immediate sense of what straw did in the back of the camel this time around. In the larger sense they are all in agreement that our grid system is incredibly outdated and the politicians and engineers have known it for decades but no one wanted to pay the political price for spending money fixing things that weren’t broke (yet). Maybe if they act fast they can get some referendum on the ballot while folks still have the blackout in their recent memories.
I had to walk home from Greenwich Vilage a stone’s throw from the Hudson to 49th@1st Ave. Actually it was pleasant in a surreal way, with more and more people streaming out onto the sidewalks. People were almost universally cheerful and pitching in doing things like directing traffic or giving away or selling for extra-cheap their ice cream and sodas and beer. Astonishingly cooperative drivers in automobiles negotiating intersections with cross-street traffic and pedestrians. I only heard about 4 car horns honk and saw not a single fender-bender and heard no voice raised in anger. They are saying there is only one known fatality and few injuries aside from blistered feet.
I saw people waiting in line to drive INTO the midtown tunnel to get to Queens.
:o
Reality check me here, folks: would you drive your car into an unlit tunnel with no functioning exhaust fans and traffic speed like turtles on Zoloft? I’d ooze through traffic for a few extra hours to try for the Queensoro or Manhattan or Brooklyn or Williamburg bridge if it were me. In fact I’d sooner ditch my car and swim across the east river than take a long slow trip through a carbon monoxide tube like that.
I wonder how the UN facility is faring, anyone heard? I’m pretty sure they have their own isolated backup generators precisely for things like this but I don’t know how long they are designed to run, and electricity is still scattered here on the east side.
Two and a half hours to get to da Bronx last night, and I was one of the lucky ones. I work on 26th and the Liberty Lines Express bus starts there and goes within three blocks of my house!
It took ONE HOUR to get from 26th to 42nd street. One more hour to get to the bridge to 149th Street–we applauded as our bus crossed the border into civilization and the American mainland 20 minutes up the Concourse, over to Woodlawn and home. Went to stay with Mom, who’s alone as Dad is on a guy’s railfan vacation in CO, the lucky guy. We cooked (yay gas stoves)some dead animals before they rotted and we stayed up until 1 am playing Monopoly by candlelight.
When we woke up, the power came back on–around 7:45 am. I am such a lucky kitty–yes, it took me 15 minutes to go one block sometimes, but at least I was in air-conditioning with lights on the bus, staring at the poor slobs who couldn’t make it home for even more hours than it took me.
20 minutes up the Concourse, over to Woodlawn and home. Went to stay with Mom, who’s alone as Dad is on a guy’s railfan vacation in CO, the lucky guy. We cooked (yay gas stoves)some dead animals before they rotted and we stayed up until 1 am playing Monopoly by candlelight.