Northeast blackout of 2003 | Hacker News Reader

Northeast blackout of 2003

en.wikipedia.org

28 pointsiancarroll13 comments

Remember that one. It was so strange. People didn't quite know what to do with themselves. Usually they'd go home in the evening and watch TV. TV was not working so they they just kind of ended up going outside and met neighbors they had never talked to before. It was great.

The food was going bad in the refrigerators and freezers so neighbors got together and those who had generators offered to store some of the food. People were firing up their grills and grilling out together, talking, socializing.

In the morning they were used to hitting Starbucks to get their caffeine fix but local Starbucks was out of power, so I remember a few neighbors complaining among other things that they have coffee headaches.

Next thing when the power came back, everyone went and bought generators. Spent thousands of dollars on those things. But I don't remember them being used much after that as there were no other such major outages since.

Oh and also they promptly went back to watching TV (and now probably browsing the web) and being just as isolated as before from each other.

I wasn't in NYC for this, but it reminds me of two events I was in NYC for: The earthquake of 2011 and the aftermath of hurricane Sandy.

During the earthquake many people fled their buildings, so we wound up at a kind of impromptu block party at the restaurant across the street with everyone excitedly telling their stories.

After Sandy, lower Manhattan was still dark. But people were out kind of giddily enjoying the bizarre experience of dark Manhattan and sharing stories, which gave the town an interesting sort of social buzz.

Anyway. The moral of the story: Despite NYC's grouchy reputation, New Yorkers seem to immediately come together during these events to talk, hang out, help, etc. It's a reminder that we live in a good town.

Everything is an event in New York. Even a minor earthquake 300 miles away that shakes your silverware.

No, actually surprisingly few things are "an event" in New York. Even stuff as major as the NYE Times Square Ball Drop are completely ignorable in most of the city if you turn off the TV.

Earthquakes, though, are rare. And if you haven't felt one before, kind of a crazy novelty.

Another interesting anomoly I experienced driving around north Detroit metro during the outage, to check on grandparents, friends and the hospital for a birth, was traffic moved much more efficiently when intersections turned into 4-way stops. Driving from 12 mile to Square Lake and Southfield to Rochester Rds was unusually brisk, even with all the hotrods cruising & loitering[0]. Perhaps they could benefit from some roundabouts...

[0] Woodward Dream Cruise

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woodward_Dream_Cruise

Two things about this incident have always struck me: How incredibly calmly New York City handled what movies tell me should be a riot-worthy moment; and how I have never met someone who wasn't living in the Northeast at the time who is aware that this occurred (I mention it off-and-on).

Chicagoan here (W suburbs). Not only was I aware of it, I used it to justify a $40,000 natural gas generator installation at my home (I'm a work-from-home radiologist, so outages are unacceptable [and also need back-up internet, of course]). Also have a full disaster-management plan and supplies in place. I got plenty of jeers from neighbors and colleagues when I had everything installed. Kept us going during a several-day outage during a heat wave about 5 or 6 years ago. We hosted 3 families for almost a week, with always-on AC, refrigeration and basic lighting.

Couple shorter brownouts since then. Nobody laughing at me now.

(PS: I'm not advocating for general installation of these things, as they are a major investment. But this was in my threat model.)

Now days you could install a battery system (e.g. Tesla Powerwall) and solar, instead of the generator.

This would probably come in significantly cheaper than the $40k, and pay for itself over time through reduced energy bills.

I would love redundancy and resiliency on a household if not neighborhood level, but I am afraid that such resiliency would be expensive.

We're all terribly vulnerable should anything happen on a regional level.

It didn't last long enough to be a bother for most people. It was basically a party. A few more days and it would've been Super Dome at MSG.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northeast_blackout_of_2003#New...

"most of the restaurants in lobbies gave out free food to guests. Since most perishable items were going to spoil anyway, many restaurants and citizens simply prepared what they could and served it to anyone who wanted it, leading to vast block parties in many New York City neighborhoods. Any ice cream in frozen storage also had to be quickly served to any and all passers by."

I was on the overnight Amtrak from NY to Chicago when this happened. I was only 7 or 8 at the time, so I had no idea what was going on - I was just thankful for the extra ~10 hours to explore the train (and find the unlocked snack cabinet in the cafe car).

SE Michigan here:

We'd just had a long power outage (hours, from the night before) restored around noonish at home. Few hours later... poof - all of Michigan gone due to this. Quite annoying! :)

It hit during my last final exam of the summer term. We were lucky that our prof let us complete the remainder of our exam under the glow of emergency lighting.

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