Subcultural engagement for the 21st Century...
Barbelith is a new kind of community (find out more)...
You can login or register.

Underground > Conversation >

Blackout Tales

El Gato Was Right: the t-shirt

04:38 / 15.08.03

Okay, if you live in the Northeast or Midwest U.S., feel free to tell your blackout stories. Snogged with a loved one (or a stranger)? Got trapped in a subway? Worried about a distant family member? Buy a flashlight on the street?

From the New York Times:

A surge of electricity to western New York and Canada touched off a series of power failures and enforced blackouts yesterday that left parts of at least eight states in the Northeast and the Midwest without electricity.

The widespread failures provoked the evacuation of office buildings, stranded thousands of commuters and flooded some hospitals with patients suffering in the stifling heat.

In an instant that one utility official called "a blink-of-the-eye second" shortly after 4 p.m., the grid that distributes electricity to the eastern United States became overloaded. As circuit breakers tripped at generating stations from New York to Michigan and into Canada, millions of people were instantly caught up in the largest blackout in American history.

In New York City, power was shut off by officials struggling to head off a wider blackout. Cleveland and Detroit went dark, as did Toronto and sections of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts. In some areas, the power problems were scattered. The lights remained on in Albany and in Buffalo, but not in nearby suburbs.

08:50 / 15.08.03

It's 5:49am right now, and the power came back on about half an hour ago... that was fun! It was dead quiet, the stars were out, and I lucked out by having a gas stove. It was fun to see everyone running around on the streets....

...I was hoping for a long weekend though. Ah well...

Tryphena Absent

09:26 / 15.08.03

You should have thrown a dinner party

10:04 / 15.08.03

Never mind! Apparently there's a state of emergency and everything's closed!

No job interview today! Subways are closed! Weee!

STOATIE LIEKS CHOCOLATE MILK

11:00 / 15.08.03

I was trying to explain to my boss' girlfriend this morning that it was probably Snake Plissken that was behind it... then I had to explain all about Escape From LA... and when I finally had to say "well, okay, you've never heard of it, it was a crap film anyway" I realised I was actually talking bollocks.

11:15 / 15.08.03

blackout tale .

11:46 / 15.08.03

Mine's boring, but my fiance and I didn't realize that this wasn't just a local power outage, so we hopped in the car, figuring we'd drive until we found something to do. After fifteen miles worth of traffic lights which weren't on, we figured it might be best to turn around. (The radio in my car doesn't work, so we were confused.) We went home and called our parents in Connecticut, and they said, nope, we don't have power either, and told us how far it went.

So we ate all the ice cream sandwiches in our freezer for dinner, sat down and got a pad of paper, some crayons and colored pencils and doodled for a while, then played a little scrabble with a very loose interpretation of the rules. After about an hour, the power came back on, and we checked it all out on TV, feeling a bit sick from too many ice cream sandwiches. The end.

13:25 / 15.08.03

my mom is visiting me in chicago from the 'burbs of detroit, where she lives and i am from. last night we were sitting in my living room chatting when she said, "let's turn on the tv to see about the power outage." cos we're a bit concerned for my dad back home. so she turns on the tv, and the lights promptly go out. i guess w/the a/c, fan, computer, lights, et al all on, the tv was the proverbial last straw. blew a fuse. how's that for irony.
i called my landlord and the power was on in about 15 minutes, though, so that was good.

13:50 / 15.08.03

I was just walking out the door when the power went out in our apartment. The people across the hall like to stand in the corridor and converse loudly with each other, and today they went wild, blaming the landlords for the outage. Someone was stuck in the scary, piss-soaked elevator, but they got him out lickety-split.

Being my day off, I had a big list of things to do, which I soon discovered was useless. No Jenny Everywhere zine today! I came back home and reported to my roommate, found the candles and the flashlight, and settled in for a pleasant evening with the kitties. My roommate was a little upset because he had planned on having people over, and ignored me when I suggested they still attend. People called to ask if we were alright without food or fans. We have a gas stove, and I'm not dependent on air conditioning, so it was all good. We spent most of the night reading Calvin and Hobbes by candlelight and wondering how long it would take for society to breakdown if electricity was gone forever.

Later, we went for a walk, and it was lovely. Groups of people wandered the streets, looking like zombies. Sometimes you'd almost walk right into one because you couldn't see them coming. My roommate and I sat on a grassy hill, watching the cars and buses go by. A police officer kept shining his light on us, so we shone ours back.

I have to grab a paper. According to Cherry, on another thread, there was looting going on somewhere.

15:19 / 15.08.03

"It was just like 911!"..If I hear one more idiot on the street say that im gonna start thinning the gene pool. No, 911 had numerous aircraft being crashed into buildings by terrorist killing many innocent people. This was a powerfailure, which had a lot of people hitting their shins on funiture. Get over it. 1-3 days of no power and people on tv are acting like its the apocalypse. Civilization has turned many into idiots.

now im going to go get coffee before I get any more grumpy.

15:47 / 15.08.03

well, I work nights, so I had set my alarm for about 9:30. it went off(battery backup), although there was no electronic display, just a klaxon in the pitch black. It was like waking up in the twilight zone. went outside to find... stars, and tons of them. I didn't even notice everyone on lawn chairs talking. called work, talked to the neighbors, drank beer, went for a walk, took pictures (thank god for 1600 speed film). What a wonderful neighborhood. Creepy, with the streets being totally dark and empty except for the occasional emergency vehicle. My brother's a firefighter, so I might have more stories when he wakes up in, oh 8 to 12 hours.

16:16 / 15.08.03

I woke up on the ferry as it was pulling into Manhattan. 10 minutes later I figured out what's going on. The more informative version of my story is in the Blackout thread in the Switchboard.

While I was out in Manhattan, my parents, my brother, and the dog went to the beach on Staten Island. They told me that the moon was red. That's all I've got to say right now. Maybe more later.

19:51 / 15.08.03

drug-addled post blackout tale

17:00 / 18.08.03

I was just outside the affected area, so wasn't actually in the blackout, but it did hit just as I charged a sigel for a servitor. I thought that was just the least bit freaky. It was like finish, look up at email, see first message pop in announcing the event.

Though as amusing as it sounds, I refuse to take any responsibility for this one. My servitor, on the other hand, I suspect has fed well from it.