November 9, 1965…The Great Blackout Hits The Northeast
On this date, 49 years ago, it was lights out in a big way! Were you there? From Ontario, Canada to Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, New York, and New Jersey, over 30 million people and 80,000 square miles were left without electricity for up to 13 hours.
The video here has NBC’s Frank McGee, reporting from New York, asking the cameraman using a tiny RCA Walky Looky portable camera, to pan around the studio which was lit by on 2 candles, a Coleman lantern and a battery powered lab light. This was video fed to WRC in Washington where the network had to originate during this time.
I know the video signal was fed there on AT&T lines, and that even when the power goes out, landline phones still work, but with such a large area affected, it’s hard to imagine where the phone companies got enough power to operate…even with emergency generators.
Oddly, the power seemed to go down slowly. WABC’s Dan Ingram recalled the event and playing an air check in which you can hear the records slow down…finally it all stopped at 5:28 PM.
The only good thing about that night was the full moon, which helped a lot of people in the dark. Were you there? Got a story? Thanks to Glenn Mack for reminding me of this. Enjoy and share! -Bobby Ellerbee
Here’s the LIFE Magazine cover a week later from Glenn Mack.
I was in college upstate NY and it was TOTAL except for emergency power at the hospitals. We thought we were being invaded.
Here’s the camera they were using…the RCA Walky Looky portable which debuted in 1952. The larger RCA Astro Electronics cam would not be available till 1968.
I was in 8th Grade, on a school bus going home that night. The initial surge began at the Sir Adam Beck hydroplant in Niagara Falls, Ontario, where a large relay opened, causing the overloaded circuits to cascade in a domino effect across the Niagara Mohawk grid, to the Con Edison grid, and so on.
We lived in Brooklyn between Brighton beach and Coney island and the power flickered I think around 530 or 630 but we had power all the way thru
Was 530 the flicker. I can’t remember but I think all tv transmitters might have gone dark depending on what backup empire had. I was 11 j
That was amazing. You get to see one of the great NBC news men, Frank McGee, and some very creative engineering. The tiny camera does a pretty good job under very low lighting, although you do see lots of characteristic vidicon smear on motion.
Yup, remember it well here in New Hampshire.
I remember being a young boy in Brooklyn and in the kitchen with my mother…WMCA on the radio. Mom turns on the washing machine (yes it was in the kitchen) and the music starts to slow down. Mom struggles to shut the washer off and it’s too late…we are in total darkness. Took Mom hours to understand that she didn’t take the entire NE corridor down but still felt guilty that she slowed down the music!
I was 8 years old, but I remember it so vividly. I did not know about the riot in Walpole Prison in MA. I remember listening to the transistor radio… The stations that remained on the air were running on emergency power and the music was playing faster than normal.
Really goes to show how far we’ve come. Hard to even make out faces
I remember this well…we scrambled in Washington to get things ready to go on the air when McGee finished…we did the evening news from Washington.
I was in Douglasville, GA at the time, a long distance from the source of the trouble. I was 15 years old. Despite the distance, we experienced ‘cycling’ voltage. Watching the incandescent lights, we could see the voltage go down, then go up, repeatedly. It was like there was a dimmer on all the lights that went from full voltage to zero, then back up to full voltage again and again; each cycle lasted about 10 seconds. I later learned that power generating stations all over the East were being brought on line to replace the generating stations that were out of service. Since many stations were ‘out of sync’ with each other, they would go through in-phase/out-of-phase cycles, resulting in voltage variations like we experienced. It was a looney time to be a kid in the South . . . . . 😉
It was so bizarre! Remember it like it was 49 years ago! Frank McGee was unreal, his English perfect as he read the wire!
Watertown, NY: The street lights dimmed briefly then returned to full brightness. If the operator at the city owned municipal electric system had followed protocol he would have phoned the grid op. Ctr. before disconnecting . . . and Watertown would have gone dark along with the rest of the Northeast. As it was, the muni was able to re-excite Niagara Mohawk’s hydro plants. The upshot was that we did not experience the blackout except as a news story. It was fascinating to watch Walter Cronkite reporting by flashlight.
All of 4 and was safely w/my parents.
I was just talking about this yesterday, I lived in Boston on Beacon Hill, we had the only lights in the city with gas lanterns. Men were directing traffic in the dark, white shirts and skinny black ties , the style of the day.
I was there. It was the opening night of a play I was stage managing on Broadway. A very strange night. But as usual, New Yorkers got it together, pulled together, and through it.
as i am viewing this video … the power goes off ! the POWER of suggestion rules and the battery is King
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6r9W7Jz_11Q