On August 14th at approximately 4:11pm myself, along with 50 million other citizens of the Canada and the Northeast and Eastern Midwest United States, got a severe reality check. For reasons still unexplained, power was lost in 8 U.S. States and parts of Canada. The outage extended as far North as the Canadian province of Ontario, as far South as New Jersey and Pennsylvania, and as far west as Michigan. Immediately after the disaster took hold officials from the U.S. and Canada as well as various power companies began finger-pointing and blaming each other. U.S. government officials were quick to rule out terrorism, but erroneous stories about lightning strikes and fires were floated out to the media and seemingly every official statement by a Canadian or U.S. government official was replaced 15 minutes later by a correction or retraction. The weather has also been all but ruled-out as the cause since it was not hot enough either in the Ohio Valley or in the Northeast to cause such a demand on electricity that the system should have overloaded. As of today there is still no official word on what caused the massive outage although the investigators say they are beginning to believe that it originated in the Ohio area and quickly spread as failsafe systems failed to contain it. I even heard people on the street theorizing that it was a social experiment in preparation for something else to come, “a dry run” as some may call it. Hell, who knows?! What is known for sure is that more than 100 power plants, including 22 nuclear reactors in the United States and in Canada, shut down in a matter of seconds, most of them automatically to protect themselves against power surges.

The past week’s blackout was the worst power failure in U.S. history in terms of size and effect, even worse than the blackouts of 1965 and 1977. Like the officials still trying to explain the outage, I can’t tell you how it happened. In fact it doesn’t even make sense to me how any localized event could cause this kind of massive electrical failure in 2003. I can tell you however, that one way or another the White House will likely try and spin this disaster to push for further privatization of the energy markets, or nuclear power, or oil drilling in Alaskan artic reserves or some other protected area. And when they do it will be particularly disturbing because not only would these suggestion be wrongheaded and fail to address the central issue or prevent future blackouts, but when the smoke clears, one of these suggestions, namely privatization of the energy market will likely be at the root of the blackout.

Back in the Early 90’s shortly before George Bush Sr. (the father of the current President) left the White House he gave energy corporations a kickback that they had been lobbying and spending a lot of money to have forced down the throat of the public - federal deregulation of electricity. From there it was only a short step to get electricity deregulation at the state level. One of the first states to fall victim to the deregulation and privatization, corporate wet dream was none other than California. You remember those guys right? You know California, The Left Coast, home of rolling blackouts, and victim of Enrons grand theft. It is known that at the time of the blackout there was more than enough power being produced by the power stations in question. The problem will likely boil down to the method of delivering this power - the transmission lines and other infrastructure. No single authority controls the electrical grid system, and under privatization and deregulation, there is very little financial incentive  for private companies to maintain or invest in upgrading the transmission line infrastructure. In addition the current system is set up such that the bidding process allows for companies to attempt to supply power to areas that are not geographically sensible simply because the quote the “cheapest” price. It will be interesting to watch the manner in which “free market” fundamentalist (privatization and deregulation advocates) attempt to spin or whitewash this situation. I can’t say for sure how the blackout investigation will end, but on another note, I can tell you about the effects of the blackout, at least in New York City.

Fortunately the power went out in the daytime when people still had several hours of daylight left, and this along with the fact that the outage lasted less than 24 hours for most of those affected, kept the situation civil. All the figures I have seen indicate there were relatively few criminal incidents attributable to the blackout reported throughout the ordeal. Early in the day I witnessed regular citizens attempting to direct traffic at busy intersections (since their were no streetlights). I witnessed people trying to help each other, giving water away for free. I even saw a couple of businesses giving food away for free (to prevent it from spoiling of course). For many people in urban areas where people live stacked, floor on top of floor in housing complexes and apartments instead of houses, it offered people a chance to meet some of their neighbors for the first time. In fact, if there were any doubts, the early hours of the blackout offered a snapshot of just how gentrified areas of the city that were formerly almost exclusively inhabited by Blacks and Latinos, had become. Those were just a couple of observations that made my long walk home at least interesting, if not enjoyable. But it wasn’t “all good”, or interesting for that matter.

In New York City, ground zero of Capitalism and ruthless profiteering many basic necessities were selling at a premium. I watched some apparently, blackout-frightened, sap, buy a Gallon of cold bottled water for what had to be at least $10 dollars. I also watched the price of small bottles of bottled water increase 50-100% and stores that sold ice cream close for the day rather than give it away.

Outside the business front and beneath the veil of civility, lay chaos. Just looking around at people I couldn’t help but think that many of them were simply waiting for someone else to “set it off” to let the looting begin. Most stores and businesses closed their doors within minutes after they lost power. It wasn’t the hottest it’s been in NYC this summer much less, the hottest it’s ever been, but it was about 90 degrees and the humidity was high which made it particularly uncomfortable. I walked more than 80 city blocks to get home that day, but fortunately I had on sneakers, which is more than I could say for many people, most of whom were just getting off early from their 9-5 jobs. Watching all these people walking home from work or wherever they were was like a scene from some end of the world movie. People just seemed dazed and a little confused, besides being obviously frustrated. It was amazing to see how dependent modern society, particularly in a highly industrialized country, is on electrical power.

In a nutshell, almost nothing worked! That means, NO Television! NO refrigeration! NO Radio (unless it’s battery operated)! NO computers! NO Internet! NO Playahata.com. NO lights! NO elevators! NO air conditioning or even fans! NO video games! NO anything you have to plug in! NO credit card or ATM transactions! In New York City this outage also meant NO subway trains and if you were on one when the power went out you had to get out and walk through the subway tunnels with the NYC rats that were also probably just getting off work. In most cases cell phones also were not working, probably because power was out at many relay stations in the area. Even for those of us who had battery operated radios, several prominent New York area radio stations were simply off the air, complicating attempts to get information about what was really going on and when it would be over. 

Of course the station with probably the strongest broadcast signal in the region, New York’s Hot 97 (97.1fm), which for a long time dominated New York’s “Hip-Hop and R & B” orientated radio stations without any competition, stayed on air as they always seem to be able to do. And just as on September 11th, while people in their broadcast area were wondering what the hell was going on, Hot 97 just kept on playing music - “I don’t know what you heard about me / but you can’t get no info out of me / you think we good for jack you’re crazy / cause Hot 97 is some moth@$# P.I.M.P.s”. It’s a regional blackout, you’re one of the few stations still on the air, and you’re playing music? Talk about accountability issues (this is also one of the problems with the FCC’s attempts to roll back ownership rules even further). Then, as if that wasn't bad enough Hot 97, in NYC had the nerve to use the fact that they played music during most of the blackout as a commercial for the station. In the commercial a Hot 97 employee states that they could have played mostly news during the blackout but they chose to play music because ..."you know this is Hip-hop". But of course! This is Hip-hop, which I suppose means to Hot 97, that the audience likes to be kept in the dark both literally and figuratively.

But enough about unaccountable radio stations, these things are far from necessities. In New York City’s maze of high-rise buildings no electricity also meant no RUNNING WATER (especially if you live above about the 5th or 6th floor), you see the pump that sends the water to your faucets and showers also runs off of an electric pump. I also didn’t have phone service because the more you rely on technology the more vulnerable you become. You see those wireless phones that we all seem to love so much don’t work without being plugged in. I would have given anything for even an old-school 30-pound rotary phone that plugged directly into the wall.

Not having electricity was humbling indeed and when this whole ordeal was over it had lasted ……a mere 18 hours! 1,080 minutes (and I spent a good part of that sleeping)! Not even a full day! You couldn’t help but have a newfound appreciation for what you do have and for how important electricity currently is to even the most basic functions or our everyday lives. But just as important is that being without power put a lot of things in perspective, in terms of human suffering. We often like to turn the channel or take a “hear no evil, see no evil” approach to strife seen in other countries. Many times it’s easier just not to look at the torn bodies, broken hopes, and tear soaked faces of people in places like Liberia, Afghanistan, Congo, and Iraq. It really drives home what it meant when your hear how bombing has disabled a power grid or access to clean drinking water somewhere for an indeterminate amount of time, especially in society’s where the infrastructure is such that people have become accustomed to having these things. It hits home even harder when the fact that people no longer have these things are a direct result of policies being enforced in our names with bombs and missiles purchased with our tax dollars. Sometimes apathy just isn’t an option

Released: August 18th, 2003

The views and opinions expressed herein by the author do not necessarily represent the opinions or position of Playahata.com.