For those too young to remember, it was a major power outage that struck the Northeastern United States back on November 9, 1965. More than 30 million people in eight states, as well as Ontario, Canada, were left without electricity, with the outage lasting up to 13 hours.
Above is the front page of the Journal of November 10, 1965, reporting on the aftermath.
The Journal coverage noted, "At its peak last night, the power failure and companion blackout encompassed 80,000 square miles and 30 million persons in New York, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island and Toronto and Ottawa in Canada. It hit about 5:50 p.m. EST and New York City, one of the last areas to have power restored, was without lights until 3:55 a.m. today.
How did it happen?
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| Sir Adam Beck Hydroelectric Power Station No. 2 Courtesy Water.OPG.com |
"On a particularly cold November evening, power demands for heating, lighting, and cooking were pushing the electrical system to near its peak capacity. Transmission lines heading into southern Ontario were heavily loaded. The safety relay had been misprogrammed, and it did what it had been asked to do: to disconnect under the loads it perceived. As a result, at 5:16 p.m. Eastern Time, a small variation of power originating from the Robert Moses generating plant in Lewiston, New York, caused the relay to trip, disabling a main power line heading into Southern Ontario. Instantly, the load that was flowing on the tripped line redistributed to the other lines, causing them to become overloaded. Their own protective relays, which are also designed to protect the lines from overload, tripped, isolating Beck Station from all of southern Ontario.
"With nowhere else to go, the excess load from Beck Station was redirected east, over the interconnected lines into New York state, overloading them as well, and isolating the power generated in the Niagara region from the rest of the interconnected grid. The Beck generators, with no outlet for their power, were automatically shut down to prevent damage.
"The Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant continued to generate power, which supplied Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation customers in the metropolitan areas of Buffalo and Niagara Falls, New York. These areas ended up being isolated from the rest of the Northeast power grid and remained powered up.
"Within five minutes, the power distribution system in the Northeast was in chaos as the effects of overloads and the subsequent loss of generating capacity cascaded through the network, breaking the grid into "islands". Station after station experienced load imbalances and automatically shut down. The affected power areas were the Ontario Hydro System, St Lawrence-Oswego, Upstate New York, and New England.
"With only limited electrical connection southwards, power to the southern states was not affected."
I was too young to be aware of it until a Doris Day movie (the next to last of her career) came out a few years later entitled, Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?
I remember that one well. It was so creepy at work that we were sent home early. I remember driving slowly through Lakewood on the way home, with all the traffic lights out. The stores all had their doors open, trying to let some light in on a hot, sunny day. Nobody knew what was going on, and there was a lot of anxiety that it was the result of terrorism, as 9/11 had only happened two years earlier.
I seem to recall the power coming back on in early evening, much to my relief.
Wow.. the great blackout of 2003. That brings back memories. We were actually at Splash zone in Oberlin when it happened. They sent everyone home and no one knew what was going on... so much uncertainty. I'm thinking the folks in 1965 faired a bit better - they hadn't gotten as use to all the gadgets we have now and days... and they hadn't experienced 911 just a few years prior.
ReplyDeleteI remember the '65 blackout, even though I was fairly young youngster. Big adventure, with candles and all. I remember Dad taking us outside to show us "what night really looked like." Oddly enough, my kids remember me doing much the same after 9-11, only I showed them what a sky without airplanes and jets looked like.
ReplyDeleteI was living in Oberlin in 2003 outage. The city's power crew disconnected us from the regional mains, fired up the town's generators, and we back in 45 minutes. The long-term outage caused the company I worked for to install a generator big enough to keep the building running, as long as it was supplied with diesel, that is. I don't think it was ever used, besides its monthly test.
During the afternoon of the August 2003 blackout (thank you Ohio Edison), I was in my NYC Battery Park office on the 23rd floor. I walked down the stairs to the street. Subways weren’t running. And, for some inexplicable reason, neither were the buses.
ReplyDeleteSo I walked to my wife’s office in midtown Manhattan where her employer was arranging car service to every workers’ home. We put ourselves on the waiting list and . . . .waited. But they forgot our names. The hours dragged on well past midnight. We were the last ones left when at 4 am someone realized that we hadn’t been given a ride. We finally got home at 5 am, entered our darkened house, and a few minutes later, VOILA!, the lights came on.
Once again, a big thank you to Ohio Edison.
In 2003 I was working at Ford's Ohio Assembly Plant.During the blackout all of us were gathered up and sent outside the plant.Inside it was total pitch black-couldn't see an inch in your face-type darkness.Super dangerous as people could've been impaled with sharp metal if they weren't very careful.I think Ford canceled work for the rest of the week.
ReplyDelete