Blogtrek

The Great Power Blackouts of 1965 and 2003

On 2003 August 14, I turned on the evening news expecting to hear the weather. Instead I heard that some news outfits, such as NBC, were broadcasting on emergency power and that there was a power outage. I looked on the Internet and sure enough, the big banner headline on CNN’s site was “BLACKOUT”. It had hit New York State, including my birthplace, Ohio, Detroit and parts of Canada, Pennsylvania, Vermont and Connecticut. Terrorism was ruled out. I would think so. To me this blackout reminds me greatly of the 1965 November 9 blackout.

I was a college sophomore at the time in Rochester, NY. I had just came back from a trip to a Niagara Falls military base to get a physical for Air Force ROTC, which I enrolled in the next year. It was 1700, 5 o’clock, so I went to the dining hall to get something to eat. While I was at the table, the lights started going dim and bright over and over again in a sinusoidal pattern. Then they got dim. Shortly afterwards I saw students with candles in their hands. I went back to my dorm to see if what had happened to the power had hit my dorm. It had. There was no power there. My roommate had a radio and was listening to the radio broadcast. It said tghat New York City was hit by the blackout. It said that Buffalo was hit. After a while it said that Boston was hit. It became apparent to us that this was a huge power blackout. I tried to swtudy in the darkness and figure I was going to have to go to bed early, when the power came back on at around 1930, 7:30 pm. I heard later, though, that power did not come on to New York City until the next morning.

The 2003 blackout affected pretty much the same area, except that it hit Detroit and Cleveland but did not hit Boston. People are now saying that we need to replace our antiquated power system. Because of this blackout? In that case, they should have done something in 1965. People are saying this is the worst power blackout in our history, but they ignore the 1965 blackout, which was a near twin of this one. There is a difference between this one and 1965, however. In 1965 energy was plentiful: there was plenty of coal, natural gas, and nuclear energy, and our nation had yet to hit a peak in oil production (1970). Today in 2003 we face a world wide ultimate oil shortage about 2010 or so, an electric power distribution shortage around 2005, and just this coming winter a natural gas shortage that threatens to double prices. Already (because of a pipeline burst) Phoenix is repeating the scenes of 1973’s oil crisis. I hope the Blackout of 2003 alerts the nation and the world to these upcoming shortages so we can do something about them.