Looters and residents of the Bedford-Stuyvesant section of Brooklyn after the 1977 power failure
Photo by Tyrone Dukes
The New York City blackout of 1977 occurred 45 years ago today.
The electricity blackout affected most of New York City on July 13–14, 1977. The only neighborhoods in the city that were not affected were in southern Queens; neighborhoods of the Rockaways, which were part of the Long Island Lighting Company system; and the Pratt Institute campus in Brooklyn which operated its own historic power generator.
Unlike other blackouts that affected the region, namely the Northeast blackouts of 1965 and 2003, the 1977 blackout was localized to New York City and the immediate surroundings. It resulted in citywide looting and arson.
The events leading up to the blackout began at 8:37 p.m. on July 13 with a lightning strike at Buchanan South, a substation on the Hudson River, tripping two circuit breakers in Buchanan, New York.
The Buchanan South substation converted the 345,000 volts of electricity from Indian Point to lower voltage for commercial use. A loose locking nut combined with a slow-acting upgrade cycle prevented the breaker from reclosing and allowing power to flow again. A second lightning strike caused the loss of two 345 kV transmission lines, subsequent reclose of only one of the lines and the loss of power from a 900MW nuclear plant at Indian Point.
As a result of the strikes, two other major transmission lines became loaded over their normal limits. Con Edison, the power provider for New York City and some of Westchester County, tried to start fast-start generation at 8:45 p.m. However, no one was manning the station and the remote start failed.
At 8:55 p.m., there was another lightning strike at the Sprain Brook substation in Yonkers, which took out two additional critical transmission lines. As before, only one of the lines was automatically returned to service.
This outage of lines from the substation caused the remaining lines to exceed the long-term operating limits of their capacity. After this last failure, Con Edison had to manually reduce the loading on another local generator at their East River facility, due to problems at the plant. This made an already dire situation even worse.
At 9:14 p.m., over 30 minutes from the initial event, New York Power Pool Operators in Guilderland called for Con Edison operators to "shed load." In response, Con Ed operators initiated first a five percent system-wide voltage reduction and then an eight percent reduction. It turns out they misinterpreted the term, making the situation worse.
Con Ed could not generate enough power within the city, and the three power lines that supplemented the city's power were overtaxed. Just after 9:27 p.m., the biggest generator in New York City, Ravenswood 3 (also known as "Big Allis"), shut down and with it went all of New York City.
By 9:36 p.m., the entire Con Edison power system shut down, almost exactly an hour after the first lightning strike. Power was not fully restored until late the following day.
The blackout occurred when the city was facing a severe financial crisis and its residents were fretting over the Son of Sam murders. The nation as a whole was suffering from a protracted economic downturn, and commentators have contrasted the event with the good-natured "Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?" atmosphere of 1965.
Some pointed to the financial crisis as a root cause of the disorder, others noted the hot July weather, as the Northeast at the time was in the middle of a brutal heat wave. Still others pointed out that the 1977 blackout came after businesses had closed and their owners went home, while in 1965 the blackout occurred during the day and owners stayed to protect their property. However, the 1977 looters continued their damage into the daylight hours.
Looting and vandalism were widespread, hitting 31 neighborhoods, including most poor neighborhoods in the city. Possibly the hardest hit were Crown Heights, where 75 stores on a five-block stretch were looted, and Bushwick, where arson was rampant with some 25 fires still burning the next morning.
At one point two blocks of Broadway, which separates Bushwick from Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, were on fire. Thirty-five blocks of Broadway were destroyed: 134 stores looted, 45 of them set ablaze. Thieves stole 50 new Pontiacs from a Bronx car dealership. In Brooklyn, cars were backed up to targeted stores for looting.
LaGuardia and Kennedy airports were closed down for about eight hours, automobile tunnels were closed because of lack of ventilation and 4,000 people had to be evacuated from the subway system.
ConEd called the shutdown an "act of God," enraging New York Mayor Abraham Beame, who charged that the utility was guilty of "gross negligence."
In all, 1,616 stores were damaged in looting and rioting, and 3,776 people were arrested, the largest mass arrest in city history. Many were stuffed into overcrowded cells, precinct basements and other makeshift holding pens.
Shea Stadium went dark at approximately 9:30 p.m., in the bottom of the sixth inning, with Lenny Randle at bat. The New York Mets were losing 2–1 against the Chicago Cubs. Jane Jarvis, Shea's organist and "Queen of Melody," played "Jingle Bells" and "White Christmas." The game was completed on September 16, with the Cubs winning 5–2.
For much of July 14, most of the television stations in New York City were off the air (as the areas where those TV stations were located were still without power for much of the day).
During the blackout, numerous looters stole DJ equipment from electronics stores. As a result, the hip hop genre, barely known outside the Bronx at the time, grew at an astounding rate from 1977 onward. Three decades later, Grandmaster Caz recalled that he took advantage of the widespread looting in their part of the Bronx to get a mixing board, as did other aspiring rappers and DJs.
"After the blackout, all this new wealth … was found by people and they just — opportunity sprang from that," he recalled. "And you could see the differences [in their sound] before the blackout and after."
The city was eventually given over $11 million by the Carter administration to pay for the damages of the blackout. After an investigation, significant changes were made to guard against a similar occurrence. They are still in effect today.