For those of us that lived through the peaceful blackout of 2003 in New York City, an outage that affected eight states as well as Ontario, Canada, there was always the memory of the violent 1977 blackout. Though lasting only two days, the earlier blackout was situated in a much different social time. New York City was virtually bankrupt, now gentrified neighborhoods like the East Village could be dangerous places to be after hours. Fear-mongering was prevalent in this tough time of high unemployment–the Fear-City anti-tourist pamphlet came out in 1975, an extreme reaction to layoffs in police, firefighting, sanitation, and other municipal services. To top it off, the Son of Sam, New York City’s most notorious serial killer was still on the loose.
In “Blackout,” the latest AMERICAN EXPERIENCE on PBS, explores what happened on the hot and humid day of July 13, 1977 and the days to follow. Lightning took out an electrical line in Westchester County, leading to a domino effect of downed lines from an overload of demand. Con Edison engineers were forced to disconnect customers to prevent a total failure of the system. But a story like this is better told through New Yorkers themselves, including first responders, journalists, shop owners, and those who worked in the Con Edison control center on West End Avenue. This exclusive clip on Untapped Cities shows, among other accounts, how disconnected even the police force was–their cars lacked AM/FM radios to begin with and for some, the portable radios went down.
The post Exclusive Video Clip: NYC’s Blackout of 1977 Explored on PBS American Experience first appeared on Untapped Cities.