Shedding new light on August blackout

On Aug. 14, the largest blackout in American history darkened homes in scattered areas across eight U.S. states and parts of eastern Canada. Tens of millions of people, including some IU students, were left without power for nearly two days. \nThe massive blackout, which even left some without sanitary water, prompted pedestrians to direct traffic, strangers to share cabs and street vendors in major cities to quickly sell "I survived the Blackout of 2003" t-shirts. \nThe power outage did not reach the Hoosier state, but many IU students who were home for the summer returned to Bloomington this week with their own survivor stories. \n"We laughed when the power first went out, but then everyone started crowding the streets, and we heard people yelling that the whole city had lost power," said Jenna Hess, a sophomore who was in New York City at the time. "That made me pretty nervous because I was afraid people would start looting. It was great how cool everyone was to each other, though. I had a lot of nice people help me find my way home, and then it was of fun." \nMajor urban areas like Detroit, New York City, and Cleveland were plunged into darkness in the middle of a workday. Befuddled suburbanites working in the cities crowded the streets trying to find a way home, causing bumper-to-bumper traffic and a flood of pedestrians on the bridges and ferries.\n"It was crazy. It seemed like there were about five million people roaming the streets trying to get out of the city," Hess said. \nHess, who lives in Pennington, N.J., was getting her hair cut in New York's East Greenwich Village when the power went out. A few hours later, the city's outlets were already jammed with people, backing up transportation and leaving many stranded in the city overnight. \nHess' trip home, which normally takes just an hour and a half, stretched into a five-hour ordeal.\n"I had to take a ferry, two buses, and a taxi," she said. "It cost over $70 -- and that was good. A lot of people didn't get home until the next day." \nWhen Hess went back to her summer job in a liquor store the following day, she was greeted by a number of commuters not quite as lucky as she had been. \n"A bunch of businessmen who were stuck in the city overnight came in and stocked up on warm beer and stuff. They had the day off work, so the beer seemed like a pretty good idea after all the hassle they'd had getting home." \nSophomore Rob Weber, who was in Detroit during the power outage, had a similar idea and spent his first night without electricity at a party. \n"When the power goes out, you've got to hurry and drink your beers while they're still cold," he said. "Everybody was really calm about the whole thing and just had fun." \nFor others, the blackout was not greeted with such ease. \n"People thought it was a terrorist attack at first," said Dyan Kleinman, a sophomore from White Plains, N.Y. "No one knew what was going on. After people calmed down, though, everybody just relaxed and enjoyed their day off work." \nKleinman was outdoors working at her summer job as a camp counselor when the power first went out. \n"No one at camp even noticed," she said. "I didn't realize it until I was driving home that night and saw the power was out in all of the cities I was driving through," she said. "None of the traffic lights were working, so it was really kind of nerve-wracking." \nWeber said although a 10 p.m. curfew was enforced in Detroit, some people still went out and braved the dark roads. \n"The whole thing was really cool -- running around with no street lights or anything. I got a kick out of it," he said. "But once it dragged on into Friday, and no one had been able to shower or anything, the excitement definitely wore off."\nThe novelty of a two-day power outage might have worn away quickly, but, as Hess said, "Nothing really bad ever came of it, so it was really a cool thing to be a part of." \n-- Contact staff writer Andrea Minarcek at aminarcek@indiana.edu.