Manager's Message
My New York City Blackout Experience
By a strange confluence of events, I found myself in the New York City area during the midst of the largest blackout to date in U.S. history.
I was there on personal business. For months, I had been searching the internet for a “nearly new” pickup that had the options I was interested in. One of my criteria was that it had to be a “never smoked in” vehicle, which may have further limited my choices, in addition to the desired options. I wasn’t in any particular hurry to find the pickup of my dreams, but when I found it, I acted.
The vehicle I found had been listed on E-bay, but went un-sold when it failed to get a bid that satisfied the seller’s reserve. I called the seller, who happened to be a dealer, and asked him what it’d take to make the deal. We arrived at what I thought was a fair price, and that’s how my NYC blackout experience began.
The dealership was Clairmont Auto Group in Caldwell, New Jersey. I weighed the difference between having it shipped vs. flying up there to pick it up and drive it back. It turned out the difference was negligible.
Because of some recent personal ‘trials and tribulations’ that were occurring in our lives, my wife Betty had earlier made the observation that it’d be nice to do something “adventurous.” We thought flying into New York City and driving our “nearly new” pick-up back to Texas just might fit that bill.
We flew into ISLIP, the airport on Long Island used by Southwest Airlines. Because of the plane changes on our route: departing Amarillo, with changes in Dallas, Houston, and Nashville before arriving at ISLIP at approximately 3:40 p.m on the afternoon of Thursday, August 14th, we elected to carry our luggage rather than check it. This turned out to be a fortuous decision.
The dealer’s grandson, Steven, picked us up at the airport, and we got out of the airport proper about 4:05 p.m., about the time the outage occurred, unbeknownst to us. The traffic seemed particularly heavy, with long hold-ups and moving very slowly.
I noticed when we got to the first intersection driving away from the airport, the traffic signals weren’t working. In fact, I noticed none of them were working between the airport and the freeway.
The sun was setting as we crossed the Brooklyn Bridge. Looking back on Manhattan, the enveloping darkness looked as if a giant shadow had been cast over the downtown area of New York City.
None of us had any idea why the traffic was so heavy until Steven got a call from his grandmother about 5:45 p.m. to ask how things were going. This was when we learned of the blackout. Steven turned on the radio, and New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg was telling everyone to be calm.
Had we checked our luggage, we obviously would not have gotten it, it would have been trapped in blackout limbo between the plane and luggage carousel in the terminal.
When we got to the dealership about 8:30 p.m., the lights had just started coming back on, with only about half power. As we signed the paper work, more lights started coming back on.
Following the signing, we went to a nearby steak and lobster restaurant the dealer suggested might have power and be open. It was open, but others were closed. Afterwards, we figured we better stop at a service station to fill up with gas. The attendant told us he’d sold twice as much gas that day as he had the previous day.
We had not made any advance lodging plans, originally thinking we would drive as far as we could into Pennsylvania that night after picking up the truck. We decided the wiser course, in light of the events, would be to find a place to stay that had power. We learned some hotels in downtown New York had to vacate their guests, giving them pillows and bedspreads, and directing them to garages and parking areas for their “accommodations.”
Considering the millions of people that were stranded in the New York City area with no way to get home after work, and the inconveniences suffered by millions more throughout the region, what Betty and I experienced was nothing more than a minor inconvenience. Thinking of the millions of people without power, and the massive task the utility professionals there were dealing with, I was thankful my responsibilities only included a small system in the Crown of Texas. Driving back, it was not the “adventure” we could have anticipated, but it’s one we’ll never forget.
Manager's Message
By Charles Castleberry