I t was a SIXIS of light. and of darkness-the kind of event that brings outthe best and the worst in people. Cer-tainly the 1965 blackout could never

happen again. or so New Yorkers hadthought. But something very much likeIt struck Wednesday the 13th. only thistime it was frighteningly differentThrough the long. sweaty night andmost of the following day. the nation’slargest city was powerless. lacking boththe electrtcity on which it depends s<oheavily and any means to stop a ma-rauding minority of poor blacks and His-panics who. in severe contrast to 1965.went on a rampage. the first since thehot summer rtots of the 1960s. They sethundreds of tires and looted thousandsof stores. rlluminating in a perverse waytwelve years of change in the charactert)f the ctty. and perhaps of the country.

For a short while after the lightsHickered out. most New Yorkers refusedto believe that a crisis was at hand andgamely carried on. Broadway actors per-formed under the uncertain beams offlashlights held by stagehands: the nudecast of OfI! Calcutm!, unable to grope toTHE BLACKOUT/COVER STORIES

cy m New York. The city sent extra po-licemen and fire fighters to the ghettos.portable generators to hospitals. and setup banks of operators to handle citizens’calls for help. But His Honor. who at71 is running hard for a second term.also began searching for someone toblame. Without bothering to wait for theverdict of investigations ordered by him-self. Governor Hugh Carey and Pres-ident Carter. the mayor quickly zeroedIn on Consolidated Edison Co.. thecompany that New Yorkers love to hate(.PCC ECONOMY & BUSINESS). DeclaredBeame. “Con Ed’s performance is. at the\ery best, gross negligence-and. at theworst. far more serious.” RespondedCon Ed Chairman Charles Lute: “It’s alittle like saying. .We’ll have a fair trialbefore we hang the defendant.’ ‘.

Though the jury was still out. thetrouble apparently began when light-ning struck not only twice but severaltimes. knocking out crucial high-voltagelines feeding in from north of the cityThis loss of power had a cascading ef-fect that brought down the city‘s wholeelectric system.

as desirable boodle. Police caught oneman in Bedford-Stuyvesant with 300sink stoppers and another with a caseof clothespins. Two young boys werespotted carrying away an end table.“Where‘d you get that thing?” a copshouted. “My momma give it to me-you can have it.” said one of the kidsas they dropped their loot and dashedInto a crowd that was happily watchinga blazing furniture store.

At Hearn’s department store inBrooklyn. youths stripped clothing fromwindow mannequins. broke their limbsand scattered them on the floor. Said Mi-guel Ten. a Viet Nam veteran who stoodguarding Arnet’s Children’s Wear store:“This reminds me of Pleiku in 1966.There was a war out here. And the man-nequins remind me of the dead peopleI saw in Nam without legs and arms.”

At the Ace Pontiac showroom inThe Bronx. looters smashed through asteel door and stole SO new cars, valuedat $250.0001 they put the ignition wirestogether and drove off. Young menroamed East 14th Street in Manhattan.snatching women’s purses. Adults toted

NIGHTOF TERROR ’their dressing rooms. borrowed clothesfrom members of the audience and wenthome in cabs. Waiters at Manhattan res-taurants served patrons by candlelight.Buses were delayed only slightly bydarkened traffic lights. Garbage truckswhined as usual on their nightly rounds.Mayor Abraham Beame. assuming. likemany citizens. that a fuse had blown. ad-libbed a quip during a campaign speechat the Co-op City Traditional Synagoguein The Bronx. “See.” he said. “This iswhat you get for not paying your bills.”

Gradually. however. the realizationtook over that the unthinkable had hap-pened: at 9~34 on one of the summer’smost sweltering nights, air conditioners.elevators. subways. lights. water pumps-all the electric sinews of a great mod-ern city-had stopped. They would notwork again for as long as 25 hours. Theblackout was far smaller than that of1965-9 million people lost electricityin New York and the northern suburbs.L’. 25 million people in eight states andtwo Canadian provinces twelve yearsago. But the effects were nationwide. TVnetworks stopped broadcasting for sev-eral minutes. The flow of teletyped newsfrom the A.P. and U.P.I. was interrupt-ed. then limped along under jury rigs(see THE PRESS). Wall Street’s banks.brokerages. and stock and commoditiesexchanges shut down for a day.

Beame declared a state of emergen-

12

Most New Yorkers. from silk-stock-ing districts to scabrous ghettos. re-sponded with neighborliness and evenbravery. But what shocked the city. andmuch of the world. was that tens of thou-sands of blacks and Hispanics pouredfrom their tenements and barrios-in 16areas-to produce an orgy of looting. InBrooklyn’s Bedford-Stuyvesant ghetto.in Manhattan’s Harlem. in the SouthBronx. the violence and plundering ap-proached the levels of the I968 riots afterthe assassination of Martin Luther KingJr. The cry echoed through the ghettos:“It’s Christmastime. it’s Christmas-time!” But to Abe Beame. and count-less other New Yorkers of all races. itwas “a night of terror.”

I?

oving bands of determined men,women and even little childrenwrenched steel shutters and grillesfrom storefronts with crowbars.

shattered plate-glass windows. scoopedup everything they could carry. and de-stroyed what they could not. First theywent for clothing. TV sets. jewelry. li-quor; when that was cleaned out. theypicked up food. furniture and drugs. SaidFrank Ross. a black police officer inBedford-Stuyvesant: “It’s like a feverstruck them. They were out there withtrucks. vans. trailers. everything thatcould roll.”

Looters looked on anything movable

shopping bags stuffed with steaks androasts from a meat market on 125thStreet in Harlem. At an appliance storeon 105th Street. two boys about ten yearsold staggered along with a TV set. whilea woman strolled by with three radios.“It’s the night of the animals,” said Po-lice Sergeant Robert Murphy, who worea Day-G10 blue riot helmet. “You grabfour or five. and a hundred take theirplace. We come to a scene. and peoplewho aren’t looting whistle to warn theothers. All we can do is chase peopleaway from a store. and they just run tothe next block. to the next store.”

The arsonists were as busy as thelooters. Firemen fought 1,037 blazes. sixtimes the normal number, and receivednearly I .700 false alarms. They were seteither to divert the attention of the copsor just for the fun of it. When the fire-men showed up. their sirens screaming.the crowds pelted them with rocks andbottles. Of the fires. 65 were consideredserious. including a store fire in Brook-lyn at which 22 firemen were hurt. An-other blaze began in a looted factorywarehouse in Brooklyn. then leapedacross the street to destroy four tene-ments and finally spread to two otherhouses. In all. 59 firemen were injuredfighting the fires.

One of New York’s worst-hit areaswas a ICblock stretch of jewelry, cloth-ing. appliance. furniture and other re-

TIME, JULY 25,1977

IN BROAD DAYLIGHT. LOOTERS IN BROOKLYN BRAZEN

SO AVARICIOUS 8 DETERMINED ARE SOME PILLAGERS THAT THEY SCAVENGE WE RUBBLE I

TOMOBILES TRACE STREAKS OF YELLOW IN THE NIGHT. LEFT FOREGROUND: UNITED NATIONS PLAZA HOTEL GLOWS FEEBLY WITH EMERGENCY LIGHTING

IILE FIRES SWEEP THROUGH NEARBY BUILDINGS, SIGHTSEERS 8, THIEVES THRONG A STREET IN BROOKLYN

I FIREMEN STRUGGLE TO PUT OUT ONE OF THE MAN1 BLAZES THAT TURNED PARTS OF THE BRONX INTO AN INFERNOCOP COOLS DOWN A CROWD IN FRONT OF A LOOTED STORE IN THE BRONX A CHAINED PRISONER IS LED AWAY BY POLICE

tail stores along Broadway in the Bush-wick section of Brooklyn. ReportedTIME’S Paul Witteman: “The evidenceof looting was numbing. As tiemenfought blazes from cherrypickers, thelooters went about their business virtu-ally unmolested. Occasionally theywould step over to one of the fire trucksand drink water from a running outlet,Some of the more enterprising lootersparked rented trucks on the side streets,engines running, and loaded up withcouches, refrigerators, TV sets-the du-rable goods that will sell most easily onthe black market. Periodically, when arumor swept through the pack that thepolice were coming. the looters wouldbreak and run. But the police, outnum-bered and fatigued, often did not try tochase them. When I left the area, it wasburning, the flames taking what littlethe looters left behind.”

After touring the ravaged SouthBronx, TIME Correspondent Mary Cro-nin reported: “Streams of black waterfrom broken fire hydrants swept the res-idue of the looting into the middle ofthe streets. Burned-out delivery trucks.spilling their seats onto the pavement.blocked doorways. Twisted steel grilles-some yanked from storefronts withtrucks that were then filled with loot-lay across sidewalks. In the newFedco supermarket, shelves gleamedbare and white, while several inches ofmashed produce, packages of squashedhamburger. rivers of melted ice cream.

and broken bottles covered the Boors.The stench was overpowering. Up to 300stores were cleaned out in the neighbor-hood, and the next morning sheets ofplywood covered most of their smashedwindows. Said Policeman John Fitzger-ald: ‘There are only cops and crooks lefthere now.’ ”

In the South Bronx, along East Tre-mont Avenue. one of the few shoppingareas left in the gutted slum, looters stolesome $55,000 worth of goods from thehuge R & M Furniture store. The nextday its owner put out word that he wouldpay $25 for each TV set returned. Po-lice learned from a tipster that a manhad stashed swag in his basement. Thecops entered without a search warrantand reclaimed about S2,ooO worth of fur-niture. One of the invading cops admit-ted later with a laugh: “Now I can bearrested for a violation.”

A number of looters were robbed inturn by other thieves. who clawedand wrenched away their booty.When two men in Bushwick wea-

rily set down a heavy box of shoes, aband of youths swooped in like vulturesand made off with the prize. A teen-agegirl on Manhattan’s upper West Sidecomplained to friends that some boyshad offered to help carry away clothesand radios, then had stolen them fromher. Said she, with the skewed logic ofthe looters: “That’s just not right. Theyshouldn’t have done that.”

THE NATIONMany bystanders cheered on the

looters, but others were outraged bywhat they saw. Complained a black manin East Harlem: “The shop owners don’tlive here, but the people who work forthem do. They run these stores out, andthey run out the few jobs in this neigh-borhood. The lights are gonna comeback on, but what about the jobs?” Aman in his 30s bitterly taunted maraud-ing teen-agers: “You dumb niggers. Youget busted, you get hurt for a pair ofsneakers. You’re dumb. niggers. You’redumb. Sneakers. Christ!”

Shouted another man at a gang ofteenagers who had looted a drugstore:“If my mother gets sick in the night andneeds her nitroglycerin, where am I gon-na go? Maybe you don’t care, but wheream I supposed to buy my pills?” Nextmorning, a young woman walked alongThird Avenue. desperately looking forany food store that might be open andunlooted. “I’m trying to buy somebread.” she said. “I can’t find none.”

Stores owned by blacks and Hispan-ics suffered the same fate as those op-erated by whites. In Brooklyn, the FortGreen cooperative supermarket-set upby low-income blacks after the 1968riots-was stripped bare. The store hadno steel window guards because, saidManager Clifford Thomas, “we thoughtwe were part of the community. We werewrong.”

In many neighborhoods. however,residents joined to protect the property

LOOKING FOR A REASON ement of glee. perhaps of revenge, of amob gone wild. Says Bard: “The looting

On the morning after the lootinghad a quality of madness. 1 cannot be-

orgy, the Spanish-language newspaperright. They feel no stake in a society lieve that they cleaned out a store of

El Diario front-paged in huge type thethat seems to deny them the opportu- prayer shawls and Bibles.” Adds Ernest

question that was on nearly every Newnity to acquire those goods. Northwest-ern Political Scientist Ted Gurr. co-au-

Dichter. a noted behavioral psycholo-

Yorker’s mind: &OR QUI?? (Why?).gist: “It was just like Lord of the Flies

thor of the 1969 Eisenhower Commis-What had sparked the plunder?

People resort to savage behavior whension report on violence in America. the brakes of civilization fail.”

What had changed since that placidblackout night of 1965? Doubtless the

argues that “the poor. and especiallypoor blacks, don’t share our middle-class

Harvard Social Psychologist Thom-

heat and humidity made some differ-as Pettigrew was impressed by the lack

ence; in 1965 the power failed on a pleas-values for other people’s property. Thegoods were there for the taking.”

of ideology in the looting-a striking

antly cool evening in November. Butcontrast to the 1960s riots. Says he:

Many black and Hispanic leadersmuch more had changed in a dozen

“When the lights went out. there was aread in the looting a message to the na-

years. Respect for law and authority has tion. Says Educator Kenneth Clark:free-for-all, an individualistic phenom-

declined; thieves often go unpunished:crime and violence stalk the slums. So.

“We have reduced the people of theenon in which everyone gets what he orshe can get.” Declared Futurist Herman

of course, does poverty. Unemploymentghetto to the point where they function Kahn. director of the Hudson Instituteon the level of predatory animals.” Adds

among young ghetto blacks is as high“They have no idea of what moral stan-

as40%, v. more than 20% in 1965.U.N. Ambassador Andrew Young: “Ifyou turn the lights out. folks will steal.

dards are. This ‘suppressed rage’ idea iscrap. This kind of reasoning will make

.Close to half of American black fam-

They’ll do that especially if they’re hun-gry.” That went a bit far-even in the

the same thing happen all over again.”.

ilies have advanced to the middle class,but their rise has only increased the frus-

ghetto, few Americans do not have Like most other experts. Harvard

tration of an underclass that sees no wayenough to eat.

Psychologist Morton Bard of theSociologist Talcott Parsons is “skepti-

up. Says Harvard Social Psychologistcal” that the pillage in New York would

Robert Bales: “When economic condi-Graduate Center of New York’s City set off a new nationwide wave of dis-

tions get better, those who are left be-University regarded the pillage as “aRobin Hood-type of thing-steal from

turbances. But behaviorists generally he-

hind get angrier.” Before their eyes the rich and give to the poor.” But thelieve that. given a similar combination

dance television programs and commer- explanation that leans on real and per-of total darkness. blistering heat and

cials that show everybody enjoying a ceived deprivation goes only so far. It issimmering anger on the part of an un-

cornucopia of consumer goods-as if ev-derclass. much the same kind of riotous

by no means clear that most of the loot-erybody should have them as a natural ers were the neediest. There was an el-

looting could erupt in almost any othercity in the U.S.

TIME, JULY 25, 1977 1 7

THE NATION

DISTRAUGHT OWNER AT SHOE STORE LEFT RAVAGED ON MANHATTAN’S UPPER WEST SIDEFrom the ghettos, cries of “/t’s Chrisfmostime, if’s Christmastime!”

Reported TIM~‘S Lou Dolinar: “lnBrooklyn’s middle-class Clinton Hill.black. white and Hispanic homeownerssat on their stoops. sharing cigarettes.candlesand flashlights. and occasionallypulling up crabgrass to pass the wearyhours before dawn. Half a dozen teen-age Italians. armed with baseball batsand iron pipes. helped merchants guarda five-block section of Myrtle Avenuein Brooklyn. At an A. & P. supermarketin Brooklyn. a burly. 6-ft. &in. Jamai-can security guard brandished a pearl-handled machete and. with four clerksand the manager. chased away a gangof 30 youths.” Many owners armedthemselves with pistols. rifles or shot-guns and sat up all night by candlelightin their stores. Surprisingly few shotswere fired. Indeed. there were remark-ably few fatalities during the disturb-ances: three people died in fires. and inBrooklyn. a drugstore owner gunneddown a man who was brandishing acrowbar at him while leading 30 youthspast the store’s accordion-like securityfence.

Eugene Riback. the owner of Har-lem’s Simon Furniture Co.. tookstock of his wrecked four-storystore. behind the protective armor

of private guards toting pistols andleashing attack dogs. Two brazen thievesran in. grabbed a washing machine andheaded to the street. One of the guardspointed his gun at a looter’s head. threefeet away. The intruder snarled: ‘*Youeither kill me or I go out the doorwith the washer.” He kept going. and

18

the security man sheathed his gunOn Utica Avenue in Brooklyn. Er-

nie Blye. a black man, stayed at his tai-lor shop all night long. grasping a gun.his German shepherd at his heels. Agang of men began to menace him. Hesried out: “If you shoot me. my dog willget you!” They closed in relentlessly.Blye shouted again: “1 got ten cans ofpotash upstairs! I’m goin’ upstairs now!I blind you. you come up the stairs afterme! I blind you!” The crowd left himalone.

Many looters seemed scarcely awarethat they were stealing. Said one of twoblack boys standing outside a strippedbicycle shop near Columbia University.“We’re just out shopping with our par-ents. This is better than going toMacy’s.” Some blacks resented all thefuss over the looting. Said Lorraine. 14.who had helped plunder a drugstore inEast Harlem: “It gets dark here everynight. Every night stores get broke into.every night people get mugged. everynight you scared on the street. Butnobody pays no attention until a black-out comes.”

A few boasted of their thefts. P.F..a 28-year-old Hispanic in Harlem.sounded like a shipping clerk readingoff an invoice list as he told TIME Writ-er B.J. Phillips: “Well. I got a stereoworth $400. a dining room set that said$600 in the window. and some bedroomfurniture. but not a whole suite. 1 gotsome tennis shoes, and a few things fromthe jewelry store, but I got there too latefor anything really good. I got it all donein half an hour. that’s how quick I was

uorkmg.” He paused to add it all up.“I’d put the total somewhere between$3.200 and $3.500.” Any remorse? “I’vegot three kids and I don’t have no job. Ihad the opportunity to rob and 1 robbed,I’d do it again. 1 don’t feel bad aboutit.”

Others offered strained justifica-tions. Said a young woman who calledherself Afreeka Omfree: “It‘s really sortof beautiful. Everybody is out on thestreets together. There‘s sort of a partyatmosphere.” Declared a young man inBushwick: “Prices have gone too high.Now we’re going to have no prices.When we get done. there ain’t gonna heno more Broadway.” Said a man in his3% grasping a wine bottle in one handand a TV set in another: “You take yourchance when you get a chance.” AddedGino. 19. a father of two: “We’re poor,and this is our way of getting rich.”

T he Rev. Vincent Gallo. an activistCatholic priest. summed up theattitudes of people roaming hisBedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.

‘When the lights went out. people justsaid, ‘Here’s our chance to get back atthe mothers who have been ripping usoff.’ There also was a herd mentality.and many of the kids were egged on byadults who said. ‘Hey. go get me this.Hey. go get me that.’ ”

Whatever the cause of the looting.New York’s massive show of policeforce. and the cops’ restraint, helpedkeep the nightmare from becoming evenworse or continuing after the lights wentback on Thursday. Canceling all leaves.the department mustered about 8,000 ofits 26.000~person force. twice the num-ber that would normally have been onduty.

Ever since the student uprisings atColumbia University a decade ago, NewYork cops have been instructed not toheat or shoot at rioters. Said DeputyCommissioner Francis J McLaughlinlast week: “They were under orders tobreak up unruly crowds or looters bycharging with their night sticks but notshooting over their heads.” The copswere responsible for few beatings, no in-discriminate shooting and no killings.About 18 policemen suffered seriousinjuries.

Reported TIME Correspondent JackWhite. who covered the 1968 racialuprising in Washington. DC.: “Thecops have learned a lot about riot con-trol in the last decade. In the past, of-ficers hopelessly outnumbered by angrycrowds frequently fired on them and in-creased their anger. But in New York.large numbers of calm. well-disciplinedofficers avoided adding to the violence.In Bedford-Stuyvesant. for example, thesituation gradually came under controlas enough police arrived to station fouror five cops on every comer of the mosttroubled area, while other cops prowledin marked and unmarked cars. Oneworn-out sergeant told me: ‘My ass isnumb and my shoulders are scrunched

TIME, JULY 25, 1977

DOING THEIR BIT TO EASE THE EMERGENCY, SOME NEW YORKERS EAGERLY, AND OFTEN SKILLFULLY, BECOME TRAFFIC COPS FOR A DAY-OR A NIGHT

TO LIFT THEIR SPIRITS, A GROUP IN GREENWICH VILLAGE HOLDS ONE OF MANY IMPROMPTU PARTIES AS DARKNESS SETTLES OVER THE CITY

STRANDED WOMAN CAMPS OUT IN LOBBY OF AMERICANA HOTEL GREETING DARKENED BROADWAY FROM GEORGE M. COHAN STATUE

WHILE OTHERS STAY UP AT 4 A.M., A MAN TURNS A BAR INTO A BED FOR THE NIGHT AT THE AMERICANA

THE NATION

’ from riding with five other men in a Pon-tiac Tempest.’ But it worked. As ten-sions eased, the police avoided makingarrests as much as possible to help coolthings off.”

Sometimes looters were let go witha warning. One experienced pair of 26-year-old cops, with modish long hair andsideburns, spun around Bedford-Stuyve-sant in a battered 1970 Dodge paintedto look like a gypsy taxi. They spied ayoung boy carrying a big box. The fright-ened kid dropped the carton. and glasstinkled. “What’s in the box. Johnny?”asked one of the policemen. “Booze.man, liquor,” replied the kid. “Where-dyou get it, Johnny?” “I bought it. man.paid money for it.” The cop peered intothe box and saw the markings of a new-ly looted liquor store on broken bottles.Then both policemen advised the kidto “take the box and go home. And bythe way, maybe you can do us a favorsome time.”

But arrests were common. Officerscollared more than 3,500 people be-tween the time the blackout struck and7:40 a.m. Friday. when Beame declaredthe emergency over. The figure wasabout eight times the number of arrestsin the riots of 1964 and 1968.

T he city’s courts and prisons wereswamped. At Beame’s urging. pros-ecutors refused to plea bargain withsuspected looters and arsonists or

agree to release them without bail. As aresult, police station houses and court-house holding pens were jammed withprisoners-up to ten in small cells de-signed to hold one person.

At the Manhattan criminal court.some prisoners shouted protests againstthe heat and overcrowding. To handlethe overflow, the city reopened theTombs, a Manhattan jail that had beenclosed by federal court order in 1974 astoo decrepit. Feeding the prisoners wasa serious problem at first because mostrestaurants had closed for lack of elec-tricity. Many families brought food torelatives behind bars. Others subsisted

: on coffee and rolls.As evening fell on Thursday. theghet$os gradually returned to normal.On some streets there was almost a senseof camaraderie between the cops andthe black and Hispanic youths. Some of

i

the officers in Bedford-Stuyvesantswung their long riot sticks like golfclubs, sending tin cans and other debris

1 flying out of the gutter. “Hey. man.”called out a black youngster with achuckle. “your grip is all wrong.” In theSouth Bronx. a brightly lit Ferris wheelslowly revolved in the night sky, its two-passenger chairs filled. Sporting shinynew Adidas jogging shoes. a young teen-age boy in Harlem said with a trace ofwistfulness: “Christmas is over.”

For the owners of the 2.000 storesthat were plundered. Thursday v.as aday of reckoning their losses. It was aday of sweeping up debris. nailing ply-wood across jagged. broken windows

TIME, JULY 25. 1977

BROOKLYN JEWISH HOSPITAL SURGEONS WORKING UNDER SPOTLIGHTS IN PARKING LOTCleaning and stitching wounds that were mosfly caused by knives ond glass.

spending the night alone in her $57-a-month apartment above a meat marketthat had been burned out by vandals“I wish I died.” she cried. “I’m almost70 years old. and I have no place to go.”

Many black and Hispanic leadersacross the country were dismayed by the

and pondering whether to reopen. AlanRubin. owner of the Radio Clinic dis-count center on Manhattan’s upperWest Side, told a reporter: “I’m respon-sible for 25 families-the families of thepeople who work for me. What’s goingto happen to them if I pull out? As badas I got hit. there are other guys whogot wiped out. What’s going 10 happenif they can’t reopen?”

Those willing to reopen were eligi-ble for low-interest loans of up to $500.-000 from the Small Business Adminis-tration. More than 400 store ownersasked for information about the loans.but many others were skeptical. Theysaid that they had been stripped bareand demolished. that all they hadworked and saved for over the years wasgone. that it was financially and emo-tionally impossible for them to startagain. Declared Stanley Schatel. ownerof Nice & Pretty. a badly damagedsportswear store in Brooklyn: “Get aloan? Are you crazy’? You think any-body in his rightful mind would wantto get back to this neighborhood?” Yetquite a few merchants were thinking ofdoing just that. “1 have to pay off thecreditors.” said Gary Apfel. owner ofLee’s Store. a men’s clothing store inHarlem. “1 \\ant to close. hut 1 can’t af-ford to close.”

More people than just store ownershad to make fresh starts on the morn-ing after the night of darkness. Rose Ste-vens. an elderly widow. wandered weep-ing down BroadHay in Brooklyn.looking for a nev. place to live after

rioting. In a typical comment. CarlosCastro. president of Chicago’s PuertoRican United Front. noted that theplunderers were poor and lived in slumhousing, though he said of the violence:“You can’t justify it.” So far. there wereno signs of a white backlash. eventhough many broadcast and newspaperaccounts of the power failure empha-sized the disorders. Sample headlinefrom the Los Angeles Times. CITY'SPRIDE IN ITSELF GOES DIM IN THEBLACKOUT. Newspapers abroad also fo-cused on the looting. A headline fromT o k y o ’s Mainichi Shimbun: P A N I CGRIPS NEW YORK: from West Germa-ny’s Bild Zrirzrrr~: NEW YORK'S BLOOD-IEST NIGHT: from London‘s Daily Ex-press:THE NAKEDCITY.

N onetheless. the overt helming ma-jority of New Yorkers and visitorsresponded to the crisis hith someof the same good humor and will-

ingness to help each other that they hadexhibited tuelve years earlier AtBeame‘s request. stores. banks and mostoffices closed. reducing traffic on thecity’s streets. At the intersection of ParkAvenue and 79th Street in Manhattan.an athletic young man wearing a capeand holding a pink Rare controlled traf-

21

iTHE NATIONtic like a matador handling a bull. On!he other side ofthe island. traffic was di-I-CCted on Riverside Drive by David Ep-stein. 17. tle joked: “My mother toldme to go out and pla) in the traffic. andhere 1 am.” Sixteen passers-b? turnedConey Island‘s t 50-ft.-high \VonderWheel by hand. enabling stranded rid-ers to reach the ground

Most of the ci~y’s 17 hospitalsswitched smoothtq to emergency gener-ators. But Bellevue‘s back-up systemfailed. and doctors and nurses had tosqueeze bags of air with their hands tokeep several patients alive until resus-

dies nere m ekery bureau-fixturessince the 1965 blackout. The hotel of-fered free coffee and food through thenight to hundreds of people who milledthrough the lobby: employees clamberedup the stairs each hour with food forthe guests on the upper floors. “Alors.( bsr ex-rmordirzaire!” exclaimed a Swisstourist. Irene Baillod. after trudgingdown from her 39th-floor room only toiind that she had left behind flash-cubes for her camera.

Some 500 diners at Windows on theWorld. the restaurant on the 107th floorof the World Trade Center. finished

NEW YORK MAYOR ABRAHAM BEAME UNWINDINGAn emergency and a hunt for blame.

citators could be turned on again. Whenback-up generators broke down atBrooklyn’s Jewish Hospital and MedicalCenter. about 100 people had theirwounds-mostly cuts from knives andbroken glass-cleaned and stitched ata makeshift field hospital set up inthe parking lot under high-intensityspotlights powered by fire-departmentequipment.

Hotels were jammed with tourists.conventioneers and suburbanites whocould not make it home because the elec-tric-powered commuter trains were out.At the Algonquin. guests were unableto get into their rooms for an hour be-cause the doors lock electronically.Many spent the night partying at theround tables in the dining room thatwas made famous by Robert Benchleyand Dorothy Parker. At the New YorkHilton. switchboard operators phonedeach room to tell guests that two can-2 2

their mea)s by candlelight androde to the ground on a service el-evator that was served by anemergency generator. But 35 peo-ple were stranded for the night onthe 86th-floor observation deck ofthe Empire State Building. Aftera free breakfast provided by thebuilding’s management. half ofthem walked down the stairs tothe ground. while the others wait-ed until the elevators began op-erating again Thursday afternoon.

0 n Broadway. Tom Courte-nay continued in OtherwiseEngaged by flashlight. withan actor shouting “Brring!”

when a phone was supposed toring and humming the overture toWagner’s Parsifal in place of a re-cording. About a quarter of the2.000 people who were watchingthe stage show Salute to New YorkCity stayed on at Radio City Mu-sic Hall after the lights went out.snacking on pretzels and Italianices bought from street vendorswho crowded into the foyer. AtShea Stadium. play stopped in thesixth inning. with the ChicagoCubs leading the New York Mets2 to I. For about 45 minutes. the22.000 fans sang along with Or-ganist Jane Jarvis: to take theirminds off the heat. she playedWhite Christmas.

Doormen at some high-rise build-ings gave tenants candles and flashlightsto help them climb to their apartments,but others groped in the dark. Anyoneliving on the upper floors was withoutwater because pumps had stopped androoftop tanks were quickly emptied.Some people preferred to bed down inthe lobbies or walk the streets. Otherssat in their cars. listening to the news-any news about the blackout.

Few bars remained open, and theywere packed with thirsty people eventhough their ice supplies were rapidlymelting. Said one woman who had vis-ited three other bars before she stoppedat P.J. Clarke’s. a well-known East Sidewatering place: “We’re typical NewYorkers. We’re going to get smashed.”At Elaine’s restaurant on Manhattan’supper East Side. tables were moved out-doors for a block party. The guests in-cluded Woody Allen. At Pacino. Andy

Warhol and Designer Calvin Klein. AtOne Fifth. a Greenwich Village restau-rant decorated with fittings from thecruise ship R.M.S. Curonia. a patronquipped: “We’ve hit an iceberg.” Pia-nist Nat Jones scrounged a candle tolight his keyboard and played It Air1 iNecessarily So. Unfortunately. it was.

There was some fast free enterprise-and some gouging. At a fancy EastSide high-rise apartment building oneblock from Gracie Mansion, the mayor’sresidence, two boys with flashlights of-fered to escort people up the stairs at $ Ieach. Some cabbies cruised with theiroff-duty lights on. trying to negotiatehigh-priced deals. charging as much as$50 for the trip from Shea Stadium toManhattan, which normally costs about$10. Cold cans of beer and ma went for$3 in Forest Hills, Queens. An ice-cream’vendor in Greenwich Village did a briskbusiness. As the temperature in his re-frigerated case dropped, so did his prices-until he finally gave away free butslightly soggy cones.

The cost to New York is more dif-ficult to reckon. There was no officialestimate of the loss, but some cityofficials thought the total-includingdamage to buildings and theft of theircontents-might be a staggering $1 bil-lion or more. Because of the blackout.the city lost $4 million in tax revenueand had to pay $5 million in overtimeto policemen and firemen. Estimates ofbusiness losses-beyond the looting-included up to $15 million in lost bro-kerage commissions for Wall Street and$20 million for retail stores.

Most of these could be made up lat-er, when banks, brokerages and otherbusinesses reopened. But the far moreimportant price cannot be tallied. Whathad the city lost in terms of morale andimage? Deputy Mayor Osbom Elliott, incharge of keeping old jobs in the city andbringing in new ones, announced theblackout at least had not caused a groupof oil suppliers from Houston and NewOrleans to drop consideration of movingsome of their offices to the city. But howmany businessmen thought of movingout? How many will become more diffi-cult to sell on moving in? At best. El-liott’s job has been a holding action. andlast week’s crisis. he said with great un-derstatement, “doesn’t help.”

S peaking of the emergency proce-dures that were supposed to havekept the electricity from failing,Federal Power Commission

Chairman Richard Dunham remarked..&Quite obviously something didn’t fit.”The same might be said of the city’scomity of neighborhoods, the uneasyweb that both binds and separates richand poor, white and nonwhite. As in allbig-city riots, the chief victims of thelong hours of darkness were the peoplewho live in the devastated ghettos andhave no other place to go. No amountof booty can compensate the looters forwhat they have lost.

TIME, JULY25 1977

WHY THE LIGHTS WENT OUTHow could a power system that

many people thought ~3s made fail-safeafter the Northeast’s great 1965 black-out plunge New York City into helplessdarkness once again’! It may takemonths of investigation to get the com-plete answer. But at week’s end. an out-line of the falling-domino sequence offailures that led to the total collapse hadbegun to emerge.

Like other major utilities in the U.S.and Canada. New York’s embattledConsolidated Edison Co. (see ECONOMY& BUSINESS) not only has its own elec-trical generating plants but is pluggedinto a larger regional pool of power pro-ducers. Depending on the electricityneeds of its 9 million customers in NewYork City and neighboring WestchesterCounty. Con Ed can either I) rely large-ly on its own generators. or 2) buy powerfrom neighboring utilities if the load-ordemand from its users-is high. or 3)sell off surplus electricity to other com-

- - -panies. Yet those choices are complicat-ed by another fact. electrical energy can-not economically be stored. Even arelatively small variation in load in onepart of the system must be quickly com-pensated for elsewhere along the line.Indeed. the decisions of controllers tobuy or sell electricity. or to switch in ad-ditional generators. require such split-second timing and are so complex thatlarge utilities like Con Ed have increas-ingly computerized their operations.

On the night of the blackout. theNeu York metropolitan area was swel-tering under 3 blanket of hot. humid airWith air conditioners whirring every-where and electrical load high-thoughstill far below the levels expected laterthis summer-Con Ed was importingfrom neighboring utilities about one-third of the electricity it was deliveringto its customers. That in itself was notunusual. In the battle to keep its ratesfrom soaring even higher. Con Ed has

Acts of God ‘z =Con Edit

Lightning strikes first power Iknes.Indian Point generating stationautomatically shuts down. system

NEW YORK a:

NEW JERSEY A

“Big Allis” generatmg statdon in

automatically “trip out’ to avold I\

3. 859 p.m.Thtrd line hit by llghtnlng “Loadshedding blacks out parts ofWestchester County Power ISimported from MC0 and PSEBC

J 2.856 p.m.k Second lightning bolt knocks

out more cables, causmg loss ofl.ooO megawatts from companiesto the north

LONG ISLAND

NASSAU

cut free

PTO LILCO

ATLANTIC OCEAN

THE NATION

lately been buying more and more elec-tricity from nearby companies that canprovide cheaper power. Yet what madeCon Ed especially vulnerable that sog-gy evening was 3 series of highly im-probable natural events--“acts of God.”as one spokesman called them.

A severe summer thunderstorm hadjust swept across the green suburbanhills of northern Westchester in the vi-cinity of the Indian Point No. 3 nuclearpower plant overlooking the HudsonRiver. At 8:37 p.m.. according to ConEd‘s preliminary analysis. flashes oflightning knocked out two 345-kilovoltlines. That immediately cut off all theelectricity from the 900-megawatt Indi-an Point facility. and the nuclear plantwas promptly and safely shut down.Then. while duty officers at Con Ed’smain control center in Manhattan-ahuge. display-filled room somewhat likeMission Control in Houston-scram-bled to make up for the power loss. light-ning struck again. At 8:56 p.m. boltsknocked out two more upstate 345ki-lovolt lines in Westchester that bring inpower from upstate New York and NewEngland. Three minutes later, lightningknocked out yet another line. Worsestill. circuit breakers designed to resetautomatically after the enormous vol-tage surge caused by 3 lightning bolt ap-parently failed to close. By now the util-ity had suffered a massive loss of some2.000 megawatts-more than a third ofits electrical load that night.

I

n the past. this deficit might have kay-oed the entire Con Ed system andblacked out nearby areas as well. Butsafety devices and procedures adopt-

ed after the 1965 blackout automaticallywent into action-at first reducing vol-tages supplied to customers by 5%, thenby 8%. Lights flickered and televisionpictures shrank. Still, the maneuver tem-porarily staved off the complete shut-downs that the devices would otherwisehave ordered to protect the generatorsand transformers from being burned outby dangerous overloads.

The voltage reduction also gave thecontrol center time to call upon otherpower plants in the city to feed in moreelectricity. By revving up their turbines.they were quickly able to make up about1.000 megawatts. Still. that was hardlyenough. So the computers, acting on pre-programmed instructions, made a cal-culated trade-off: to keep the city’s vitalsubways. hospitals, elevators and otherservices running, they began “sheddingload”-reducing electrical demand-byblacking out several less populated sub-urban bedroom communities in West-chester. Presumably, that would giveCon Ed controllers time to call in moreenergy from elsewhere.

For 3 few minutes, the stratagemworked. But 3 new problem developedon the utility’s eastern flank. BecauseCon Ed’s great drain of power was over-heating their connecting cables, theneighboring Long Island Lighting Co.

TIME, JULY 25,1977

--SUPPORTERS OF ANTINUCLEAR CLAMSHELL ALLIANCE MARCHING IN PROTEST OVER GENERATOR CONSTRUCTION AT SEABROOK, N.H.

4

unplugged from the system. That leftCon Ed with only three major sources,of electricity: its often troublesome1,000-megawatt “Big Allis” (for Allis-Chalmers) generator in the borough of,Queens and two remaining out-of-statelinks-one to New Jersey’s Public Ser-vice Gas & Electric Co., the other to up-state and New England utilities.

Incredibly, at about 927, still morelightning in Westchester cut off ConEd’s last remaining hookup to the north.Moments later, as they staggered underthis additional demand, Big Allis wasshut off by its automatic switches, andNew Jersey also cut itself free. Thus thecity was isolated from any outside sourc-

j es of power because of the very safety ar-i rangements made after the 1965 black-1 out. Only a handful of small local power:&ations. were left to meet the over-whelming electrical load. By 9:41 eventhe last of these shut off.

The breakdown took little morethan an hour, but the restoration ofpower was far more tedious. Though theequipment itself was undamaged, pro-tective circuit breakers-many of themunderground-automatically trippedand had to be individually examinedand reset. In addition, since 1965, ConEd has shut down several of its old localcoal-lired plants. Thus it is forced todraw on generators far outside the citythat are more difhcult to reconnect intothe system. Finally, no more than a sin-gle section of the city could be poweredup at a time for fear of a new overload.

t In all, it was 25 hours before all theequipment could be brought back on lineand the lights came on again.

Could the disaster have been avert-ed? In the immediate post-mortemsafter the blackout, some critics suggest-

.ed that Con Ed should have appealedto the public to shut off appliances, thus

” reducing load on the overburdened sys-tem. But could the message have got outquickly enough-and would the cityhave responded? Others wondered whythe controllers did not react more vig-orously by blacking out more areas soon-er to save the overall system. Some evensuspected that there might be an undis-covered yet crucial flaw in the network’sdesign or equipment. As investigatorsexplore these and other nagging ques-tions about New York’s calamity, everymajor utility in the country will be care-fully listening to the answers.

Outside New York, there were quitea few cocky power company executiveswho said about the possibility of black-outs: “No, it can 5 happen here.” Therewere some who pooh-poohed Consoli-dated Edison’s “act of God” explanationas unconvincing. There were a numberwho blamed Con Ed’s own defects anddescribed with pride the superior safetyfeatures of their own systems. Yet oncloser consideration. few power execu-tives were willing to say flatly-and pub-licly-that they could offer ironclad se-curity against the same sort of failure.

Systems from Boston to Los Ange-les protect themselves with tie-ins tomultistate power pools and with auto-matic “load shedding” controls thattemporarily cut off some customerswhen overloads threaten. Yet New Yorktoo relied on those devices. and theywere not enough.

Of course some of New York’s prob-lems are unique. Nowhere else in theU.S. is power failure likely to last as longas 25 hours; New York has more un-derground cable than any other system-80.837 miles of it-and it obviouslyrequires more time to repair than do sur-face lines. And because each section ofManhattan’s power grid sucks as muchpower as a small city. the restoration ofpower in each neighborhood had to pro-ceed slowly and carefully to avoid sud-den overloads on the system. Earlier thismonth, when fire destroyed an electriccable in St. Louis. it took only eight hoursto restore power to the 40-block down-town area.

P ower lines travel into most citiesfrom several directions. but all themajor cables connecting Con Ed

~ to other pools of electric power runin a single corridor from the north. Lastweek a storm apparently knocked outall eight of these lines within an hour.Says an executive of Chicago’s Com-monwealth Edison: “If a major line goesout here. we can interchange a lot moreeasily and flexibly.” One reason for thedifference: Commonwealth Edison canmore readily obtain right-of-w*ay forpower lines in Midwestern farmlandsthan can Con Ed in the crowded East-ern Megalopolis.

NUCLEAR PLANT Al HADDAM NECK, CONN.“The reserve would fall to zero.”

But to the extent that geographyadds to the vulnerability of major pow-er lines. New York is not alone. In thepeninsular state of Florida, all the linesto power pools elsewhere run up anddown in a fairly narrow corridor. astMay 2.5 million residents in five 8lor-ida counties (including Miami’s DadeCounty) were without power for approx-imately four hours after the electric sys-tem short-circuited.

New York’s blackout also focusedattention on the intensely debated ques-tion of whether U.S. utilities haveenough power-generating capacity. Asoil and gas become scarcer and costlier.electricity will become an increasinglyimportant energy source tit now ac-counts for 29% of U.S. energy). Manyutility executives and their equipmentsuppliers argue that the U.S. will haveto build many more coal-fired and nu-clear power plants. The U.S. NuclearRegulatory Commission reports that 84nuclear plants will be completed in thenext decade: the Federal Power Com-mission says that if the NRC’s estimateis correct. the national power level willbe “too low.” As a consequence of the1973-75 recession. utilities canceled or-ders for I4 reactors and deferred 96 oth-

2 5

THE NATION

ers. Among the reasons: harassment byenvironmentalists, government red tapeand delays. the difficulty of financing.Says Robert Kirby, chairman of Wes-tinghouse. the biggest builder of nucle-ar reactors: “We increasingly will befaced with brownouts and blackouts un-less we do something to bolster our totalpower output.”

Nationally, the U.S. now has a 24%surplus of generating capacity. and thatshould suffice through the early 1980s ifpresent rates of growth in demand andcapacity stay the same. At present.many utilities expect that use of elec-tricity will increase by between 4% and6% annually. But before the surge in en-ergy costs and the 1973-75 recession. thegrowth rate was 7.2”; a year; so far thisyear demand for electricity is up, to 7%annually in the first quarter. An FPC ad-visory commission warned that if thegrowth in demand returned to 7.2%.“the industry reserve margin would fallto zero by 1983. and the risk of poweroutages would be vastly greater thantoday.”

The Northeast appears to have morethan enough reserve electrical capacity.but there is a power squeeze in parts ofthe rapidly growing Sunbelt. In SouthTexas. for example. the requirementthat utilities convert the fuel for theirgenerators from natural gas to coal-atthe same time that industry is convert-ing from gas to electricity-often forcesHouston Lighting & Power to buy pow-er from other companies. Completion oftwo large nuclear power plants in Tex-as in the early 1980s is expected to easethe squeeze.

Output Threatened. In the North-uest. drought has threatened the out-put of river-based hydroelectric gener-ators “The future for the PacificNorthwest is very grim.” says DanSchausten. an executive of the Bonne-ville Power Administration. which ser-vices Washington. Oregon. Idaho andwestern Montana. If the drought per-sists next year. B.P.A. may impose elec-tricity cutbacks-and. in the worst case.rotate scheduled blackouts among thecommunities it serves. A similar rota-tion of brief blackouts was imposed onJan. 17 by Virginia Electric & Powerand the Southern Co. when demand forheating during the big freeze-com-bined with equipment shutdowns else-where due to the freezing weather-threatened to overload their systems.

A flat prediction of trouble is offeredby Frank Zarb, former head of the Fed-eral Energy Administration: “There willbe a lot of brownouts starting in 1981and 1982 in various parts of the coun-try due to a lack of capacity.” That con-cern is shared by Jack L. Weiss. actingchief of the FPC’s Bureau of Power. Sayshe: “If plants now scheduled are com-pleted. if there’s adequate fuel. if there’sadequate transportation [for the fuel].then. yes. we’ll have sufficient electricity.But there’s a real possibility that all ofthe ‘ifs‘ might not happen.”

26

PENSIVE BUDGET DIRECTOR BERT LANCE IN HI.5 WASHINGTON OFFICE

THE ADMINISTRATION

Going to Bat for Beleaguered BertThe financial and political troubles

of former Georgia Banker Bert Lancereached the point last week where Jim-my Carter himself had to come to therescue. The President recommendedthat the director of the White House’sOffice of Management and Budget be re-leased from a promise that. if kept. coulddestroy Lance’s already shaky financialposition.

As first reported by TIME (May 23).in a story filed by Correspondents Ru-dolph Rauch and Philip Taubman, thestate of Lance’s finances has grown in-creasingly parlous. But in coming to theaid of a longtime friend, Carter was com-pelled to compromise the ultralofty eth-ical standards that he had set for mem-bers of his fledgling Administration.

Carter’s charitable move must stillbe endorsed by members of the Sen-ate Governmental Affairs Committee.which originally confirmed Lance in hisjob. At week’s end the 17-member grouphad not reached a decision. But fromthe tenor of proceedings, there is littledoubt that the Senators are strongly in-clined to follow Carter’s lead when theyreconvene this week. Even if they do.however. some observers believe thatLance will still be in trouble because ofa number of questionable judgments thathe has made since taking office.

Undoubtedly. Lance’s debts werethe main thing. Last January. before hewas confirmed as OMB chief. Lancelooked prosperous enough. He filed astatement with the Senate committeelisting his “direct liabilities” as S5.343.-797. his assets as $7.968.354 and his networth as $2.624.557.

The key to Lance’s problem is hisownership of 200.767 shares in the Na-tional Bank of Georgia. where he pre-sided before going to OMB. Lance. at

Carter’s request. promised the Presidentand the Senate that he would divest hii-self of his shares in the bank before Dec.3 1. (Treasury Secretary Michael Blu-menthal made a similar pledge to di-vest himself of Bendix Corp. stock byOct. 31.1

Lance’s shares, bought largely at apremium price, cost him more than $3.3million in borrowed money. At one pointlast week their value had sunk to $1.7million. One reason for the steep declinewas that National Bank of Georgia of-ficers decided earlier this month to writeoff $2.3 million in loan losses for thefirst half of 1977. Another was the pros-pect of Lance’s promised divestiture.Since his shares amount to roughly 16%of the bank’s stock, the anticipated salehas had an understandably dampeningeffect on the market value.

Making Do. The stock squeeze isnot the only drain on Lance’s resourc-es. The genial Georgian, who made$450,000 the year before joining Carter’sAdministration but now must make dowith his $57,500 Government salary(plus at least $150,000 in investment-related income), pays rent of $15,000 ayear for a handsome town house inGeorgetown. He owns an elegant 40-room mansion in Atlanta, a $100,000house in Calhoun. Ga., and a vacationhome on Georgia’s exclusive Sea Island.Nor does Lance stint on entertaining.In June, with his financial positionsteadily decaying, Lance and his wifeLaBelle threw a star-studded party atWashington’s Georgetown IM for mem-bers of the Carter Cabinet, plus suchother guests as Supreme Court Chief Jus-tice Warren Burger. Publisher Katha-rine Graham and Mr. and Mrs. AverellHarriman.

The deadline on the sale of Lance’s

TIME. JULY 25, 1977