Northeast blackout of 1965

A map of the states and provinces affected; not all areas within the political boundaries were blacked out.

The Northeast blackout of 1965 was a significant disruption in the supply of electricity on November 9, 1965, affecting Ontario, Canada and Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island, Vermont, New York, and New Jersey in the United States. Over 30 million people and 80,000 square miles (207,000 km²) were left without electricity for up to 12 hours.

Cause

The cause of the failure was human error that happened days before the blackout, when maintenance personnel incorrectly set a protective relay on one of the transmission lines between the Niagara generating station Sir Adam Beck Station No. 2 in Queenston, Ontario. The safety relay, which is set to trip if the current exceeds the capacity of the transmission line, was set too low.

As was common on a cold November evening, power for heating, lighting and cooking was pushing the electrical system to near its peak capacity, and the transmission lines heading into Southern Ontario were heavily loaded. At 5:16 p.m. Eastern Time a small surge of power coming from Lewiston, New York's Robert Moses generating plant caused the improperly set relay to trip at far below the line's rated capacity, disabling a main power line heading into Southern Ontario. Instantly, the power that was flowing on the tripped line transferred to the other lines, causing them to become overloaded. Their protective relays, which are designed to protect the line if it became overloaded, tripped, isolating Adam Beck from all of Southern Ontario.

With no place else to go, the excess power from Beck then switched direction and headed east over the interconnected lines into New York State, overloading them as well and isolating the power generated in the Niagara region from the rest of the interconnected grid. The Beck generators, with no outlet for their power, were automatically shut down to prevent damage. The Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant was however able continue to generate under reduced power conditions with its generators supplying power to Niagara Mohawk Power Corporation customers in the metropolitan areas of Buffalo and Niagara Falls NY. These areas ended up being isolated from the rest of the Northeast power grid and remained powered up. The Niagara Mohawk Western NY Huntley (Buffalo) and Dunkirk steam plants were knocked offline^[1] . Within five minutes the power distribution system in the northeast was in chaos as the effects of overloads and loss of generating capacity cascaded through the network, breaking it up into "islands". Plant after plant experienced load imbalances and automatically shut down. The affected power areas were the Ontario Hydro System, St Lawrence-Oswego, Upstate New York, New England, and Maine. With only limited electrical connection southwards, power was not affected to the Southern States. The only part of the Ontario Hydro System not affected was the Fort Erie area next to Buffalo which was still powered by the old 25 Hz generators. Residents in Fort Erie were able to pick up a TV broadcast from New York where a local backup generator was being used for transmission purposes.

Radio

An aircheck^[2] of New York City station WABC reveals Dan Ingram doing a music radio show, in which he comments that the music sounds slow. The music playback equipment used motors that got their speed timing from the frequency of the powerline, normally 60 Hz. Comparisons of segments of the hit songs played at the time of the broadcast, minutes before the blackout happened, in this aircheck, as compared to the same song recordings played at normal speed reveal that approx 6 minutes before blackout the line frequency was 56 Hz, and just two minutes before the blackout that frequency dropped to 51 Hz.^{[citation needed]} Ingram mentioned that it seemed the electricity is slowing down, and he didn't know that could happen. He also stated that lights were dimming in the studio. When the news came on, the main story was about a man, Roger LaPorte, who set himself aflame in front of the UN so the staff seemed to be unaware of the impending blackout event. However, the newscast gradually fizzled out as power was lost.

Unaffected areas

At the time Holyoke, Massachusetts had a natural gas powered auxiliary Pratt & Whitney gas turbine as well as a municipal power plant. When the control board operator saw problems on the grid he disconnected Holyoke and went to local power. Holyoke did not lose power. Hartford, Connecticut also used gas turbines to maintain power. Also at that time, Braintree, Massachusetts had their own electric light company, BELD, and did not lose power.^[3]

Effect and aftermath

New York City was dark by 5:27p.m. The blackout was not universal in the city. Some neighborhoods never lost power. Also, some areas in New York City suburban area Bergen County, New Jersey, served by PSE&G, did not lose power. Most of the television stations in the New York metro area went dead, as well as about half the FM stations.

Fortunately, a bright full moon lit up the cloudless sky over the entire blackout area, providing some aid for the millions who were suddenly plunged into darkness.

Power restoration was uneven. Most generators had no auxiliary power to use for startup. Parts of Brooklyn were repowered by 11:00pm, the rest of the borough by midnight. However, the entire city was not returned to normal power supply until nearly 7:00 a.m. the next day, November 10.

Power in western New York was restored in a few hours, thanks to the independent generating plant at Eastman Kodak Company in Rochester, New York, which stayed online throughout the blackout. It provided auxiliary power to restart other generators in the area which, in turn, were used to get all generators in the blackout area going again.

The New York Times was able to produce a ten-page edition for November 10, using the printing presses of a nearby paper that was not affected, the Newark Evening News. The front page showed a photograph of the city skyline with its lights all out.

Following the blackout, measures were undertaken to try to prevent a repetition. Reliability councils were formed to establish standards, share information, and improve coordination between electricity providers. Ten councils were created covering the four networks of the North American Interconnected Systems. The Northeast Power Coordinating Council covered the area affected by the 1965 blackout.

The task force that investigated the blackout found that a lack of voltage and current monitoring was a contributing factor to the blackout, and recommended improvements. The Electric Power Research Institute helped the electric power industry develop new metering and monitoring equipment and systems, which have become the modern SCADA systems in use today.

In contrast to the wave of looting and other incidents that took place during the 1977 New York City blackout, only five reports of looting were made in New York City after the 1965 blackout. It was said to be the lowest amount of crime on any night in the city's history since records were first kept.^[4]

The myth of the blackout baby boom

A thriving urban legend arose in the wake of the Northeast Blackout of 1965, in which it is told that a peak in the birthrate of the blackout areas was observed nine months after the incident. The origin of the myth is a series of three articles published in August 1966 in the New York Times,^[5] in which interviewed doctors told that they had noticed an increased number of births.

The story was debunked in 1970 by J. Richard Udry, a demographer from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, who did a careful statistical study that found no increase in the birthrate of the affected areas.

The myth of unidentified flying objects causing the blackout

When no cause for the blackout was immediately apparent, several UFO writers (including John G. Fuller, in his book Incident at Exeter) postulated that the blackout was caused by UFOs. Several sightings of probably mundane objects were cited, along with a sighting of a possible arc from a power line to a tree near Syracuse.^{[citation needed]}

See also

• Brittle Power
• List of power outages
• New York City blackout of 1977
• Northeast blackout of 2003
• Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?

References

1. ^ Buffalo Evening News. November 10 1965. 
2. ^ MP3 of the WABC broadcast as the blackout happened. Accessed 3 December 2010.
3. ^ Time Magazine. December 10, 1965. "Providing Blackout Lights"
4. ^ Frum, David (2000). How We Got Here: The '70s. New York, New York: Basic Books. p. 14. ISBN 0465041957. 
5. ^ [1]

External links

• Damien Cave, Imaginary infants as beacons of hope, 10/15/01, Salon.com, online
• CBC Digital Archives - The 'Great Northeastern Blackout' of 1965
• Memoirs of the 1965 Blackout – MemoryArchive.
• Sitts, George. "Radio Pierces The Great Blackout," Broadcast Engineering (magazine), December 1965.
• TV News coverage of the blackout, [2]
• The first episode of the 1978 BBC documentary Connections explained and re-enacted parts of the blackout [3]