Northeast Blackout of 1965

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. Around 25 million people and 80,000 square miles (207,000 km²) were left without electricity for up to twelve 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 and Southern Ontario. Instead of the relay being set to trip and protect the line if the flow of power exceeded the line's capacity, it was set for a much lower value.

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 misset relay to trip at far below the line's rated capacity, disabling a main power line heading into Southern Ontario. Within seconds, 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 and Moses generators, with no outlet for their power, were automatically shut down to prevent damage. 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, Western New York and Eastern New York-New England. Maine, with only limited electrical connection southwards, was not affected. 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 City where a local backup generator was being used for transmission purposes.

UFO Reports

On the same night, many UFO sightings were made in the same area. One occurred at 4:30 PM over Tidioute, Pennsylvania, and another at 5:22 PM between Syracuse Airport and Rochester, New York. They were described as fast, bright objects. During the blackout, a private pilot and a flight instructor both witnessed a bright fireball 50 - 100 ft. in diameter, which quickly vanished. The fireball was observed over the Clay Power Station, which was originally said to be the source of the blackout before authorities reported the source of the surge to be at Beck. In New York City, UFOs with a strange glow were reported, and one of the pictures of the object taken was printed in Time Magazine. Before the Federal Power Commission's explanation, the Indianapolis Star, the Syracuse Herald-Journal and the Associated Press all picked up the UFO reports. ["The Canadian UFO Report: The Best Cases Revealed", Chris Rutkowski and Geoff Dittman, 2006, ISBN 1-55002-621-6]

Effect and aftermath

New York City was dark by 5:27pm. The blackout was not universal in the city. Some neighborhoods never lost power.

Power resupply 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.

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.

Popular culture

The events of the blackout were dramatized in the 1968 film "Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?".

The blackout helped inspire an episode of the American television series "Bewitched". The episode, titled "The Short Happy Circuit of Aunt Clara," featured Aunt Clara attempting a spell to put out some lighted candles which inadvertently put out all the lights on the Eastern Seaboard. The episode was first broadcast on November 10 1966.

The blackout is featured in an episode of "Quantum Leap" ("Double Identity -- November 8, 1965"). In an effort to return to the future, Sam sets in motion fictional events that trigger the blackout.

The blackout is featured (and parodied) in an episode of "Green Acres" in the first season episode entitled, "Double Drick" on March 23 1966.

The blackout is discussed extensively in episode 1 of the BBC series "Connections" by James Burke.

The blackout provides the scene in a section of Don DeLillo's novel "Underworld".

The blackout was mentioned on the HBO TV series "Oz", when the story of elder inmate Bob Rebadow's execution is told, in which he escaped the electric chair due to the timely blackout.

The blackout is mentioned in George Gipe's novelization of the movie "Gremlins" from 1984. According the novel, the blackout was caused by the Gremlins.

On the sitcom "Wings" in the episode "Sports and Leisure", a question about the blackout comes up in a game of Trivial Pursuit. Then, most of the characters retrospect as to where they were or what they were doing when the blackout occurred

The blackout was also mentioned in an episode of the original "Batman" TV series.

Episode #4 of the first season of "Mr. Monk" also mentions one of the characters' conception during 1965 blackout.

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", 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.

ee also

*"Brittle Power"
*List of power outages
*New York City Blackout of 1977
*Northeast Blackout of 2003
*The cause and effects of this event were dramatized in the television series "Connections", by James Burke (Episode 1, "The Trigger Effect").

References

* Damien Cave, "Imaginary infants as beacons of hope", 10/15/01, Salon.com, [http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2002/09/03/baby_boom/index1.html online]

External links

* [http://archives.cbc.ca/IDD-1-70-874/disasters_tragedies/1965_blackout/ CBC Digital Archives - The 'Great Northeastern Blackout' of 1965]
* [http://www.memorywiki.org/en/New_York_Power_Black_Out%2C_1965%2C_by_Randy_Summers Memoirs of the 1965 Blackout] from MemoryArchive.