What Really Happened During the 2003 Blackout?

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The power plant in the very first frame, next to the United Nations building in Manhattan, that's where I was... in the control room as a very young Engineer. I was actually giving a tour of our control room and flipping through some system graphics, when all 3 units tripped offline at nearly the same time, and the plant went completely dark, which before then was thought to be impossible. One of the operators actually yelled at me because he thought it was my fault, lol... I was relieved when the system operator called a few minutes later, and told us to, "Standby, we just lost the entire Northeast." We overcame a lot of challenges that evening, and for a young Engineer, it was exciting. I slept on the roof that night because it was too hot inside. I remember looking up at the night sky and seeing the stars, and thinking... when was the last time anyone in Manhattan looked up at the night sky and saw the stars like this? Great job on the video, and thanks for bringing back such great memories.

Damn...I just remembered how amazing that outage was. A bunch of us kids in the neighborhood had sleepovers, people were just going to each other's houses. We were playing in the streets. There was such a strange and unique coming together of humans where I was. As soon as the power came back, people started to go on about their usual business and that special moment was gone

The power went out above my head as I was boarding a plane in the Toronto airport. Ended up sitting on the tarmac for two hours, not knowing what the cause of the delay was. We were shuffled off the plane and I, a thirteen year old about to embark on their first solo journey, was left alone in an airport. I was too young for a cell phone at that time and the pay phones weren't always working. Managed to get a hold of my parents who brought me home. I can remember the sweltering heat. My elderly dog ended up passing away that night because of this heat. No vets were open because of the blackout. We didn't get power back in my house until 7am the next morning. It was...definitely a bad day for me.

I was not even 10 at the time. My dad had just walked in the door with 2 weeks worth of groceries when it tripped. I can still remember his “You have GOT to be kidding me!” As we hoped nothing would go to waste.

This happened when I was 4 and I thought I caused it by watching too much TV. I've lived with the guilt for many years, thank you for explaining what really happened and for clearing my conscience.

When you learn about the complexity of managing the power grid, it feels like a miracle that we consumers are actually allowed to do whatever we want and use as much power in whatever way we want in our homes. Something to be thankful for, since all the heavy lifting and problem solving is being done by someone else on our behalf.

I remember this blackout in Jersey City and NYC. Surprisingly, the blackout took so many people by surprise that there were zero reports of crime because everything came to a standstill. Instead, everyone tried to help each other when everyone tried to figure out what happened.

For additional context to anyone who isn’t hip to this story. The companies who were responsible to manage things (FirstEnergy and others) also had plenty of shady activities going on internally. So as you follow along with this wonderful walkthrough, keep in the back of your head the vision of your neighbor who has that old lawnmower that barely works. But it works so he won’t replace it even though he spends 5 hours every time just to get it running. Apply that exact mental visual to the scale of a company that is responsible for managing the grids as you listen to him talk about how these tiny pockets of problematic issues slowly domino effect

The Lift Pump Station located near Ludington, Michigan helped save the entire eastern half of the US and Canadian power grids. This facility maintained grid frequency by absorbing most of the nearly 5 GW load imbalance as the disconnects around Lake Erie engaged. The pump station filled itself to the brim, well past its safe design water surface elevation, then ran itself nearly dry, again outside of safe operating levels and at great risk of causing cavitation in the turbines to provide power afterwards. These actions helped prevent catastrophic damage cascading all the way to Denver and gave some time for other stations to reconnect. If a power station is scrammed, a rapid shutdown, and depending on its type it can take days if not weeks to get a power station back up and running. A pump station can provide nearly immediate power generation. Thank you to all of the station operators, line workers and service crews who struggled on that day, your actions and quick thinking, kept the lights on east of the Rockies and prevented a far darker outcome. Both the 2003 and the Texas outages could have been much worse if the load imbalances had been allowed to progress a few minutes or even seconds longer. The control systems in place now are night and day more robust than what was present in 2003.

I was working at a 2000 MW power plant that day. I recall hearing air blast breakers operating frantically in the switchyard just after 4 pm. Lights blinked and then moments later the plant was black. From my office, I looked across the river and saw two other large power plants also fully tripped. Our plant generators were spinning, but there was no grid to connect to. We hoped to keep the units ready to resynch, but we could not keep up with demin water consumption, and one by one, lost the plant. The grid was partially restored by the next day when we were able to fire our units and resynch, thus rebuilding the grid. Certainly a day etched in my mind!

I remember this day very very well and I was so proud of my friends group. We had a contingency plan that if anything ever happened to the point where it was a panicky situation that required everybody to meet up at one place they would all meet at my place. I want to go pick up my friend Lindsey because she was the only one without a car and when I came home there was literally about 20 of them just waiting outside. They had generators and gas and propane generators and they brought their grills and their coolers and we started just cooking up all the food that was going to be going bad eventually and we basically had a three day long party. When we were on the third day we started siphoning gas from our cars so that we can continue to power our generators so that we can keep people's medications cold that needed it. And ever since then we all now use propane generators and we usually have around six propane tanks, each, at all times.

I was working in midtown near Times Square when the black out occurred. I lived in NJ at the time and found myself stranded. I had only $4 in my wallet and spent that buying a couple bottles of water as it was indeed a warm day. I heard that there were buses leaving from the Port Authority so I walked over there only to find a massive crush of humanity there. Had to be well over 100,000 people around there trying to get out. Then I heard the ferries were running across the Hudson and walked to them only to find many more thousands of people trying to get on a ferry. I gave up, and walked back to the office building where I worked and eventually got a ride late that night in a car service sedan with someone seated literally in my lap. We drove alone through the pitch black Lincoln tunnel. So eerie. The lesson learned: I always carry $300 in emergency cash ever since. When the electricity goes out, cash rules all, as I found out the hard way.

I was a kid in Brooklyn during this blackout. It was one of the most memorable nights of my life because we got a full night sky due to no light pollution. You usually never see more than 2-3 stars at night in my neighborhood.

I'm not gonna lie, as someone who was in NYC during this, Manhattan specifically, it was actually really fun. Gas service was still going so restaurants were cooking and effectively giving away all the food they had built up, everyone was out on the street ( who wasn't trudging across a bridge) was drinking. Driving...yes driving...was actually really easy because traffic was self moderating. It was a very surreal experience, all told. Spent the day after that first night out in Brooklyn by the water drinking with friends and then hung out at my friend's place on the west side and watched them switch the super blocks back on one by one. Looking up 8th avenue, it was kind of amazing. From the horizon you could see entire sections of Manhattan switch on, I wanna say like 10 block squares at a time coming towards where we were down in the 30's.

I remember this quite well. I was working in Solon, OH at the time, and the power tripped off at around 4:00. Some phone calls from our facilities manager confirmed it wasn't just us, but pretty much everyone in NE Ohio. They sent us home since we couldn't do much except twiddle our thumbs and it was clear it wasn't coming back on anytime soon. Got home, pulled the rope to open my garage door by hand, turned on the camp lantern for light when it got dark, and kept listening to the battery powered radio for news. Lit my gas stove with a lighter and made dinner, and read a book by candlelight. Quite peaceful, actually. When I heard that water pressure was going down I filled my bathtub so I had some water. Power came back on around 10 PM. Next day, I found out this was huge problem for lots of folks. I didn't have a generator back then, but it was certainly eye opening.

I remember this. Me and my friends were swimming when the pool tank shut off... we went home and realized we had lost power. My house didn't have any power for 4 days. We lost everything in the fridge and had to use flashlights to go about the house. It was dark everywhere and we couldn't go anywhere. It was a crazy few days... I was 11 going on 12 when it happened. I'm now 31. Amazing how much time has passed since then. Thanks for this

The sound of nearly the entire neighborhood cheering when the lights came back on, man you had to be there to hear it. A timeless sound that will forever be etched in my head. I remember how it all began and how it ended. We definitely were all still pretty shook thinking the worse because of 9/11. My parents scared the hell out of me saying ppl were likely going to loot houses (we lived in the suburbs in bumblef*ck nowhere) I as a dumb 12 year old, imagined it all going down. We all slept in one room burning UP that summer, lol. Anyway! Very interesting information here! I wonder if anyone lost their job. Salute to those who put their back into fixing this.

I loved this day. I lived beside a valley with a river. After so many hours, and seeing that everything was down, i set up a campsite beside the river. Will never forget how bright the stars were. I was actually sad when the city glow returned.

i was born in 2001, so i was only 2 years old (i.e. too young to remember) when all of this was going on. but my mum told stories of how the whole street stepped up and helped everyone out - there was a small (probably 20-30 units) apartment building on the street with mostly disabled and elderly people, i.e. the people most adversely-affected by the power loss. some people went around, handing out burgers and hotdogs cooked on their propane BBQs, my mum had a bunch of ice cream in the freezer that was now melting so she held me in one arm, grabbed the ice cream, bowls, and spoons, put it all into a little buggy cart thing (not like a shopping cart, but a wagon), and walked up and down the block handing out bowls of half-melted ice cream. there was this older fellow who had a couple generators (just little things, the sort of generator you'd have with you when camping) and a few people dragged their freezers over (helped out by someone's dolley), apparently the entire street ate a big ol BBQ with ice cream bars, ice-cold beer, etc etc in front of this guy's place. even the old and disabled ppl from the apartment came out! my mum still has a picture of me, enjoying a 'magic' show put on by one of the ppl from that apartment! it's really interesting how communities, people who really don't know eachother very well, can band together in tough times. sure, it would've been easier to just ignore my mum and i, she's never been terribly healthy, nevermind those poor ppl in the apartment block - but how everyone pulled together to maintain civility, community, and got through the crisis together? gives you just a lil bit of faith in humanity, don't it?