I was a NYC Firefighter assigned to 138th St. in the South Bronx. We saw the lights go out in Manhattan and seconds later the Bronx went dark. We were immediately called to a stuck elevator in the projects around the block and didn't get back to our firehouse for the next 14 hours.
It was the wild west. Fire to fire
, looting, shots fired. Fires that would require 20 units were fought with 1 or 2. We were in our glory.
I got home to Queens, got a couple of hours rest, picked up a meal for the night tour (no supermarkets left in the South Bronx) and was back in the shit. That next night was just as bad until power came back on.

I was 15, my brother was 11, and our dad took us to NYC for the first time. When we left the Hotel Taft there was a guy on the street selling yo-yos with tiny lightbulbs in them, chanting "Everybody loves a yo-yo!". We saw the movie "Rollercoaster" in Sensurround near Times Square, then started back to the hotel. When the lights went out, Dad grabbed both of us by the hand. I was about to protest that I was too old to have my hand held, but chose to shut up and do what he said, because I had never seen him look that scared. We ran back to the Taft, with glass breaking and guys running down the street with TV sets. I was so naïve I didn't even realize they were looters. The guy with the lighted yo-yos was still outside the hotel, now laughing and chanting "Everybody loves a yo-yo in a blackout!" We sat in the hotel lobby for two hours, then a bellhop started leading groups of guests up the stairs to their rooms, lighting our way by striking matches! We had to climb 12 flights. My only regret is that I didn't buy a yo-yo from that vendor... what a perfect souvenir that would have been!

I was charge nurse working at an assisted living facility in East Haven CT.EVERYTHING WENT BLACK, I CANNOT REMEMBER HOW LONG IT WAS FOR, I GUESS BECAUSE OF MY FEAR THAT "OMG SEPTEMBER 11TH WAS CLEAR STILL IN EVERYONES MEMORIES. MY THOUGHTS AUTOMATICALLY WENT STRAIGHT TO PROTECTING MY RESIDENTS AND NEEDING TO PHONE MY CHILDREN.

I remember the 1965 blackout living in Harlem NY i was 9 years old one month short of my 10 birthday, i was in my mother's room watching a Japanese monster picture when the lights went out something after 5pm, i also remember the 1977 black out living in harlem the worst black out ever wow, and i remember the 2003 black out living in the Bronx it was not too bad.

I met my cousin Ellen at Carnegie Hall where I had an audition for a show. We went up to 34th Street where I played some songs for a radio show that was on WRBS. We got some dinner at Penn Station, and I sent her on her way on the Path train to Rockland County and I caught the LIRR to Babylon and Oakdale. After changing at Jamaica and getting on a Diesel train - I sat and looked at the skyline go dark. My cousin made it home okay and so did I.

Had just gotten off an elevator in mid-town where I had been examined for my first ever contact lenses; my future husband and I drove back to Long Island to college and slowly noticed the traffic lights were not working. Took the East River Drive out to Greenvale, L.I. Midterms were postponed and that caused some glee. The blackout was no problem for us. In 1977 I was working nights as a nurse at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Hospital on the pediatrics unit. I don't remember how I got to work (bus or cab)from my upper west side apartment but all our patients were ok overnight (there was a generator for some lights and no one was on a respirator). We nurses gave morning report to the day shift around 7am (daylight by then) out on the roof-top terrace where there was a small playground and tables and chairs for the kids. I went home and went to sleep and didn't know about the looting until late that evening heading back to work again. I remember hanging out with neighbors on the W. 71st Street block when I first got home in the morning: it was a nice "party." Once again, I'd been barely affected. Just good luck. I moved to Denver in 1984 and we only get temporary black-outs when someone hits a local power substation with their car, or when we have a blizzard. They only last for minutes usually, at most a few hours, and the whole town doesn't go out.

Remember both and was young and fortunately was home for both, living in East Harlem in Manhattan,the 65 was almost a non-event, neighbor helping neighbor with whatever was needed like candles,etc. The 77' blackout was a totally different experience, could hear commotion outside of our window in our dark apt. and look to see people carry items and shining flashlights to see what they took and to our shock realized people were looting,our supermarket got wipe out, furniture stores, needless to say it was scary, next day the commercial areas look like a war zone, some never recovered, for the 2003 was visiting upstate about an hour away and got affected but was not a big deal. Enjoyed the documentary.

I remember enjoying the new front lawn in Queens Village, which we had only moved into, 6 days before, from Fort Greene, Brooklyn. We were catching fireflies and putting them into an empty Hellman's Mayo jar. I had decide to release them for then evening, since they had been held captive for sometime, and weren't glowing as much. As soon as I did, all the lights in the neighborhood, street lamps and house lights, went dark.I was only 9 years old, and couldn't shake the feeling that we were being punished for harming the fireflies. Then I realized that Mom was still at work in downtown Manhattan, at the Manny Hanny building on Water Street. My older brother, Rico went out in his newly purchased (refurbished) Chevy Chevette, to get her back home. It was pure luck that she didn't get stranded in the subway, and that an hour or 2 later, they were both home. He told us about how drivers were taking turns at the intersections, and since it was late, past 10 pm - the going was relatively smooth. Just think what it would have been like for us, had we stayed at Clinton and Myrtle, directly above the retail shops.

I experienced the 1965 and 1977 blackouts in White Plains, Westchester County, just north of New York City. The 1965 event was most memorable because of how it began. Unlike typical power cuts, where electricity just snaps off and everything suddenly goes dark, the 1965 event started as a very gradual dimming, like someone slowly turning off a faucet. I remember it took about 15 minutes from initial dimming-to-dark. The lights went from normal white brightness to yellow, orange, red, then out! On the TV I was watching at the time, the picture slowly shrank until it became a white dot; then black. Of course, nobody in my neighborhood knew what was happening because such a grand outage had never occurred before. I found it very weird and disturbing, and have never experienced a power failure like it since. In contrast, the 1977 outage was the typical quick cut-to-dark during a loud summer T-storm. I just assumed it was a local outage, went to bed around 10:30PM (nothing else to do) and didn't realize how severe an event it was until the next morning when I finally started my car and tuned to 1010 WINS news radio. Shock and awe!

I was in the '77 nyc blackout. It was my first summer in NY having begun Barnard College earlier that year.

I had a summer job and no radio. I got to the M4 (?) bus that crosses Manhattan at 110th st. Looking out the window I couldn't make sense of what those folks were doing at the tire store. It slowly dawned on me that they were stealing. I got to work at 42nd and Lex, I was waiting for the elevator to work, a couple cops came up to me to ask me what I was doing, "I'm waiting to get to work". One said, "Go home, didn't you hear, all work is closed to do, sheesh".

What a first summer I had in NYC where I lived for 20 more years.

We were in a church meeting on second floor above a chinese restaurant on 29th street. We used candles to see and started walking church members home to protect them. Most lived in 23rd street projects some on floors as the 18th. We spent a lot of time climbing stairwells in the dark. All were afraid as it was chaos around us. One of my friends had a car, we all piled in to go home to Brooklyn. We drove down 7th ave inching through intersections and finally made it.

Another friend was flying home from LA. His plane was preparing to land - when there was no more NYC. They diverted to Connecticut and bussed back to NYC. The bus had to come through the Bronx the driver had everyone lay down on the floor to avoid the gunfire. He finally got home Mid morning of the next day. Brooklyn Heights was relatively quiet in comparison to rest of day.

I had just graduated high school a few weeks earlier. Hundreds of teens like myself would gather in Forest Park, Queens for free local rock band music. On the night of the black out and after the bands were finished playing, many people had battery run boom boxes tuned to WNEW FM which played only hard rock at the time. The first indication something was up was when the park lights went out at one time. The big clue was when WNEW went off the air! We then went to the Queens Zoo at Flushing Meadows Park and played with the animals.

i was working at bon marche downtown in 1977, it was a lighting store. when we blacked out we all went down to washington square park and decided to look for cold beer. fruitlessly. as we were sitting on a bench a man came running up to us and said "they're burning harlem and kentucky fried chicken has ice" sure enough i guess they were trucking ice in from new jersey. i lived on 14th st and the ice cream place downstairs was giving away their icecream. neighbors were setting up barbeque on the street, the a&p; gave away it's frozen food. the ymca across the street had a generator. it was really quiet without the constant hum of electricity. i remember old people in front of their buildings on folding chairs cause they couldn't get up to their apartments. i lived on the 2nd floor and my toilet flushed

I lived thru ALL of NYC's blackouts, but the worst was 1977 as my Mother and I were in Central Park for a free presentation of "Three Penny Opera" and living in Bayside, which is the tip of Queens. Like how do we get there, public transportation was knocked out. But since no one could understand what was happening, they held us in the outdoor theater for an hour, then made us leave the park in groups of 20 with a flashlight leading us. When we reached Fifth Avenue, it was like war was declared! We actually found a yellow cab driver willing to take us out to Queens, it was one scary ride out there. And he was so generous, charged us next to nothing. My Father was frantic, and would have paid anything necessary. But it wasn't necessary. SO THANK YOU AGAIN, kind driver, for a trip in 1977 that I will never forget. Needlesss to say, we did NOT return to the Delacorte in Central Park for another showing, let's not push our luck here.

Working at a law firm in the Wall Street area in 1965. After working a little overtime, tired and waiting for the elevator to get up to the 43rd floor, when it stopped once, twice, then nothing. Waiting for it to come up and take me down to the lobby, and after about a half hour, I looked around to find another office where someone was still around after hours. Found a gentleman in one of the offices and he had his portable radio on. He suggested I take a seat and wait because Con Ed had just reported power would be back on in the next hour. After hours of waiting, I heard voices in the stairwell, so I decided to take a look & found many people stranded like myself ~ a few had flashlights, but it was still very difficult to see what was going on. One man had driven his car into the city from Staten Island and had it parked in one of the nearby garages & was good enough to drive every one of us home ~ had to walk down the 43 floors, but we held hands going down single file and all was good. I definitely thanked God that the elevator that I was yelling at to hurry up, never made it to my floor but happily stopped half a floor down from me. (Quite a few people were not as lucky and there were some very sad stories.) Power was not restored until later the following day. Darkened New York night, very surreal to say the least. Oh! and BTW, next morning drove in with some other people to cover the work day and walked the 43 flights as power not restored yet.

I lived thru all 3 blackouts at the ages of 5, 17 & 43. In 1965 I was watching one of those cheesy japanese monster films when our old b&w; console started to flicker. I called my mother who was making dinner. She fooled with the rabbit ears & it seemed ok. As soon as it started to flicker again, I called her & she expressed her annoyance just before the place went dark. In 1977 I was lying on my bed listening to the radio & reading a college catalog because I was going to be a freshmen in the fall. The song Do You Wanna Make Love was playing and started to sound warped so the DJ said he would try another song and as soon as he said that the lights in the house went out. I got off my bed thinking we blew a fuse before i heard my grandmother downstairs say "what happened to the lights." We realized it wasn't just us so we went out on the porch because it was hot & we saw a bunch of kids riding down the street with new bikes they stole from the bike store around the corner. He never recovered & went out of business.

I was on a 5 train when the blackout began. The train stopped in the 103rd Street station, but on the express track. The interiors of the train cars were lit and no one noticed that the station was dark. We assumed the problem was only related to the subway, so we sat and complained and waited and fumed. We weren't given any information for a long time. During this wait, several people walked between cars and jumped down to the tracks. This seemed so reckless to me -- we had no idea what caused the problem or when it would be fixed. Most of us just kept waiting. After about two hours, we were directed to file to the front car and jump down. Like good zombies, we slowly crossed over the local track and, in deep darkness (the few flashlights the responders had didn't accomplish much), climbed the side of the platform and felt along the wall until we reached the stairs and exited the station.

The scene on the street was shocking and so bright. Traffic was a mess, but everyone was hanging out and having a good time and trying to make a buck. I lived in the Pelham Parkway section of the Bronx at the time and couldn't imagine figuring out how to walk all the way home. Another train passenger and I were both headed north, so we hitchhiked along the highway and got a ride from a wide-smiling nurse who lived in a nearby-neighborhood in the Bronx.

It was a hot, loud, sticky night, but the power was back the next day. Good adventure, anyway.

Yes, I lived through all three of New York's major blackouts although I was in Long Island during the 1977 fiasco. What I recall as being most shocking was how different it was from the one in the 1960s that was quite mellow and fun. People flipped out in the 1977 one. The 1960s one was a lot larger, in fact it affected the entire East Coast and originated in nearby Big Allis in Ravenswood, but the 1970s one was a scary experience.

It was after dinner. My brother and I were supposed to be doing our homework. Our Dad had gone back to the office per usual, and our Mom had gone to choir practice. Instead of doing our homework, I was watching TV, and my brother was in the basement fooling with our Dad's tools, in particular the hand drill. While he was drilling I had to turn up the TV, then all of a sudden the TV went off, and so did all of the lights. My brother couldn't get the drill to work, or the lights to go back on. We were doomed, so off we ran to our bedroom and scared ourselves to sleep until the next morning when I told our parents that my brother caused the blackout.

I was at work in midtown Manhattan on the hot Thursday afternoon of the 2003 blackout. Of course, everyone worried at first that something nefarious had caused the power failure (9/11 was still too fresh in our minds). Still, whatever the cause, there was no point in hanging around on the 18th floor. Once my co-workers and I had made our respective ways down many dark flights of stairs (for some reason, the emergency lights in the stairwells didn't kick in), we went our separate ways.

It was extremely hot, traffic was insane, and my cell network, at least, was completely inoperable except for the few minutes during which I got in a quick call to my sister that relayed pretty much no useful information, i.e. "I'm trying to get home, but I'm not sure how I'm gonna do it. Will try to call later, 'bye." Couldn't reach my husband--thanks, T-Moblie!

Considering the craziness of the situation, everyone I encountered was calm and fairly pleasant, if uncomfortable and exasperated. MetroNorth, my means of transport from Yonkers to NYC every day, was down, so the only other option was the bus. But which bus, and where to find it? Basically, huge crowds of people stood on Third Ave., peering at each bus heading up from downtown and hoping to hook up with the "right" one.

My lucky moment came when after about 2 hours, a (theoretical) express bus to Riverdale came rolling up. Riverdale! I'd graduated from The College of Mount Saint Vincent, so I knew the area. Only about 5 miles or so from where I lived; maybe someone could pick me up from the bus stop? How I'd reach anybody to do that, I didn't know, but I was pretty sick of standing around and had nowhere to spend the night, so the "express" bus it was.

The bus was hot and packed with people, but everyone was in good spirits--hey, at least we had respective destinations. And so the bus crawled at a snail's pace toward the Bronx. The woman in the seat next to me lent me her cell phone (she had AT&T;), and I was able to reach my parents, who talked to my brother, who said he'd pick me up in Riverdale . . . if I could find a way to call him when I got there.

Four hours later, in the pitch dark, I disembarked the bus. The driver had dropped me off in front of my old college campus, but I literally couldn't see my hand in front of my face. My phone had no flashlight, so I waited for cars to pass in order to use the headlights to get my bearings. I knew there was a payphone bank in front of the campus gate . . . another car passed, and there it was! But I couldn't see to dial. I ended up using the light from the screen of my cell phone to dial my brother on the payphone. That's probably my weirdest memory of that day.

As I struggled to dial, a man approached, and I prayed he wasn't some predatory creep. Fortunately, he was just a nice guy whose sister and brother-in-law lived in the apartment building across the street. He invited me to hang out there with them until Paul arrived, so I did. It's a bit of a blur, but I used someone's phone (I don't think mine) to determine when my brother was fairly close. Then I basically stood out on Riverdale Avenue, trying to examine cars without actually flagging them down. Finally, my chariot arrived.

I left my office at about 4:45 that day; it was 1:30 a.m. when I finally got home to my husband. Still, I'll never forget my ex-boyfriend's mother describing how she was stuck in the subway during the Blackout of 1965. They had to walk along the tracks to get out. So I consider myself lucky--extremely lucky--that I spent August 14, 2003 ABOVE ground.

The 1965 blackout was pretty memorable as well. I was 15 years old and taking driving lessons from a Driving School. The teacher (with auto) turned up right on time that Summer evening and away we went along streets with no stoplights working or street lights. Who cared at age 15 ?.....it was fun !

I was onstage in the middle of the New York Shakespeare Festival's 1977 production of The Cherry Orchard at Lincoln Center when the stage went dark. At first we, the actors, thought that once again something had gone wrong with the computerized lighting board and we simply waited for the adjustment to be made. Word trickled in somehow that the problem was citywide and not going be easily solved. I don't remember exactly when or how the decision was made, but it seemed to be a communal one among cast, crew and audience. We finished the performance by flashlight and candlelight and that night, the Vivian Beaumont Theatre seemed to travel back a hundred years.

I had taken the train into the City with a friend for a concert that night. We were in the middle of a Boz Scaggs concert when the music suddenly died and the lights went out, and we were told there was a blackout and were asked to just exit quietly. We walked out onto the street and everything was dark all around us. No street lights. No lights in buildings. Nothing. It was surreal. New York is a city of lights, not darkness. We had to get home. We were thirsty and hungry and hot, but shops closed immediately and nothing was available. We made it back to Grand Central Station but were told the train tunnels were flooded and trains weren't running. Pay phones were either not working or there were huge lines for them. I can't remember which. There was no air conditioning. It was hot & humid. We bought a cold onion bagel that some vendor there was selling and shared that. No water fountains worked. We sat on the floor of the terminal, not knowing what to do, and knowing our parents were going to be crazy with worry. A cab driver came in and offered to take up to 5 riders to Larchmont area suburb. My friend's aunt lived in Mount Vernon which was near Larchmont and he agreed to take us there. We got in his cab and drove right through Hell's Kitchen and Harlem. At that time, it wasn't the "cool and trendy" area it is now. The looting and fires were rampant. Store windows were breaking all around us and people were running out with TV's and huge appliances and clothing- as much as they could possibly carry. People were jumping on cars that were just trying to get down the street and setting fire to parked ones. We had to drive slowly, since so many people were in the streets, and that made it all the more scary. Our cab driver said he had pepper spray & a small bat, but I didn't think that would be enough if the looters attacked our car. One of the riders lied and said he lived farther out than he had originally said and we decided he had to be dropped off last. By the time we arrived in Mount Vernon, the lights were out there and the cabby had one of those searchlights on his side mirror. We stopped to ask directions from someone at an intersection, near a fire alarm box blaring a siren. He said he had no idea where he was and had just pulled the fire alarm out of desperation.We got to her aunt's house at 3am in the morning and were able to finally call our parents in Connecticut. My mom told me the TV news had on-site reporters saying things like, "...and we won't even tell you what's happening in the streets right now." And that had totally freaked them out with worry for us.