Word: blackout
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...crisis of light, and of darkness?the kind of event that brings out the best and the worst in people. Certainly the 1965 blackout could never happen again, or so New Yorkers had thought. But something very much like it struck Wednesday the 13th, only this time it was frighteningly different. Through the long, sweaty night and most of the following day, the nation's largest city was powerless, lacking both the electricity on which it depends so heavily and any means to stop a marauding minority of poor blacks and Hispanics who, in severe contrast to 1965, went...
...over that the unthinkable had happened: at 9:34 on one of the summer's most sweltering nights, air conditioners, elevators, subways, lights, water pumps ?all the electric sinews of a great modern city?had stopped. They would not work again for as long as 25 hours. The blackout was far smaller than that of 1965?9 million people lost electricity in New York and the northern suburbs, v. 25 million people in eight states and two Canadian provinces twelve years ago. But the effects were nationwide. TV networks stopped broadcasting for several minutes. The flow of teletyped news...
...later, when banks, brokerages and other businesses reopened. But the far more important price cannot be tallied. What had the city lost in terms of morale and image? Deputy Mayor Osborn Elliott, in charge of keeping old jobs in the city and bringing in new ones, announced the blackout at least had not caused a group of oil suppliers from Houston and New Orleans to drop consideration of moving some of their offices to the city. But how many businessmen thought of moving out? How many will become more difficult to sell on moving in? At best, Elliott...
...fuss over the looting. Said Lorraine, 14, who had helped plunder a drugstore in East Harlem: "It gets dark here every night. Every night stores get broke into, every night people get mugged, every night you scared on the street. But nobody pays no attention until a blackout comes...
...arrests were common. Officers collared more than 3,500 people between the time the blackout struck and 7:40 a.m. Friday, when Beame declared the emergency over. The figure was about eight times the number of arrests in the riots...