Some of you would have heard about my mate Steve from Bournemouth who's working in New York for Quietman next to Times Square.
Here's his tale of last week's blackout. Might get some of his pics up here too if I pull my finger out!
Hey everybody,
I thought I would write to tell you a bit about the blackout!
It happened at 4.11pm EST and I was at work as usual. All of the lights went
off and the alarms sounded. At first everyone (including me) thought it was
a terrorist attack, people were very afraid. Then we had to evacuate our
building... We are on the top floor (21st) and it took 10 minutes to get
down as I was following this really old woman! When we got outside on the
street we assumed that it was only our block that was out of power but then
my friend Scott (who had left early) phoned me to say that all of Manhattan
was out of power and that I shoudl get out of there as quickly as possible
because there are 8 million people who will be trying to get around at the
same time! I told my friends I was leaving (which I actually regret because
they stayed in the bar downstairs and had a street party!) because I would
be able to get the ferry home to Hoboken.
So I walked through Times Square to get to the west side and could not
believe the pandemonium, cars were blocked and people were everywhere! I got
to the ferry port and was unable to make any phonecalls because all of the
cell towers were out of action by this point. The ferry queue was 4hours
long, people were passing out because of the heat. I realised how trapped we
are on this 'island' as we simply had no way to quickly get out or even
communicate with anyone, we still assumed it could be some terrorist
attack.. What I did like was the community spirit, everyone was very
friendly and talkative.
I finally got on the ferry and was very relieved as it was taking me
directly to Hoboken. I got home at 9.43pm and I was very dehydrated and
tired. Fortunately I had a couple of hours of power in my laptop so I
watched a DVD and went to bed. I didn't sleep well because I couldn't use
the A/C and I woke at 8.00am (Friday) to see the power back on! Even though
the power was back at work our boss told us that we were shut for the day.
So I did the only decent thing and bought a cooler and a 12 pack and was in
the park drinking and sunbathing by 11.30am!
All in all it was a tiring but fun experience, I'm just glad I wasn't in the
subway or halfway up the Empire State Building when it happened. One funny
thing, the mayor of New York was telling us to conserve energy yet those
screens in Times Square came back on pretty quickly!
Hope everyone is well
regards,
Steve P "I survived the Blackout of 2003" (yes they are selling T-Shirts
saying that)