'77 NYC Blackout Memories
from Al Giordano @AlGiordano
1. Forty years ago this week the New York City blackout of 1977 began when lightning struck a Con Edison substation in Buchanan, NY...
2. It was at 8:37 p.m. and at that precise moment I was on the Clearwater sloop on the Hudson River across from the Indian Point nuke...
3. It was a fundraising boat ride for the Westchester People's Action Coalition (WESPAC) featuring the singer-songwriter Pete Seeger....
4. A number of us there had been arrested three months prior at the Seabrook nuclear site in New Hampshire. So when lightning struck...
5. ...the substation, we saw it from the river, and it looked like it struck the next-door Indian Point nuke. Then the lights went out...
6. ...up and down the valley. There were no cell phones back then. Nobody knew what had happened. We were a few hundred feet from the nuke.
7. Some panicked. "What if the nuke melts down? We're trapped!" I was, like, "Well if we gotta die, we get to die with great people!"
8. Suddenly we heard the familiar strum of a banjo, probably the most iconic banjo in human history, and Pete began to sing...
9. "Amaaaaaaaaaazing graaaaaaaace, how sweeeeeeet the sound...." Instantly the palpable fear in the air dispersed as everyone sang along...
10. I told this story when Pete died, in 2014, and was reminded of it again today when I saw a news story remembering the historic blackout.
11. The boat was the only thing on the entire Hudson River generating light. On the shores of both sides, lights remained out all night.
thread:
Link to tweet
= new reply since forum marked as read
