Hi, I'm the History Guy. I have a degree in history and I love history,
and if you love history too, this is the channel for you.
Forty years ago this summer, four lightning strikes within an hour on critical electrical
subsystems would leave the United States largest city without power for 25 hours.
The events that followed showed both the best and the worst of human nature.
Represented the challenges of the time, and forever changed the future of New York City.
At 8:37 p.m. on July 13th, 1977, a lightning bolt struck a critical substation along the
Hudson River in Westchester County, New York. Within an hour three other lightning
bolts would strike critical lines. Efforts by Consolidated Edison to shed power failed,
and a cascade of blown critical breakers caught the city of New
York off from the nation's power grid. The city went dark at 9:34 pm.
This was not the first time that New York City had lost power. In November of 1965,
a major power outage that struck the American Northeast all the way up into Canada,
it was the largest power outage in the history of the United States. And during that event,
New York had remained relatively calm, even somewhat festive. There were less than a
hundred arrests for crimes committed during the 1965 blackout. It was even the setting for
the 1968 comedy film with Doris Day called ‘Where Were You When The Lights Went Out’.
But 1977 was different, the first reports of looting came into police stations within
10 minutes of the power going out, and by the time the power came back on more than
1,600 stores had been looted and more than a thousand fires had been set by arson. 35
blocks of Broadway...were destroyed. Thousands of people were injured,
including 550 police officers. A congressional investigation determined that the cost of the
looting and fires alone exceeded 300 million dollars. New York City Mayor Abe Beame called
it “A night of terror”. Compared to 1965 when less than 100 people were arrested, more than
3,700 people were arrested for looting. The jails were overfilled, the police were swamped.
So why was 1977 so different? Well the mid 1970s were a difficult time in New York City. Years
of deficit spending and a nationwide economic downturn following the energy crisis in 1973,
had brought the city to the verge of bankruptcy in 1975. The city's credit rating had been declining
since the mid 1960s and in 1975 they could no longer find creditors who were willing to purchase
their bonds. The state and federal government stepped in to rescue the city but only under the
promise that the city get its financial situation in order. In order to balance the budget, the
city shed 50,000 city employees in 1975, alone. City services from libraries to garbage removal,
were cut back while fees were increased. Between 1975 and 1980 the New York City
Police Department shrunk by 34 percent, while crime rose by more than 40 percent.
The nationwide economic downturn and recession in the mid-1970s,
combined with broader trends like white flight and deindustrialization, had struck New York
City particularly hard. In 1975, unemployment in New York City was a staggering 12 percent,
and two years later in 1977, it was still hovering around double digits. The city's
economic promise had seemed to fade and in its wake came the crime that was bred
from despair. New York City's crime index doubled between the mid 1960s and mid 1970s.
There were 830 violent crimes per 100,000 persons in New York City in 1977. That number had been
just 409 a decade earlier. In 1977 there were an estimated 40,000 prostitutes in New York
City and 200,000 heroin abusers. In addition to its economic woes, the city was in the midst of
a terrible heat wave when the power killed the air-conditioning in July of 1977. Over a
10-day period the average high temperature in New York City was 97.1 degrees, that's
fifteen degrees above normal, and is still the hottest heatwave in the history of New York City.
And the city was on edge, in fear of a single criminal, the self named Son of Sam. The vicious
murderer had been committing random murders in New York City since July of 1976, and by 1977 had
murdered six people and wounded seven others. He had eluded the largest manhunt in the history of
New York City, and so people were both gripped by terror and losing faith in their police force. The
criminal, David Berkowitz, would be apprehended August 10th, less than a month after the blackout.
To be clear it was not all terror that night, much of New York remained calm and reacted much as they
had in 1965. New Yorkers pulled together, thousands of people volunteered to help,
for example directing traffic or helping people navigate dark stairwells or distributing candles
and flashlights. In some places it was even a festive atmosphere, where bars remained open
all night serving liquor, even though they couldn't serve food. Millions of New Yorkers
didn't even know about the rioting and looting until the next day. And despite all the mayhem,
some sort of unwritten agreement between the police and the looters prevented escalation,
and so in all of the chaos, only two people were killed.
The impact on the city was significant and many residents woke up to know that their
neighborhoods would be forever changed. Many of the shops that had been looted or burned never
reopened. The violence changed politics in the city as the appearance of being out of control
destroyed Mayor Beames hopes for re-election and catapulted a relatively unknown candidate,
congressman Ed Koch, to win the mayoral election in the fall. He had run to the right of other
Democratic candidates on a law-and-order platform. And while Mayor Koch's 11 years
in office were controversial, he did help to restore the city's financial stability,
and rebuild much of the damage from the looting in 1977. Although crime rates in New York City
would not reduce back to the levels of the early 1960s until 40 years later in the early 2000s.
One interesting claim is made by hip-hop music pioneer Grandmaster Cass, who argues that the
looting that occurred in the 1977 blackout, helped to catapult the hip-hop music craze to popularity,
by allowing more aspiring DJs and rappers to acquire music equipment. According to online
streaming service Spotify hip hop music is the most popular genre in the world today.
In the end the response to the blackout in 1977 was the result of a culmination
of many factors and long-term economic trends whose impacts were magnified in the largest
city in the United States. But it is still startling how just four lightning strikes
could be such a trigger. And it begs the question, was this explosion avoidable,
absent just one summer thunderstorm? Or was it inevitable? In any case it was worth remembering.
I'm the History Guy. I hope you enjoyed this addition to my series 5 minutes of history,
short snippets have forgotten history 5 to 10 minutes long, and if you did enjoy
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