Two People, One Blackout

On July 13, 1977, the power went out across New York City for twenty-five hours. Below are two accounts of that night. Both are true. They do not match.

ACCOUNT ONE: A CITY OFFICE REPORT

Lightning struck equipment north of the city at 8:37 p.m. Backup systems failed one after another. By 9:36 p.m. every borough was dark. Traffic signals stopped. Subway trains halted between stations with passengers aboard. Hospitals switched to generators. Emergency crews worked through the night, and power was restored borough by borough over the following day. The report lists what was damaged and what it cost to repair.

ACCOUNT TWO: A GRANDMOTHER ON PROSPECT PLACE

"The streetlights went and the whole block came outside. Nobody stayed in. You could see stars over Brooklyn, which I had not seen in my life. Mr. Feld carried his freezer meat down to the sidewalk and cooked all of it on a grill so it would not spoil, and he fed anybody who walked past. My neighbor sat in her car with the door open playing the radio for the street. I was twenty-six years old and I remember it as the first time I met the people living above me."

WHY THEY DIFFER

The report is counting damage. The grandmother is remembering an evening. The report was written to answer the question "what broke and what did it cost." Her account answers a question nobody wrote down: "what was it like to be there."

Neither account is wrong. But if you only read the report, you would think the night was a machine failure. If you only listen to the grandmother, you would not know the subway had trapped people underground. A careful reader takes both and asks what each one was built to do.