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Thenortheast blackout of 1965 was a significant disruption in thesupply of electricity on Tuesday, November 9, 1965, affecting parts ofOntario inCanada andConnecticut,Delaware,Maryland,Massachusetts,New Hampshire,New Jersey,New York,Pennsylvania,Rhode Island, andVermont in theUnited States. Over 30 million people and 80,000 square miles (207,000 km2), and a population density of 144.9 inhabitants/km2 were left without electricity for up to 13 hours.[1]
The cause of the failure was the setting of aprotective relay on one of the transmission lines from theSir Adam Beck Hydroelectric Power Station No. 2 inQueenston, Ontario, nearNiagara Falls. The safety relay was set to trip if other protective equipment deeper within the Ontario Hydro system failed to operate properly.On a particularly cold November evening, power demands for heating, lighting, and cooking were pushing the electrical system to near its peak capacity. Transmission lines heading intosouthern Ontario were heavily loaded. The safety relay had been misprogrammed, and it did what it had been asked to do: to disconnect under the loads it perceived. As a result, at 5:16 p.m. Eastern Time, a small variation of power originating from theRobert Moses generating plant inLewiston, New York, caused the relay to trip, disabling a main power line heading into Southern Ontario. Instantly, the load that was flowing on the tripped line redistributed to the other lines, causing them to become overloaded. Their own protective relays, which are also designed to protect the lines from overload, tripped, isolating Beck Station from all of southern Ontario.[2]
With nowhere else to go, the excess load from Beck Station was redirected east, over the interconnected lines intoNew York state, overloading them as well, and isolating the power generated in the Niagara region from the rest of the interconnected grid. The Beck generators, with no outlet for their power, were automatically shut down to prevent damage. The Robert Moses Niagara Power Plant continued to generate power, which suppliedNiagara Mohawk Power Corporation customers in the metropolitan areas ofBuffalo andNiagara Falls, New York. These areas ended up being isolated from the rest of the Northeast power grid and remained powered up. The Niagara Mohawk Western NY Huntley (Buffalo) and Dunkirk steam plants were knocked offline.[3] Within five minutes, the power distribution system in the Northeast was in chaos as the effects of overloads and the subsequent loss of generating capacity cascaded through the network, breaking the grid into "islands". Station after station experienced load imbalances and automatically shut down. The affected power areas were theOntario Hydro System,St Lawrence-Oswego,Upstate New York, andNew England. With only limited electrical connection southwards, power to thesouthern states was not affected. The only part of the Ontario Hydro System not affected was theFort Erie area next to Buffalo, which was still powered by older 25 Hz generators. Residents in Fort Erie were able to pick up a TV broadcast from New York, where a local backup generator was being used for transmission purposes.[citation needed]
Anaircheck[4] ofNew York Cityradio stationWABC from November 9, 1965, reveals disc jockeyDan Ingram doing a segment of his afternoondrive time show, during which he noted that a record he was playing (Jonathan King's "Everyone's Gone to the Moon") sounded slow, as did the subsequentjingles played during a commercial break. Ingram quipped that the King record "was in thekey of R." The station's music playback equipment usedsynchronous motors whose speed was dependent on the frequency of the powerline, normally 60 Hz. Comparisons of segments of the hit songs played at the time of the broadcast, minutes before the blackout happened, in this aircheck, as compared to the same song recordings played at normal speed reveal that approximately six minutes before blackout the line frequency was 56 Hz, and just two minutes before the blackout that frequency dropped to 51 Hz.[5] AsSi Zentner's recording of "(Up a) Lazy River" played in the background—again at a slower-than-normal tempo—Ingram mentioned that the lights in the studio were dimming, then suggested that the electricity itself was slowing down, adding, "I didn't know that could happen". When the station'sAction Central News report came on at 5:25 pmET, the staff remained oblivious to the ongoing blackout. The lead story was stillRoger Allen LaPorte'sself-immolation atUnited Nations Headquarters earlier that day in protest ofAmerican military involvement in theVietnam War; a taped sound bite with the attending physician played noticeably slower and lower than usual. The newscast gradually fizzled out as power was lost by the time newscaster Bill Rice started delivering the second story about New Jersey SenatorClifford P. Case's comments on his home state's recentgubernatorial election.
Some areas within the affected region were not blacked out. Municipal utilities inHartford, Connecticut;Braintree,Hudson,Holyoke,Peabody[6] andTaunton, Massachusetts; andFairport,Greenport, andWalden, New York had their own power plants, which operators disconnected from the grid and which were able to sustain local loads,[7] though some areas lost power for at least a few hours. In New York City,Staten Island and parts ofBrooklyn were spared[8] when Con Edison disconnected its Arthur Kill Generating Station from the grid.Rochdale, Queens was also unaffected as it had its own power plant.
From the first failure at 5:17 p.m. near the Niagara-Canada border, the blackout moved eastward across the state, and "at 5:27 p.m., the lights began sputtering in New York City, and within seconds... blacked out in Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, and most of Brooklyn." The blackout was not universal; some neighborhoods never lost power, notably Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn.[8] Also, some suburban areas —includingBergen County,New Jersey—served byPSE&G never lost power.
Fortunately, a bright full moon lit up the cloudless sky over the entire blackout area,[9] providing some aid for the millions who were suddenly plunged into darkness.
Most telephones remained operational since thetelephone exchanges were powered by emergency generators. However, not all emergency generators functioned as desired. The generator atUpstate Medical Center in Syracuse failed to start, creating a serious crisis and forcing surgeons to complete operations in progress by flashlight.
Power restoration was uneven. Most generators had noauxiliary power to use for startup. Parts ofBrooklyn were repowered by 11:00 p.m., the rest of theborough by midnight. However, the entire city was not returned to normal power supply until nearly 7:00 a.m. the next day, November 10.
Power in western New York was restored in a few hours, thanks to theGenesee River-powered generating plant inRochester, which stayed online throughout the blackout. Like starting a car, starting or restarting a generator requires power for a starter motor (seeblack start). The availability of this hydroelectric power was crucial; it was used to restart dead generators, which then could provide power to restart other generators, in a cascading process which required much switching by engineers at the various plants.
TheMount Weather Emergency Operations Center saw the first full-scale activation of the facility during the blackout.[10][11]
The New York Times was able to produce a ten-page edition for November 10, using theprinting presses of a nearby paper that was not affected, theNewark Evening News.[12] The front page showed a photograph of the city skyline with its lights all out.[8]
The task force that investigated the blackout found that a lack of voltage and current monitoring was a contributing factor to the blackout, and recommended improvements.[citation needed]
TheElectric Power Research Institute helped the electric power industry develop new metering and monitoring equipment and systems, which have become the modernSCADA systems in use today.[citation needed]
In contrast to the wave of looting and other incidents that took place during the1977 New York City blackout, only five reports oflooting were made in New York City after the 1965 blackout. It was said to be the lowest amount of crime on any night in the city's history since records were first kept.[13] However, more than 800,000 riders were trapped in the subway.[14]
Reports about an allegedbaby boom that followed the blackout nine months later are considered unsubstantiated.[15]
Over an area of 80 million square miles, 30 million people were now in darkness.
The largest power failure in history blacked out nearly all of New York City, parts of nine Northeastern states and two provinces of southeastern Canada last night. Some 80,000 square miles, in which perhaps 25 million people live and work, were affected. ... The light and power went out first at 5:17 P.M. somewhere along the Niagara frontier of New York State. ... The tripping of automatic switches hurtled the blackout eastward across the state—to Buffalo, Rochester, Syracuse, Utica, Schenectady, Troy and Albany. ... At 5:27 p.m., the lights began sputtering in New York City, and within seconds, the giant Consolidated Edison system blacked out in Manhattan, the Bronx, Queens, and most of Brooklyn –but not in Staten Island and parts of Brooklyn that were interconnected with the Public Service Electric and Gas Company of New Jersey.
