On Tuesday, November 9,1965 at
about 5:15 PM, the lights went out from New Jersey, through New York City and state, most of New
England and up into the Ontario provinces of Canada.
It was the start of the Great
Blackout of 1965.
In all, the blackout covered
80,000 miles and affected 30 million people. It lasted for 13 hours and was due
to an improperly set relay. In other words, simple human error caused the great
black out of 1965.
I was a ten-year-old living in the
Naugatuck Valley when the blackout happened. Our father worked an
overnight shift in New Haven in those days, so it was me, my younger brother
and our mother at home.
My brother thought the blackout
was the greatest thing since sliced bread, it was exciting. There was a full
moon and the skies were clear and we lived high enough up on one of the hills
to look down and across into the valley was in complete darkness.
We were baby boomers and had
never known the fear of war or really, the want for anything. But my mother had
lived thought the war and thought the blackout was ominous…maybe the Russian
were behind it…maybe this was the start of the greatest war ever, nuclear annihilation.
After all, it was the heart of the cold war. Te Cuban missile crisis had
happened only two years before and the Berlin Wall had gone up just a year
before that.
Our radio worked and as always
it was tuned into WELI in New Haven, the “Voice of the Valley.” The station didn’t really know what was going
on either but they kept use clued in with
news updates. When the station reported that the FBI was on the case my mother shook
her head in approval “They’ll get to the bottom of this” she said.
The great black out came and
went and although it was the talk of the valley for several days, eventually it
was pushed aside by the Christmas holidays and thatw as that. Down in New York
there were only five reports of looting in all of New York, then a city of 8
million souls. It was said to be the lowest amount of crime on any night in the
city's history since records were first kept.