JULY 13, 1977 NYC BLACKOUT

JohnnyGage

JohnnyGage

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During the hot summer of 1977, NYC was in the middle of a fiscal crisis and residents were frightened by the random Son of Sam murders. At 9:27 p.m. on July 13, the city went completely dark due to an electrical blackout that lasted for 25 hours. All off duty firefighters were recalled.

The skyline went entirely dark, and the lights went out nearly everywhere: in the subways, at major transit hubs like Grand Central Terminal, stranding commuters; at places like Shea Stadium, where the Mets were forced to stop a game against the Chicago Cubs in the sixth inning; and in many of the city’s neighborhoods. In some places—perhaps most memorably, Bushwick was one of the neighborhoods hit hard, especially stores along the blocks that were set afire after being looted.

1.1Blackoutnyc-aerial-fire.jpg 12049114_071322-wabc-ap-nyc-blackout-file-img.jpg 1977Blackout.jpg
 
That top picture Dan, Mike Barone on his second of three episodes on GSE talks about being at that job with Ladder 18. There are some good news videos floating around on YouTube about the blackout.
 
Pretty interesting watching this as someone who was not born yet when this happened. My mother was a teacher in the Bronx, and my father worked in a store in the Bronx when this happened. He said that “crooked nosed gentlemen” would patrol the streets around the neighborhood to ensure that what happened in bushwick would not happen in and around if Arthur Ave in the Bronx

 
On this day July 13 back in 1977 around 2130 hrs the lights went out & accompanying widespread looting & arson commenced & went unchecked thru the night & into the next day......sporadic looting & Fires continued for at least a week ..... many business's that now had been totally looted continued to be set on Fire just for sport culminating a week later in a 10 Alarm Fire in Bushwick which was started in an abandoned factory & resulted in the destruction of numerous occupied stores & dwellings .....on the original night of The Blackout i spent 12 straight hours fighting Fires along Broadway in Bklyn....the end result was the total destruction of numerous blocks that had been thriving business's .....most of the area to this day has never recovered.....looters were so intent on getting what they could that for the most part we had no direct incidents w/them .....the Police were severly overtaxed & spread very thin.....i remember one furniture store on Broadway around Gates Ave that had PD guarding the front & looters using a small back door to remove furniture....they were so brazen that they simply dismantled items inside then brought the pieces thru the small door & just sat there on the sidewalk assembling them w/out a care in the world....early on before the Bus traffic was halted (because of the lawless mobs but more so because the streets were quickly becoming unpassable due to material & Fire apparatus) there were groups who had chains that they would attach to a closed security gate on a store then when a Bus slowly passed thru the crowd they would attach it to the Bus pulling the gate off thus gaining access to another store.....at one Fire in a heavily involved Butcher Shop that we were operating in LAD*112 who was assigned the floor above gave us an Urgent message about an extremely heavy load on the floor ....the apt above was filled front to rear w/brand new refrigerators that had been stashed there earlier in the night ....we went to several other Fires one after another until the next afternoon ......at some Jobs there might be only one or two LADs & no Eng so we would just stretch off a nearby ENG that was operating at another Job close by ..... as far as the eye could see up & down Broadway there were Units ( some from as far away as Staten Island ) operating & almost wall to wall people/looters .....this was part of my night/day .....similar scenes were repeated in many other areas thru out certain sections of the City.....it was a long time ago but sometime it seems like yesterday.
 
A day or so following this we ran out of 6 foot hooks at Ladder 112. The night after the blackout was very busy as well and the last fire of the tour was right before 9AM and the Boro Chief was trying to get companies back into service to keep down the overtime.
 
Back in November 1965 there was also a NYC Blackout.
However, in that blackout there was very little violence or looting.
In fact, 9 months later, there were reports a baby boom

In the case of the July, 1977 Backout I remember taking a ride down to NYC about two days later.
I went to Broadway in Brooklyn where for miles ever store for blocks on that street had been looted and burned out.
Of course that wasn't the only area hit hard.

There are several audio recordings and videos of NYC's 1977 Blackout out there.
 
I was a fireman in Manhattan's Tower Ladder 18 when the citywide Black Out of 1977 happened at the beginning of my night tour.
27 Houses later we had responded to 7 major multiple alarm fires. We were sent to Brooklyn early the next morning as Part of "Emergency Command Procedures"FDNY 1977 Backout Bklyn.jpgFDNY Blackout 1977 Major fire 5-5 Exposure 1-4 Corner.jpgFDNY 5th alarm during Black out 1977 COLOR TL Ops..jpg and the last fire we fought was in Bushwick not far north of Atlantic Ave, that started in a vacant warehouse that spread to over 12 multistory buildings and was equal to an =8th Alarm. A photo of that fire is the 1st one on the left in Johnny Gage's entry on top of this page. Here are some more photos. Photo the 1st Photo on the Left shows TL-18 in position to stop the spread of fire down the block of 4 story "Row Frame" Buildings. The FDNY used Brooklyn Box 5-5 997 Stone Ave. & Sommer St. for this fire located mostly on Thruxton St. and surrounding streets, units responding to nearby working fires, were later redirected to this fire due to its spreading to numerous surrounding Streets and Avenues. I believe that FDNY responded to over 1,300 working fires during the just over, 24 Hours of Great Blackout of July1977.
Captain Bob Rainey FDNY Engine 26 retired.
 
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captaindewey50267021@gm said:
I was a fireman in Manhattan's Tower Ladder 18 when the citywide Black Out of 1977 happened at the beginning of my night tour.
27 Houses later we had responded to 7 major multiple alarm fires. We were sent to Brooklyn early the next morning as Part of "Emergency Command Procedures"View attachment 50897View attachment 50898View attachment 50899 and the last fire we fought was in Bushwick not far north of Atlantic Ave, that started in a vacant warehouse that spread to over 12 multistory buildings and was equal to an 8th Alarm. A photo of that fire is the 1st one on the left in Johnny Gage entry on top of this page. Here are some more photos. Photo the 1st Photo on the Left shows TL-18 in position to stop the spread of fire down the block of 4 story "Row Frame" Buildings. The FDNY used Brooklyn Box 5-5 997 Stone Ave. & Sommer St. for this fire located mostly on Thruxton St. and surrounding streets, units responding to nearby working fires, were later redirected to this fire due to its spreading to numerous surrounding Streets and Avenues. I believe that FDNY responded to over 1,300 working fires during the Great Blackout of 1977.
Captain Bob Rainey FDNY Engine 26 retired.
Click to expand...
Mike Barone talked about this on his GSE episode, I believe it was his second of three episodes. What a crazy 10 days in July!
 
Mike Barone and I worked together in Tower Ladder 18 a great fireman and great guy and a friend. TL-18 got a Unit Citation for our operations at the 5-5 997. I believe that we operated on Thruxton St. when the fire from the large heavy timber warehouse got so intense we needed to remove the rig or lose it. I vividly remember trying to recover the 3 1/2" supply lines, still somewhat filled with water after they were shut down, to 18's repositioned rig, to the new position now protecting the row frames on the exposure 2 (=B for a lot of you). At one point we had very heavy fire on both sides of the street. Due to the radiant heat, I turned my helmet around and still burned my face. That was the only time I ever turned my helmet around at a fire, now at over 50 years of firefighting.
Captain Bob Rainey FDNY Engine 26 retired.
 
captaindewey50267021@gm said:
Mike Barone and I worked together in Tower Ladder 18 a great fireman and great guy and a friend. TL-18 got a Unit Citation for our operations at the 5-5 997. I believe that we operated on Thruxton St. when the fire from the large heavy timber warehouse got so intense we needed to remove the rig or lose it. I vividly remember trying to recover the 3 1/2" supply lines, still somewhat filled with water after they were shut down, to 18's repositioned rig, to the new position now protecting the row frames on the exposure 2 (=B for a lot of you). At one point we had very heavy fire on both sides of the street. Due to the radiant heat, I turned my helmet around and still burned my face. That was the only time I ever turned my helmet around at a fire, now at over 50 years of firefighting.
Captain Bob Rainey FDNY Engine 26 retired.
Click to expand...
There is a 10 minute or so video of this fire on a DVD. You can clearly see 18 operating at the 1-2 corner wetting down the row frames. Another tower ladder is on the 1-4 corner behind a building try to prevent the spread up the block.
 
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