On November 9, 1965, over 80,000 square miles were without power throughout areas of Canada and the Northeastern section of the United States. For as many as twelve hours, over 25 million people lived in darkness. This event is widely known as the Great Blackout of 1965. Although it occurred forty nine years ago, the Great Blackout of 1965 has had a major impact on how electricity operation systems work today, and has led to the formation of reliability councils such as the National Electric Reliability Council, now North American Electric Reliability Council, or NERC. Also, this large scale power failure has inspired many film writers to dramatize the Great Blackout.
Background
The blackout originated in an area around the Ontario- New York border, at the Niagara generating station. Like any other ordinary generation station in the 1950’s, it held many strongly interconnected generators. The location of the facility played a big role in the areas that were affected by the blackout. Certain areas throughout New York, Ontario, most of New England, and parts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania lost their power. These areas were made up of the Ontario Hydro System, St Lawrence-Oswego, Upstate New York, and New England systems (Handwerk). Within these areas, some small portions were left unaffected. Holyoke, Massachusetts, Hartford, Connecticut, Braintree, Massachusetts and Taunton, Massachusetts, Fairport, New York and Walden, New York had their own power plants, which operators disconnected from the grid which caused them not to lose power (U.S.). Exactly where the power was lost depended on whether or not the transmission lines for the electricity were connected to generators that were strongly interconnected with each other.
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White, Theodore H. "What Went Wrong." Life 19 Nov. 1965: 46+. Google Books. Google. Web. 3 Apr. 2014.
“Squirrel Power!” by Jon Mooallem, gives an inside look at the many outages caused by squirrels running along the power lines. Mooallem uses credible sources to highlight the amount of times a squirrel has caused a power outage and why the incidents are common to begin with. Mooallem wants the reader to know that squirrels are acting on natural instincts in a world filled with wires providing electricity for people.
Royer, Jordan. “Hurricane Sandy and the importance of being FEMA”, Crosscut.com, Crosscut.com, Web. 1 Nov 2012, 3 May 2014.
The series of events that occurred on April 26th, 1986 at the Chernobyl Power Plant located in the Ukraine, would be considered one of the worst disasters that the world would ever see. It was supposed to be a routine check “to determine how long the steam-driven turbines at the plant would continue to generate electricity in the event of an electrical blackout” (Worsnop). This seems ironic because a simple test led to such a complicated calamity. During the test, one of the turbines was shut off and the emergency core cooling system was turned off as well. For a simple test, turning off the emergency core cooling system all together might not have one of the best options. They were running the core at low power and by doing so it caused excess xenon to accumulate. By reducing the water flow to the core, the core stared to heat up rapidly causing the reactor power to increase. Finally, they figured that they should remove the control rods from the reactor core as an emergency shutdown method. However, all the events leading up to this point did the opposite of shutting...
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...dith S. Baughman, et al. Vol. 7: 1960-1969. Detroit: Gale, 2001. U.S. History in Context. Web. 17 Jan. 2014. Source.
I believe that the Vietnam War (1954-1975) was one of the most important events in the 1960’s because it was a highly controversial and covered heavily by media. Vietnam was the first war to be videotaped by reporters for the public to see on a daily bases. Before this everything was filmed by the government and edited to show how great of a job we were doing but in Vietnam reporters didn’t have that kind of restriction on their filming. Some reporters would go to the front lines and give the American public a look into the horrors of the war. This negative press that the war got, usually portrayed the American soldier in Vietnam as a blood thirsty savage, that would shoot at anything that came in their path. This was really not the case but the public didn’t know that and quickly came to the conclusion that the war was unjust. Many felt that America was meddling with another countries Civil War and that American soldiers should begin to be withdrawn from Vietnam and return to their families. Men around the country were also very unhappy because the draft could take you from your everyday life and you could be sent to Vietnam to fight for a cause that they didn’t believe in and do nothing about it or risk spending time in prison and or paying a heavy fine. The American government thought the war was just because they were fighting of communist whom have different views than our capitalist run country but the American people thought still that we should leave Vietnam.
Lin et al (2011) indicate that on the 14th of August 2003, New York was engulfed in a number of a series of power generation interruptions which subsequently triggered a shutdown for protective purposes. Although the shutdown was intended for good purpose, million of New Yorkers in the Northeastern US experienced over 31 hours of blackout beginning on August 14th 4.11 p. m. DeBlasio et al (2004) attest to the arguments of Lin et al (2011) and add that the real effect of the blackout was very significant to human safety and health as a survey by US Department of Transportation found out. For instance, they indicate that 11, 600 traffic lights went off coupled with around 413 subway trains being stopped thereby affecting approximately 400,000 passengers. U.S-Canada Power System Outage Task Force (2003) reports that approximately 800 instances of people caught in elevators who need rescue were recorded. The report also indicated that the high rise buildings of New York within the affected area lacked water since they rely on electric pumps to transport the water to all the floors. Additionally, recycling plants were unable to recycle raw sewage during the period of the black out (Lin et al, 2011). Therefore, some waste was pumped to rivers and hence becoming a health hazard.
On April 26, 1986 the worlds worst nuclear disaster happened just outside the town of Pripyat. Located not too far from the capital city Kiev, Ukraine. According to History.com, More than 70,000 people have suffered from the effects of this disaster. Along with much of the land (18 square miles) around that area will not be habitable for the next 150 years, forcing as many as 150,000 citizens to re-locate permanently. At the time of the explosion, Chernobyl was the largest and the oldest nuclear power plant in the world. With four 1,000 megawatt reactors, one reactor explosion and meltdown could affect hundreds, if not thousands of people. Still, the soviet government tried to cover it up or hide this from its own people, as well as the rest of the world. The Soviet Union initially reported the death of two individuals and requested advice for fight graphite fires. Even as Sweden was starting to pick up dangerous levels of radioactivity, the Soviet Union continued to not take responsibility and warn surrounding nations. It wasn't until years later that the full story is released to the public.
People stuck in the big mess, civil disorders began to characterize by arson, heavy looting in everywhere without controls. From the Washington Post, the academic article “How the 1977 blackout unleashed New York City's tough-on-crime politics” by a historian of twentieth-century American politics Kimberly Phillips-Fein, she also described the vile situation of the blackout (1977). There was the data pointed out after power outage for twenty-five hours, “more than 1,600 stores throughout the city were robbed …In some parts of the city, stores and buildings were torched as well. This wave of spontaneous property destruction, occurring in all five boroughs and at least 31 neighborhoods.”, could be imagined the public situation was serious and the level of destruct by the
Many stores had a shortage of basic supplies. People who weren’t evacuated from their homes began to stock up on necessities. They went to grocery stores and got all kinds of supplies; bread, canned goods, bottled water, gas powered generators, batteries, radios, flashlights. Gas powered generators would help with power outages.
"Hurricane Sandy: One Year Later | FEMA.gov." Hurricane Sandy: One Year Later | FEMA.gov. N.p., 28 Oct. 2013. Web. 04 Dec. 2013. .
The Great Chicago Fire of 1871 was one of the largest disasters in American history. Practically overnight the great city of Chicago was destroyed. Before the fire there was a large drought causing everything to be dry and flammable, then a fire broke out in the O’Leary’s barn and spread throughout the city. Many attempts were made to put out the fire but there were too many errors and problems in the beginning. After the fire many people were left homeless and had to help build their city again (Murphy, 39)
President Jimmy Carter once said, “We must adjust to changing times and still hold to unchanging principles.” This quote perfectly describes the tumultuous events that occurred during the 70s. People had to reevaluate their principles and make life changing adjustments. Scandals, massacres, and controversial court hearings are just a few of the many happenings that occurred and this is just a glimpse of the chaos the decade of the 1970s had to bring. The Webster Dictionary defines tumultuous as involving a lot of confusion, violence, and disorder. The tumultuous 70s brought turmoil and discord. Ranging between the Watergate Scandal that resulted in the resignation of President Nixon, to the Supreme Court decision on abortion, and even including the Munich Massacre that killed 11 Israeli Olympians. One journalist described this decade as "the sober, gloomy seventies", and they were just that. This decade was nothing short of a tumultuous few years.
Entire forests ' worth of trees were falling across Long Island, roads were flooding, and streetlights and power lines were being ripped out of the ground like cheap lawn signs. Over 1.5 million people lost power, including my father and grandmother. Four people died, thankfully not including my relatives, not even the one who had taken off right at the start. All in all, the storm would go on to cause up to $100 million of damage, less than half of which would later be repaid by federal and state relief funds (Wikipedia,
Katrina and the huge lightning strike fires that happened in California during 2008 that left many