PUF's Where's Energy

July 13, 1977: Infamous NYC power outage

On July 13, 1977, the infamous New York power outage took place. The Big Apple was brought to its knees after a lightning storm. For twenty-five hours, nine million people were in the dark as mass looting and rioting broke out across the boroughs. A thousand fires, sixteen hundred looted stores, five hundred and fifty injured police officers, four thousand arrests. All this while the fear of the notorious Son of Sam murders magnified. A Bronx car dealership had fifty Pontiacs stolen.