At 9:34 p.m. on Wednesday, July 13, 1977, New York City went completely dark. A series of lightning strikes hammered Con Edison’s power lines and infrastructure throughout the evening, triggering a cascade of failures, overloads, and automatic shutdowns across the entire system. Within minutes, traffic lights went black, elevators stopped mid-floor, and subway trains ground to a halt in their tunnels. The Mets-Cubs game at Shea Stadium was cut short in the bottom of the sixth inning. Every borough of the city — from the Bronx to Brooklyn — lost power at once.
The blackout lasted 25 hours. Power was restored gradually across the city, with the last sections coming back online by 10:39 p.m. on July 14. For many New Yorkers, those hours in between were defined not just by darkness, but by sweltering July heat and a city suddenly stripped of every modern convenience. People poured into the streets, unsure of what was happening or how long it would last.
With the subways shut down and traffic signals dark, getting across the city became a serious challenge. Buses were flooded with riders, and streets clogged with confused and stranded commuters. Some New Yorkers adapted quickly — gathering by candlelight, helping neighbors, and making the most of an unusual night.
The looting began almost immediately after the lights went out. Across the five boroughs, people smashed storefronts, stripped metal security gates off their hinges, and emptied shelves. The targets ranged from supermarkets and clothing stores to furniture showrooms and car dealerships. Looters grabbed food, clothes, appliances, and in some cases entire vehicles. On darkened streets, some individuals were mugged by other looters. More than 1,600 stores were damaged or ransacked, and over 1,000 fires were reported as arsonists moved through neighborhoods under cover of the blackout.
Times Square, normally a wall of neon and noise, sat completely silent and dark. Across Midtown and beyond, hotels filled with stranded guests. The absence of working elevators forced people to climb stairwells in some of the city’s tallest buildings.
With no traffic signals functioning anywhere in the city, intersections became dangerous and chaotic. Accidents occurred throughout the night. At Shea Stadium, auxiliary lights and car headlights from center field were used to illuminate the field after the game was suspended.
The next morning’s newspapers led with stark headlines. The Daily News captured the scope of what had happened in a single front page. The city was still reeling — fires still smoldering, storefronts stripped bare, and jails filling fast. By the time order was restored, police had arrested more than 3,700 people on looting and property destruction charges. The total property damage reached over $300 million in just 24 hours.
The scale of looting was unlike anything the city had seen before. In the Bronx, entire store inventories disappeared overnight. In Brooklyn’s Bushwick neighborhood, police made arrests on nearly every block. Officers were stretched thin across the city, unable to respond to every call as hundreds of incidents unfolded simultaneously.
The arson was just as devastating as the looting. Fires burned through the night in Brooklyn and the Bronx, gutting factories, apartment buildings, and storefronts. Fire departments responded to over a thousand calls, with crews stretched across multiple simultaneous blazes. Some buildings burned to their frames before firefighters could reach them.
Mayor Abe Beame toured the hardest-hit neighborhoods in the aftermath, visiting merchants who had lost everything overnight. Many store owners described watching helplessly as their businesses were emptied or destroyed. Beame held a press conference with Police Commissioner Michael Codd at City Hall, where officials faced sharp questions about the city’s response to the crisis.
The contrast with New York City’s previous major blackout in 1965 was striking. That outage had produced stories of community spirit and cooperation. In 1977, New York City was in a very different place — burdened by a fiscal crisis, rising crime, and neighborhoods that had been deteriorating for years. The 1977 blackout tore the lid off those conditions in a single night. Still, even amid the chaos, some New Yorkers directed traffic at dark intersections, checked on elderly neighbors, and worked to keep the peace in their blocks.
When daylight broke on July 14, the full scope of the destruction became visible. Burned-out buildings sat alongside gutted stores. In the Bronx and Brooklyn especially, entire commercial strips had been picked clean. Supermarket shelves lay empty, their contents looted or left to spoil on the floor. The cleanup was massive — and for many small business owners without insurance, the losses were permanent.
Not every scene from those 25 hours was defined by destruction. In SoHo and parts of Manhattan, neighbors gathered outside on sidewalks and turned the blackout into an impromptu block party. Fire hydrants were opened across Brooklyn and Harlem, with children playing in the streams of water while adults filled buckets and bottles to carry home.
With traffic signals still dark in some areas, ordinary citizens stepped in to direct the flow of cars and pedestrians at busy intersections. It was one of the clearest examples of New Yorkers taking matters into their own hands during those chaotic hours.
Businesses felt the fallout from the looting, which caused even more white flight.
The night hip hop exploded as so many artists stole their gear that night.
Fun summer, Blackout, hi temp of 104, Son of Sam, and Billy Martin and Reggie Jackson feuding all season long
We had almost four weeks off school because of snow and consecutive days of sub zero temps. The Ohio river froze and we walked across it. Memories of endless days playing in the snow and cold feet.
I remember it well. We were lucky and never lost power but a lot of people had no power and no heat. Snow drifts to the rooftops of houses, people without food and hundreds of cars abandoned on the highways.
It was so bad in Indianapolis that the national guard used tanks to rescue stranded people on the interstate.
I remember that – living is upstate NY. As a kid it was just another winter with some extra goodness 😀
This is the exact reason why my mother packed us up the summer of 79 and we moved from Ohio to Florida
My great grandfather told me that people died in their trapped cars because the snow covered up the exhaust pipe and they succumbed to CO poisoning. They were running their cars to keep warm.
[–]Powerful_Variety7922 2 points 1 year ago
This CDC article cites research that found 5 people died from carbon monoxide poisoning while in their cars during this storm.
https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/00001214.htm#:~:text=Major%20findings%20of%20the%201978,five%20from%20carbon%20monoxide%20intoxication.
I had a motocross bike, and rode all over town sliding around corners, as the roads were impassable by cars. Good times!
I was just a kid. Good times.
I think we got 60” snow. No power but we had wood stove. Unfortunately well water. Melted snow on wood stove to wash and flush toilets
One of my favorite years with plenty of ice skating and even on the Ohio River and most IN state lake parks. Dad even made our backyard into an ice rink.
I loved it .we went to school 6 days the entire month. Ohio river frozen solid. They used dynamite to break up the ice jams.our entire backyard became tunnel city. They were everywhere.
was a teen in Michigan. What a wild week that was. shopping by snowmobile, rides to work on snowmobiles. Stuck in the house with 3 younger siblings.
I remember the blackout of summer 2003
So do I, I think it was on a Thursday. My dad has my brothers and I for the day and we were watching “S.W.A.T.” At destinta in New Windsor. All of a sudden the lights got fucky and the projector went down. We had to go.
My dad dropped us back off at home and the only thing that was kinda working was a ceiling fan that was too big for my room when it was installed. It made this literal “woo woo” sound. It was funny.
I had just come back from skating, and my mom told me that everything was out. We set up a grill by our garage and started a small cookout. It was a glorious summer evening just shooting the shit with my family.
It was a fun night. My friend bob got dropped off by his mom and we walked to my friend Sean’s place and rode bikes and waited for the power to come back on.
I was four and we lived on the 19th floor….getting home that night sucked