The blackout occurred when the city was facing a severe financial crisis and its residents were fretting over the Son of Sam murders. The nation as a whole was suffering from a protracted economic downturn and commentators have contrasted the event with the good-natured "Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?" atmosphere of 1965. Some pointed to the financial crisis as a root cause of the disorder, others noted the hot July weather. (The city at the time was in the middle of a brutal heat wave). Still others pointed out that the 1977 blackout came after businesses had closed and their owners went home, while in 1965 the blackout occurred during the day and owners stayed to protect their property. However, the 1977 looters continued their damage into the daylight hours, with police on alert.[1]
Looting and vandalism were widespread, hitting 31 neighborhoods, including most poor neighborhoods in the city. Possibly the hardest hit were Crown Heights, where 75 stores on a five-block stretch were looted, and Bushwick where arson was rampant with some 25 fires still burning the next morning. At one point two blocks of Broadway, which separates Bushwick from Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn, were on fire. Thirty-five blocks of Broadway were destroyed: 134 stores looted, 45 of them set ablaze. Thieves stole 50 new Pontiacs from a Bronx car dealership.[1] In Brooklyn, youths were seen backing up cars to targeted stores, tying ropes around the stores' grates, and using their cars to pull the grates away before looting the store.[1] While 550 police officers were injured in the mayhem, 4,500 looters were arrested.[1]
Mayor Abe Beame spoke during the blackout about what citizens were up against during the blackout and what the costs would be.
"We've seen our citizens subjected to violence, vandalism, theft and discomfort. The Blackout has threatened our safety and has seriously impacted our economy. We've been needlessly subjected to a night of terror in many communities that have been wantonly looted and burned. The costs when finally tallied will be enormous."[3]
Because of the power failure, LaGuardia and Kennedy airports were closed down for about eight hours, automobile tunnels were closed because of lack of ventilation, and 4,000 people had to be evacuated from the subway system. ConEd called the shutdown an "act of God", enraging Mayor Beame, who charged that the utility was guilty of "gross negligence." In many neighborhoods, veterans of the 1965 blackout headed to the streets at the first sign of darkness. But many of them did not find the same spirit. In poor neighborhoods across the city, looting and arson erupted. On streets like Brooklyn's Broadway the rumble of iron store gates being forced up and the shattering of glass preceded scenes of couches, televisions, and heaps of clothing being paraded through the streets by looters at once defiant, furtive and gleeful. "The looters were looting other looters, and the fists and the knives were coming out," Carl St. Martin, a neurologist in Forest Hills, Queens, recalled years later. A third-year medical student living in Bushwick when the blackout hit, recalled he spent the night suturing a succession of angry wounds at Wyckoff Heights Hospital. Before the lights came back on, even Brooks Brothers on Madison Avenue was looted. On July 17, the first Sunday after the blackout, a priest named Gabriel Santacruz looked out at the congregation in St. Barbara's Church in Bushwick and jokingly referred to the "act of God", declared by ConEd when he said, "We are without God now." [4]
In all, 1,616 stores were damaged in looting and rioting. 1,037 fires were responded to, including 14 multiple-alarm fires. In the largest mass arrest in city history, 3,776 people were arrested. Many had to be stuffed into overcrowded cells, precinct basements and other makeshift holding pens. A Congressional study estimated that the cost of damages amounted to a little over US$300 million
