Brook Lapping - The New York 1977 Blackout

The Archive Hour BBC Radio 4, 12th July 2008 at 8pm

The long hot summer of 1977, and New York City was on edge.

It wasn't Metropolis, it was Gotham. The most notorious serial killer in its history, the 'Son of Sam', was on the loose, terrorising the city. New York was in a fiscal crisis, almost on the verge of bankruptcy. There was a crime wave across the city, a drug epidemic on the streets. People didn't use the subway at night. City Hall had put a freeze on municipal hiring; cops were being laid off and firehouses shuttered in areas that needed them most. A million New Yorkers fled the city. Then one sweltering night in July, a lightning storm caused New York's generators to buckle and the city was plunged into total darkness. Pilots saw runways disappear beneath them; subway trains froze between stations. Traffic lights blinked out. Within moments a wave of looting, violence and arson spread across all five boroughs throwing the city into utter chaos.

Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Syndeny Schanberg was city editor of the New York Times that night, and managed to print a whole edition; sending his journalists out into the streets, writing his copy by candlelight. It was also a night where radio came into its own - music stations suddenly had to turn over to rolling news, pulling the city together, with some great archive featured here.

Presenter: Sydney Schanberg

Producer: Simon Hollis

Brook Lapping Production