We had a power blackout here on the Upper East Side yesterday afternoon. It
didn't last very long, but as luck would have it I was on the ground when it
happened. I have long wondered if I'd be capable of climbing the seventeen
flights to our apartment. It would appear that I am.
I had been at the doctor's, for the second of four Vitamin B-12 injections.
(I think they're making a difference, but it's too early to be sure.) I walked
up to JG Melon for a late lunch afterward. Then I stepped into a taxi, noticing
that it seemed about to start raining. We drove up Third Avenue and turned onto
86th Street. I leaned forward, as I always do at this point, and told the driver
that I wanted to go to a driveway on the far left of the intersection with
Second Avenue. But the driver stayed in the right lane. I was beginning to be
annoyed when the combination of his deceleration and a screaming siren made me
realize that something was up. Almost instantly, I noticed the chaos at the
intersection. And the blank traffic signals. Oh, no, I thought.
The problem with power failures is that nobody has any idea when they're
going to be fixed. Had someone told me that power would be restored within forty
minutes - well, I'm not sure that I'd have believed it. I am haunted by
end-of-civilization nightmares, where things just break down permanently. Cities
like New York no longer bustle with new growth so much as they totter on ageing
infrastructure, which, as everyone knows, is boring to maintain. (It doesn't
help that the city wasn't built with easy repairs in mind.)
Unaccountably, I'd left my cell phone charging by my bedside. I begged the
doorman on duty to let me use his, and he somewhat reluctantly agreed. We had no
idea how extensive the blackout was, and I wanted to connect with Kathleen as
soon as possible. In the event, I was shaking too badly to press the numbers, so
the doorman did that for me, too. The call failed.
Two things propelled me upstairs. I will leave one of them to your
imagination. The other was the land line, which was probably not affected.
Peering down the corridor to the fire stairs, I saw light. So did an older woman
from the fourteenth floor who seems to know everyone in the building but has
only just decided to acknowledge my existence. (How do I know she's older? Her
"Vassar '48 reunion" sweatshirt. I was born in 1948.) She was intrigued
by the backup lights, which are new, installed since the last blackout, in 2003.
Like most residents, she couldn't believe that the management had actually done
something useful, and in fact the note of scolding persisted, as if the
management were still guilty of the reprehensible offense of having failed to do
install the backup lights sooner.
I decided to follow her up the stairs as long as I could. What she
could climb, I ought to be able to climb, even though she bears many signs of
the former athlete. We went up seven flights before she paused. I paused. We
stood for about a minute, I'd say. The stairwell was a site of some chaos. All
the way up to the sixteenth floor, I'd witness ongoing episodes in the drama of
a mother whose two year-old boy was trapped in one of the elevators, with his
baby sitter. The last I saw, a handyman and the mother were trying to pry open
the elevator door at the sixteenth floor. You may be sure that I counted my
blessings. Coming home ten minutes sooner, I'd have been in there with the kid,
but I don't want to go there.
My near neighbor and I climbed another two flights, and then paused again.
That was our pace. As we approached the fourteenth floor, she graciously
asked if I wanted some water. If I'd felt the least bit unsteady, I'd have
accepted, but I declined with thanks. My heart was pounding, but not scarily,
and I didn't feel any particular discomfort. I soldiered on up the four
remaining flights in a single go.
The first thing I did after I'd let myself in was to strip down and jump in
the shower. There was still plenty of it; we weren't fifteen minutes into the
blackout. The water in tall buildings is supplied by wooden water tanks situated
on the roof. The tanks in turn are supplied by pumps in the basement. The pumps
go out in a blackout, of course, but it takes a while for the tank to empty. In
addition to the shower, I filled the pasta pentola, just to have water for
cleaning my hands. By the time I gathered up all the stuff that I thought I'd
need and taken a seat on the balcony - I didn't want to heat up the cool rooms
with my presence, and, besides, I can't stand still air - I was soaking again.
I was still shaking too badly to dial the one phone that still worked. With
the cell phone, dialing wasn't the problem; the overloaded circuits were. At
4:30, I heard a news report on WINS about the blackout. I was delighted to learn
that only a small part of the city was affected. By now, I could see that the
traffic signal at 87th and First was working, but I assumed that that was backup
power. I finally made contact with Kathleen, who was of course unaffected,
although she told me that she'd noticed a surge in the power a while back. We
agreed to talk in an hour. I went back inside for something, and saw immediately
that the power had come back on.
I took another shower.
