Anyway, the subway station was dark as fuck. I would've assumed SOME people would've been walking around with flashlights, but up until the very end where the station opened into daylight, I had the only visible light in the place. Which I find incredibly irresponsible, since it was a station that I'd never been in before, and if not for my flashlight I would've had no clue how to get out. Because of that, I guess, I ended up leading a lot of other people who couldn't figure out how to get out or were too disoriented to try.

So once out of the station, my immediate sight was seeing a billowing cloud of smoke coming from Fourteenth St, followed by several dozen police and fire cars rushing in that same direction. Though I later found out it had nothing to do with the blackout, at the time I didn't know and it was frightening. So I got on my cell phone just long enough to freak my sister out by saying, "Turn on CNN and tell me what's happening in New York, cos the power's out and it looks like buildings are smoking," and then the connection died. I wasn't able to dial another call again until I got to work.

Since I was in Manhattan and had no way to get back home, I just decided to get to work. It was about 4:30 at this point. My estimate, though I don't know for sure, is that I was about fourty or so blocks away from work, roughly. So I started walking. It took me over an hour, but by 5:45 or so I was finally in Chelsea, and at work.

Once there, I noticed several other of my coworkers were there as well. Many of them had decided they were walking back home in groups. No one, however, was going in my direction. My boss and his son was there, and they had decided to dig in and tough it out for the night. I had resigned myself to doing that as well.

All this time, however, I had been desperately calling C.S., because while he lives in Long Island, he was in the city at the time that this happened. Actually, he was supposed to be in a train at the time this happened. So I was worried, because I couldn't reach him. I was afraid he'd been trapped underground or in a train someplace.

Fast forward, it's now about 12 midnight, and I finally managed to get in touch with him for the first time. It turns out he WAS leaving, and had just made it out of the elevatour when the power shut off. He had gone back to his aunt's house on 34th street to wait. At about 12:30 I left work to brave the pitch-black city to get to where he was.

I have to admit, I have never done anything so frightening as walk through New York City when there aren't even street lights. And also, it was very cloudy, so the moon wasn't doing much either.

Eventually, however, I made it to their house, and I spent the evening with them until they drove back to Long Island the next morning, and C.S. drove me back to Brooklyn.

It was an ordeal, but thankfully everyone was okay. For my first New York catastrophe, it could've turned out much worse.

Entry last modified: April 17, 2006 at 4:53 pm.

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