By Anthony Rifilato
Her shift at Wendy's, where the lights had gone out and the cash registers beeped incessantly, was cut short, and she was trying to walk north on Grand Avenue to get home.
"Everything was dark," she said.
To Mavis' dismay, there were no police officers or others directing traffic, as cars veered through the non-functioning traffic lights and other motorists, too preoccupied to look out for pedestrians, struggled to maneuver their vehicles onto Grand Avenue through the snarled traffic.
"They need somebody here," said Mavis. After waiting some 15 minutes, she quickly and carefully darted across the street.
Like most Baldwinites, the embattled woman was impacted by last week's power outage, which affected eight states and parts of Canada. It was the largest blackout in American history, affecting tens of millions of people and costing billions of dollars, according to officials. Power industry officials attributed the cause to the failure of high-voltage transmission lines in Ohio, which overloaded the power grid and cascaded into Canada and then New York.
By Friday, 90 percent of Long Island's power was restored, and on Saturday, LIPA declared the electrical system back to normal. But while officials dealt with the emergency, residents and businesses were biding their time on Thursday and Friday, hoping power would be restored quickly.
The blackout brought nearly everything to a standstill in Baldwin. Most businesses closed. Trains stopped and highways were clogged, leaving some commuters stranded. Residents tried to beat the heat, with temperatures rising into the 90s.
In the municipal parking lot behind West Grand Avenue, children played ball as adults sat on the curb, escaping cramped apartments. "It's hot down there," said Juan of his nearby basement apartment, as he chatted with friends after work on West Grand Avenue and Merrick Road. "I can't even take a shower."
Others not only had to deal with the heat but were faced with a traffic nightmare as well. "There were no lights," Pedro Aluna, a Baldwin resident who works in Wyandanch, said of the traffic signals as he stood outside a deli on West Grand Avenue, listening to a portable radio for the latest news. What usually takes him 25 minutes turned into a two-hour commute, he said. "[Drivers] didn't want to let you go. They just kept going."
Brooklyn resident Bill Morris, who had stopped to gas up in Baldwin on his way home from the beach at Robert Moses State Park, was waiting out the traffic in the municipal parking lot on North Grand Avenue and Edward Street, where he read the newspaper and his girlfriend rested in his 1954 Buick Special. "I'd like to get home tonight," he said. "But I'm thinking I don't want to be driving without traffic lights."
On Merrick Road and Grand Avenue, a Nassau County police officer was directing traffic, and brought some semblance of order to the chaos. But there were simply too many lights to man every intersection, police said.
"We held over all our officers working the day tour for the evening," said Deputy Inspector Rich McCarrick of the First Precinct. McCarrick said the precinct's emergency generators began operating when the area lost power shortly after 4 p.m. Throughout the county, police said, they fielded 1,566 calls in the first few hours of the blackout. "Naturally, when the lights go out we get flooded with phone calls," said McCarrick.
For the most part, McCarrick said that there weren't many emergencies or car accidents, though he said a few arrests were made for burglaries of businesses. "We didn't have more than we would have expected," he said. "Under the conditions we had, things went well."
Fire officials shared McCarrick's sentiments. "It was actually pretty quiet," said Baldwin Fire Chief Doug Weidmann. He said that the department was on standby by 4:30 p.m. on Thursday. Additional volunteer firemen idled in front of their fire houses, standing by as emergency vehicles deployed.
"We opened up our operations center," Weidmann said. But by early Friday, electricity was slowly being restored, and North Baldwin received power at around 1:00 a.m. "Sporadically, the rest started to come on at around 6 a.m. [Friday]," Weidmann said.
Many local businesses were forced to discard food and shut their doors. "Everybody is hurting," said Dave Britt, store manager at Waldbaum's on Sunrise Highway, which closed at around 6 p.m. Britt, initially hopeful that the power would come back on, finally decided to send workers home. "It doesn't look like it's going to happen," he said.
At the Aquarium Grill on Grand Avenue, the owners worried about spoiling food and the loss of business. "We're probably going to close," said Ezgi Dumen, the owner's daughter, as she stood outside. "We had one customer. He left."
For other customers in the area, it wasn't so easy. At Fatou Hair Braiding on Grand Avenue, 9-year-old Ayana Hudson was in the middle of having her hair braided when the lights went out. Her stylist, Diass Mbiaye, of Harlem, moved the chair close to the door for better light, and finished the job. Because the trains stopped, Mbiaye and her co-worker, Yacine Diop, also of Harlem, said they were stranded. "We don't know what we're going to do," Diop said.
Long Island Rail Road commuters in transit were also in a bind, and were forced to trek through town after their trains abruptly halted. Some were clamoring for rides at Dawson Taxi on Brooklyn Avenue. Avi Chandler, who owns the Qwik Stop Deli, also on Brooklyn Avenue, said many of those let off were coming into his store for a cool drink. "Everybody is crazy for water," Chandler said. "Some said they were walking to Merrick."
Babylon residents Teri Mosey and Mandy Oppel were heading into Manhattan for a concert at Central Park's Summer Stage by the group Indigo Girls, when their train stopped. After a 45-minute wait, they were let off. "They let everybody out before Freeport," Oppel said as she and Mosey searched for a store to buy something to drink at the Waldbaum's Shopping Center. The two, while haggard, sweating and inconvenienced, said they would try to make it to the concert, and were optimistic the Indigo Girls would go on. "We're not really worried," Mosey said.
Using portable generators, the group took the stage that night. The show must go on, and for most area residents, the show indeed went on, with or without light.
