Yup, The Lights Went Out

Is there a Staten Island angle on the 1977 blackouts? Don’t worry, the Advance has it covered:

On the night of July 13, 1977, drivers crossing the Verrazano-Narrows Bridge into Staten Island were confronted by a truly unsettling sight: The borough, all 58.5 square miles of it, was shrouded in black.

It has been nearly 30 years since the “Blackout of ’77” plunged New York City into darkness for nearly two days, including a frenzy of looting and lawlessness, particularly in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn.

Many Staten Islanders can still vividly recall “the day the lights went out.”

“Our area went black, and everybody was out in the street walking around. It wasn’t really until the next day that we knew what happened,” said Marjorie Decker Johnson of Clifton, a local historian and preservationist.

. . .

James McBratney, owner of Jimmy Max restaurant in Westerleigh, remembers taking advantage of the situation and having a little fun while the lights were off.

“I was 16 years old, working at Denino’s (the Port Richmond pizzeria) making pies. When the lights went out we had no customers and no air conditioning. I went to the back room with my friend John and we split a six-pack. Somehow, we thought we were helping the situation by drinking whatever beer there was before it got too warm,” said McBratney.

OK, so in lieu of exciting Staten Island blackout stories, revert to Staten Islanders’ blackout stories:

Danny Blaine, owner of the eponymous saloon in Fort Wadsworth, was working with Ladder Co. 122 in Park Slope, Brooklyn. Staten Island should count itself lucky, he said, considering the hellish conditions that obtained in the “borough of homes and churches.”

“It was like being in a war zone,” said Blaine, a Livingston resident. “We were out all night on calls. There was one call where we passed six fully involved, three-story roaring fires just to get to our building.”

Bob FitzSimmons of St. George was working as a stationary engineer at Manhattan’s Flower Fifth Avenue Hospital. He described scenes that resembled the post-apocalyptic landscape of John Carpenter’s 1996 action flick “Escape From L.A.”

“We had a large diesel engine to supply lights and power. It was chaotic because everything was dark except for us. We were like a lighthouse. The whole neighborhood congregated outside the hospital and our security was overtaxed with people trying to escape the dark,” said FitzSimmons.

“We had a lot of surgeries because there were a lot of bullets flying around that night. There were people chasing each other with shotguns. I couldn’t believe the devastation around me,” he continued.

When asked how he remembered Staten Island during the blackout he replied: “It wasn’t that bad. We got lucky.”