Rant #1,414: Blackout!

I am sure that you heard that yesterday, pretty much the whole of Washington, D.C., suffered a blackout, where they completely lost power for a while until emergency generators came on.

Supposedly, there was some problem at a substation, causing an explosion, and the loss of power was felt as far away as into Maryland.

Homeland Security checked everything out, it was not an act of sabotage, but I can bet you that when the lights went out yesterday, people initially, at least, were in the panic mode.

Nowadays, anything can happen, and don't think the terrorists both inside and outside of this country haven't thought about attacking our electrical grid.

Heck, I am sure that many people thought the Koreans had gotten back at us for showing that horrid movie.

Remember when they lost their Internet? They blamed that on us, so maybe they are, in fact, sophisticated enough to get at our power grid.

I remember the great blackout of 1965, which shut off power up and down the East Coast.

I lived in Rochdale Village, South Jamaica, Queens, New York, and when it happened, we all ran out into the hallway to commiserate with each other.

It was more like a brownout to us, because our development had its own power plant, so we were impacted, but not as much as other places.

In fact, aircraft used whatever lights we did have as beacons to land at nearby Kennedy Airport.

Funny, nearly 50 years after we had power and others didn't, Rochdale Village actually experienced its first power failure a couple of months ago, where the power plant failed for the first time in over a half century.

So, it just proves that these things can happen, and can happen almost naturally.

But in these times, we must be concerned that certain people could tamper with our electricity, and for that matter, our water supply, and other things that we take for granted.

It is a wonderful world that we live in, but certain people evidently have the means to disrupt that wonderful feeling that we have.

Happily, yesterday was not the day for this type of behavior.