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CHARLESTON, W.Va. --(FOX NEWS) A Southwest Airlines 737 aircraft that originated in Nashville made an emergency landing in Charleston after the passenger cabin became depressurized because a hole appeared in the fuselage.
Central West Virginia Regional Airport Authority spokesman Brian Belcher said Flight 2294 was diverted to Yeager Airport and landed shortly after 6:30 p.m. Monday. There were 126 passengers and five crew members on board.
John Benson of Knoxville was on Flight 2294 with his two sons. Benson was planning on taking his sons to New York by way of Baltimore. What was supposed to be a nice family trip, quickly turned into one of the most frightening experiences of his life.
"Literally the whole top of the plane ripped off," Benson said.
Southwest spokeswoman Marilee McInnis said a football-sized hole was located mid-cabin, near the top of the aircraft.
Benson captured cell phone video from the Southwest flight. The sky can actually be seen through a hole in the ceiling that was peeled back. It has not been said what caused the hole, but Benson said he had to calm his children down after a rough takeoff.
After takeoff, Benson thought everything was fine - until about a half hour into the flight. Part of the plane peeled open, causing it to lose cabin pressure. Then the oxygen masks dropped.
"When we looked out the windows all we saw are mountains, and they told us we're about to land. You know everyone's looking out the windows saying, 'Where are we gonna land?' My friend Julie asked the attendant, 'Are we gonna land at the airport?' and she said, 'no we aren't going to make it to the airport,'" Benson said.
According to Benson, the flight crew told them the closest airport was seven away. Benson said it was the longest seven minutes of his life. Thankfully, the plane landed at Yeager airport, where a replacement plane was waiting to take the passengers to Baltimore.
Of the 131 crew and passengers on board, no one was hurt. Benson said his family will continue their journey to New York, just not on a plane.
The National Transportation Safety Board said they have been trying to determine what might have caused the damage.
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Its not designed just to die after a year. Rechargable batteries have certain chemicals inside that can hold a charge and regain the charge by adding electricity. Over time, these chemicals (usually nickel and cadmium) lose their potency. The best way to extend their life is to periodically run the battery completely dead, and then recharge it fully. Most take several hours to actually recharge, and if you take them off too soon it can reduce their potency. Always leave your batteries to charge for at least a couple hours, don't always trust what the phone says.
As far as the on/off question, the batteries will keep the current charge for longer if you turn it off, but it shouldn't affect the lifetime of the battery. Vibrate does use more of the current charge, but ditto on the lifetime. If your battery won't keep a long enough charge, the potency is permanently affected and you do need a new battery.
Freezing the battery may work, but it may also cause the battery to explode. Do that at your own risk.
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LAS VEGAS --(FOX NEWS) Graffiti vandals have defaced the world famous “Welcome to Fabulous Las Vegas sign on the southern end of the Las Vegas Strip.
The graffiti, which appeared to be written with a marker rather than spray paint, was spotted Monday. Several letters were written on the sign, but no profanities.
Russell Davis of Clark County Public Works said the graffiti will be cleaned up Tuesday morning. He said this was the first time he could remember that graffiti had been tagged on the famous sign.
Davis said sign maintenance workers discovered the graffiti, which they believe happened sometime over the weekend. Every day, hundreds stop to have their photographs taken at the sign, making it highly unusual that a person would be able to deface it without being seen.
Although the sign falls outside city lines, Las Vegas Mayor Goodman issued a statement to FOX5 saying, "When they [defaced] my tortoise, I said, 'off with their thumb!' This deserves, 'off with their head!'"
Goodman was referring to a time in 2005 when he suggested police cut the thumbs off vandals who defaced a tortoise statue near downtown Las Vegas.
Built in 1959, the Las Vegas sign has become a symbol of the city, appearing in ad campaigns, films and even board games. In May, the sign was officially welcomed onto the National Register of Historic Places.
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WASHINGTON --(FOX NEWS) Retail sales advanced in June by the largest amount in five months, led by a surge in gasoline prices and a slight rebound in the battered auto sector.
The Commerce Department said Tuesday that retail sales rose 0.6 percent last month, better than the 0.4 percent gain that economists had expected. It marked the second consecutive increase and boosted hopes that the economy may be on the verge of a rebound.
While much of the strength came from a price-driven surge at gasoline stations, there was also strength in a number of other areas, including the best showing at auto dealerships since January.
The hope is that the battered consumer, bolstered by tax cuts including in the $787 billion economic stimulus bill, will resume spending in coming months and this will help end a painful recession that is already the longest in post World War II history.
In June, sales of autos and auto parts jumped by 2.3 percent, the best showing since January. However, even with the gain, auto sales are 14.5 percent below the level of a year ago, underscoring the troubles in the industry.
Excluding autos, retail sales rose by 0.3 percent in June, lower than the 0.5 percent rise that economists had expected.
Much of the strength outside of autos reflected the big jump in gasoline prices during the month, a rise that pushed sales at gasoline stations up by 5 percent, after a similarly big jump in May. Excluding gasoline, retail sales would have risen by 0.3 percent last month, just half the overall gain. Sales also showed strength and electronics and appliance stores and at sporting goods stores.
Sales at general merchandise stores, the category that includes nationwide department store chains and giant retail chains such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc., fell by 0.4 percent following an even bigger 1.7 percent decline in May. Sales at specialty clothing stores were flat last month.
This dismal showing reflected a report last week showing lackluster chain store sales. Consumers appeared to be shopping for necessities and seeking discounts, buoying discounters but punishing brands like Abercrombie & Fitch. That chain's same-store sales fell 32 percent in June, more than expected. American Eagle Outfitters Inc. reported a drop of 11 percent.
Financial and employment worries have discouraged shoppers. The nation's jobless rate jumped to a 26-year high of 9.5 percent in June.
Consumer confidence, as measured by the Conference Board, dropped in June, reversing a three-month upward trend fueled by a stock market rally that also is fizzling a bit.
Many economists, however, believe that the economy is in the process of stabilizing after a steep nosedive at the end of last year and first three months of this year. Many are forecasting that the overall economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, will begin growing again this July-September quarter.
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LUCASVILLE, Ohio --(FOX NEWS) A former truck driver who went on a multistate killing spree has been executed in Ohio for the murder of a Cincinnati-area man who gave him a ride in 1991.
Forty-five-year-old John Fautenberry of Oregon was pronounced dead at 10:37 a.m. Tuesday at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville.
Fautenberry was sentenced to death for the slaying of Joseph Daron Jr., 46, who picked him up while he was hitchhiking on Feb. 17, 1991.
Fautenberry also confessed to killing a four people in three other states Alaska, Oregon and New Jersey during a five-month period in late 1990 and early 1991.
Fautenberry is the first inmate executed in Ohio since June 3.
Ohio has put 30 men to death since it reinstated the death penalty in 1999.
Fautenberry spent his final hours watching television and meeting with a priest.
Fautenberry gave up his right to a trial by jury in Cincinnati and pleaded no contest on July 23, 1992, to two counts each of aggravated murder and grand theft and one count of aggravated robbery.
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WASHINGTON --(FOX NEWS) A secret Central Intelligence Agency initiative axed by Director Leon Panetta examined how to assassinate members of Al Qaeda with hit teams on the ground, according to current and former national-security officials familiar with the matter.
The goal was to assemble teams of CIA and special-operations forces "and put bullets in [the Al Qaeda leaders'] heads," one former intelligence official said.
The plan was never carried out, and Panetta canceled the effort on the day he learned of it, June 23. The next day, he alerted Congress, which didn't know about the plan.
"The agency hasn't discussed publicly the nature of the effort, which remains classified," said agency spokesman Paul Gimigliano. The Wall Street Journal reported Monday the effort stemmed from a presidential order dated September 2001 that directed the CIA to find ways to kill or capture Al Qaeda leaders.
The revelation has intensified a growing battle between the executive branch and Congress over the conduct of the CIA and U.S. intelligence operations.
Democrats in Congress are calling for an investigation into whether or not it was properly briefed on the matter. Meanwhile, Sen. Kit Bond, the top Republican on the Senate intelligence panel, said the thrust of the plan should be resurrected. "The general concept in the plan is one that should be explored somewhere. Whether it's a modification of this plan or some related plan," he said in an interview.
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Today's Highlight in History:
On July 14, 1789, during the French Revolution, citizens of Paris stormed the Bastille prison and released the seven prisoners inside.
On this date:
In 1798, Congress passed the Sedition Act, making it a federal crime to publish false, scandalous or malicious writing about the U.S. government.
In 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry relayed to Japanese officials a letter from President Millard Fillmore, requesting trade relations. (Fillmore's term of office had already expired by the time the letter was delivered.)
In 1881, outlaw William H. Bonney Jr., alias "Billy the Kid," was shot and killed by Sheriff Pat Garrett in Fort Sumner, N.M.
In 1908, the short film "The Adventures of Dollie," the first movie directed by D.W. Griffith, opened in New York.
In 1913, Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr., the 38th president of the United States, was born Leslie Lynch King Jr. in Omaha, Neb.
In 1921, Italian-born anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were convicted in Dedham, Mass., of murdering a shoe company paymaster and his guard. (Sacco and Vanzetti were executed six years later.)
In 1933, all German political parties, except the Nazi Party, were outlawed.
In 1958, the army of Iraq overthrew the monarchy.
In 1966, eight student nurses were murdered by Richard Speck in a Chicago dormitory.
In 1978, Soviet dissident Natan Sharansky was convicted of treasonous espionage and anti-Soviet agitation, and sentenced to 13 years at hard labor. (Sharansky was released in 1986.)
Ten years ago: Iranian hard-liners answered a week of pro-democracy rallies with one of their own, sending 100,000 people into the streets of Tehran. Race-based school busing in Boston came to an end after 25 years. Major league umpires voted to resign Sept. 2 and not work the final month of the season. (The strategy collapsed, with baseball owners accepting the resignations of 22 umpires.)
Five years ago: The Senate scuttled a constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. (Forty-eight senators voted to advance the measure 12 short of the 60 needed and 50 voted to block it.) In Iraq, a suicide attacker detonated a massive car bomb at a checkpoint near the British Embassy and the interim government's headquarters in Baghdad, killing 11 people; the governor of Nineveh province was killed in an attack on his convoy.
One year ago: President George W. Bush lifted an executive ban on offshore drilling which had stood since his father was president. The New Yorker magazine featured a satirical cover showing Barack Obama dressed as a Muslim and his wife, Michelle, as a terrorist. (The Obama campaign called the cover "tasteless and offensive.")
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KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, Florida (FOX NEWS) -- Weather forced NASA on Monday to scrub a launch of space shuttle Endeavour, marking the spacecraft's third takeoff postponement in three days and fifth since mid-June.
Space shuttle Endeavour is shown Monday shortly after the day's launch was called off.
Monday's attempt was scheduled for 6:51 p.m., but storm cells with lightning were within 20 nautical miles of the launch area, violating safety guidelines, NASA said.
"The vehicle and our teams were ready, but the weather has just bitten us again," launch director Pete Nickolenko told the shuttle crew.
"We understand, Pete. That's the nature of our business," Mark Polansky, shuttle commander, responded. "Like we said before, when the time is right, we'll be here and we'll be ready."
NASA said it will next try to launch Endeavour at 6:03 p.m. Wednesday.
Weather forced the cancellation of launch attempts Saturday and Sunday. And last month, two launch attempts were scrubbed because of a hydrogen leak.
On Sunday, lightning and cumulus clouds violated guidelines in case of an emergency landing and sent astronauts back to their quarters for the night. Cumulus clouds are tied to volatile weather such as lightning and tornadoes.
On Friday, 11 lightning strikes hit within a half-mile of the launch pad, scratching Saturday's launch.
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TAIPEI, Taiwan --(FOX NEWS) Taiwanese authorities say a 6.3-magnitude earthquake has struck off the east coast of the island, rattling buildings in Taipei, but causing no casualties or damage.
The Central Weather Bureau says the quake struck at 2:05 a.m. Tuesday. It was centered about 36 miles off the eastern city of Hualien, some 85 miles southeast of the capital.
Earthquakes frequently rattle Taiwan, but most are minor and cause little or no damage.
However, a 7.6-magnitude earthquake in central Taiwan in 1999 killed more than 2,300 people. And in 2006 a 6.7-magnitude tremor south of Kaohsiung severed undersea cables and disrupted telephone and Internet service to millions throughout Asia.
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GRAND CANYON NATIONAL PARK, Ariz.(FOX NEWS)-- A man has driven over the edge of the Grand Canyon and plunged 600 feet to his death, authorities said. Grand Canyon National Park spokeswoman Shannan Marcak said rescue personnel found the vehicle and the body of a male below the South Rim. The National Park Service was investigating. Marcak saids no additional information was immediately available. The incident happened around 6 a.m. Monday near the El Tovar Hotel.
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(FOX NEWS)--A man walking his young son across a street was mowed down and killed by a driver who bashed into seven cars as he tore through a New York neighborhood, police said.
The driver reportedly got into a fight with his wife in the parking lot of a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant in Baychester, got in his car and erratically drove through the parking lot and streets.
The driver slammed into the 36-year-old man, who was not identified, as he tried to push his 6-year-old son out of the way, police told MyFOXNY.com.
The father died at the scene. The boy wasn't hurt.
Police say the driver kept going, hitting six more cars and a total of 14 people before his mangled car came to a stop. He is now in police custody, MyFOXNY.com reported.
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GRAND BEACH, Mich.--(FOX NEWS) A convicted killer who was one of three inmates who escaped from the Indiana State Prison was caught Monday near the vacation home of Chicago Mayor Richard Daley by one of his bodyguards, and authorities warned residents nearby to stay inside.
The guard was holding the inmate, 48-year-old Charles Smith, at gunpoint in a driveway near Daley's home, when police arrived and took him into custody, said Grand Beach Police Chief Dan Schroeder. The three inmates two murderers and a rapist escaped from the prison through the tunnel system underneath the penitentiary, which is eight miles from Daley's vacation home and 40 miles from Chicago.
Schroeder said police believe convicted killer Mark Booher, 46, of New Castle, Ind. also was spotted in Grand Beach and warned residents to stay inside and lock their doors.
"Until this individual is apprehended, I don't want them to take any chances," Schroeder said.
A woman at a home in Grand Beach saw two men in her driveway and called police, Schroeder said. It was unclear how Daley's security guard became involved, he said, but Smith was taken into custody without incident.
Authorities also are looking for the third inmate, convicted rapist Lance Battreal, 45, of Rockport, Ind.
It was not immediately clear whether Daley was at his house when Smith, of New Castle, Ind., was caught.
Indiana Department of Correction officials said the men were discovered missing about 10 a.m. Sunday. The three escaped by getting past bars in the tunnels and pipe chases under the grounds of the maximum-security prison in Michigan City, Ind., said Department spokesman Doug Garrison.
Two of the inmates did maintenance work in the prison's tunnel system as part of supervised work crews. Garrison said he wasn't sure which two had done the work.
The three men were in the same housing unit but it's unclear how they knew each other, Garrison said. Prison officials were talking to people who knew the inmates, including people on their visitation or e-mail lists and family and friends.
Smith, Booher and Battreal started serving time in the late 1990s and all faced at least 30 more years behind bars.
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Reporters in the newsroom of The New York Times, including Robert D. McFadden, in stripes, worked by candlelight during the blackout. (Photo: The New York Times).When the lights went out at 9:34 p.m. on July 13, 1977, it set off a night of rioting, looting and general mayhem in neighborhoods across the city. Starting today, City Room will feature the reminiscences of New York Times reporters who covered the blackout from the streets, City Hall and the candle-lit newsroom.
The city was magical that night. From my rooftop on the Upper West Side, the skyline of Manhattan glittered like a wedge of stars across the intergalactic gulf: the Upper East Side, the towers of Midtown, Broadway, all ablaze every point of light a story of ambition, murder, love. I flipped sizzling hamburgers on a grill, sipped a beer and listened to the music drifting from the doorway.
Somewhere in the distance, lightning danced and summer thunder rumbled. A weather story? Perhaps for someone else. It was my night off, an unchoreographed evening away from the Times newsroom, away from the pounding typewriters and the relentless deadlines.
It happened in stages. The Upper East and West Sides disappeared first blink, blink, blink, 20 or 30 blocks at a time, like dominoes falling split-seconds apart, the darkness moving south with incredible speed as I watched in disbelief, swallowing Broadway, Midtown, Chelsea. The Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn were gone too. The great city of millions had vanished into inky blackness. I looked around in amazement and, oddly, found New Jersey blithely aglow. It was not the end of the world.
Cars were honking below, as if a celebration had begun. I looked over the parapet and saw rivers of light in the streets vehicles moving slowly, or halted altogether. I stepped back into my apartment. The air-conditioner was dead, and it was sweltering. I picked up the phone and was surprised to get a dial tone. The city was down and out, but the phones still worked. I called the Metropolitan desk and was told to get to work, fast. I kissed my wife, Judy, and 2-year-old son, Nolan, goodbye, as if for the last time, and went out into the chiaroscuro madness.
The front page of the July 14, 1977, issue, which featured Robert D. McFadden’s byline. To see the front pages from the blackout up close, download the PDFs: July 14, July 15, July 16. The elevator was out, of course, so I walked down a pitch-black stairway, feeling my way blindly along the walls, trying to remember how many floors I had passed and where the door to the lobby came out. The streets were chaotic but illuminated by the headlights of marauding vehicles. At Broadway and 72nd Street, a big traffic jam was developing. Stop lights were out. People were stepping out of trapped cabs and buses, pouring out of restaurants and bars, ambling out of apartment buildings as if looking for an explanation.
The subways were not running. I began walking south on Broadway, heading for Times Square, my route marked by streaming headlights and blaring horns. Outside Lincoln Center, New York’s performing arts mecca, huge crowds of displaced patrons were milling about. Twenty blocks farther, the eerie glow of taxicab lights enveloped Times Square, normally a circus of glaring, moving neon lights. The crowds that had spilled out of the Broadway theaters were enormous, people robbed of their last act and stumbling into the streets to compete with the traffic and jostle with pickpockets.
At the offices of The Times on West 43rd Street, the stairways were already lighted by candles, and in the third-floor newsroom, editors and reporters were clustered and conferring by candlelight at the Metro Desk, poring over notes and assignment lists. Down the blocklong newsroom, candles glowed softly at the reporters’ ranks of steel desks. The wire room the nerve center of teletype and Telex communications where a million words a day clattered into the newsroom from Times correspondents across the nation and around the world was as silent as a tomb.
An army of reporters was being called in for a long night. Many had already been dispatched into the chaotic city, where the looting had begun in earnest and countless fires had been set by arsonists, where motorists had blundered into accidents and people trapped in elevators and subway tunnels were waiting to be rescued by an overwhelmed police force. Lucky, indeed, about those phones still working.
Lucky, too, that reporters were still a couple of years away from turning in trusty Smith-Corona and Royal typewriters for newfangled computers and other electronic marvels useless in a power failure. But how was the paper to be printed? Articles could be written and edited, but there was no power for the Mergenthaler Linotypes where printers set articles into hot type, or for the gargantuan high-speed presses that shook the building foundations when they rolled, printing a half-million newspapers an hour.
But a solution had already been devised. The Jersey Journal would print the edition for us. The newspaper would look a bit odd, with headlines in an unfamiliar type face, but the articles, the thoroughness and ingenuity of the reporting, the quality of the editing, would be thoroughly Timesean.
My assignment was to write the lead of the paper taking notes from reporters in the field and writing a comprehensive account of all major aspects of the blackout: the disruption of nine million lives, the wide looting and vandalism, the arrests and rescues, the stranded trains, wailing sirens in crowded streets, the closed airports, the hospital emergencies, Con Edison’s explanations, and the countless ways New Yorkers coped: civilians with flashlights pitching in to direct traffic, strangers helping strangers.
For me, it was the beginning of a hard but satisfying week that included four follow-up articles on the restoration of power and the examination of what went wrong, the gradual resumption of normal life in the city, the legal processes for thousands arrested on criminal charges, the woes of looted shop owners and the political fallout for city and utility officials. But those stories did not have to be written by candlelight.
Posted at 09:27 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)
Reporters in the newsroom of The New York Times, including Robert D. McFadden, in stripes, worked by candlelight during the blackout. (Photo: The New York Times).When the lights went out at 9:34 p.m. on July 13, 1977, it set off a night of rioting, looting and general mayhem in neighborhoods across the city. Starting today, City Room will feature the reminiscences of New York Times reporters who covered the blackout from the streets, City Hall and the candle-lit newsroom.
The city was magical that night. From my rooftop on the Upper West Side, the skyline of Manhattan glittered like a wedge of stars across the intergalactic gulf: the Upper East Side, the towers of Midtown, Broadway, all ablaze every point of light a story of ambition, murder, love. I flipped sizzling hamburgers on a grill, sipped a beer and listened to the music drifting from the doorway.
Somewhere in the distance, lightning danced and summer thunder rumbled. A weather story? Perhaps for someone else. It was my night off, an unchoreographed evening away from the Times newsroom, away from the pounding typewriters and the relentless deadlines.
It happened in stages. The Upper East and West Sides disappeared first blink, blink, blink, 20 or 30 blocks at a time, like dominoes falling split-seconds apart, the darkness moving south with incredible speed as I watched in disbelief, swallowing Broadway, Midtown, Chelsea. The Bronx, Queens and Brooklyn were gone too. The great city of millions had vanished into inky blackness. I looked around in amazement and, oddly, found New Jersey blithely aglow. It was not the end of the world.
Cars were honking below, as if a celebration had begun. I looked over the parapet and saw rivers of light in the streets vehicles moving slowly, or halted altogether. I stepped back into my apartment. The air-conditioner was dead, and it was sweltering. I picked up the phone and was surprised to get a dial tone. The city was down and out, but the phones still worked. I called the Metropolitan desk and was told to get to work, fast. I kissed my wife, Judy, and 2-year-old son, Nolan, goodbye, as if for the last time, and went out into the chiaroscuro madness.
The front page of the July 14, 1977, issue, which featured Robert D. McFadden’s byline. To see the front pages from the blackout up close, download the PDFs: July 14, July 15, July 16. The elevator was out, of course, so I walked down a pitch-black stairway, feeling my way blindly along the walls, trying to remember how many floors I had passed and where the door to the lobby came out. The streets were chaotic but illuminated by the headlights of marauding vehicles. At Broadway and 72nd Street, a big traffic jam was developing. Stop lights were out. People were stepping out of trapped cabs and buses, pouring out of restaurants and bars, ambling out of apartment buildings as if looking for an explanation.
The subways were not running. I began walking south on Broadway, heading for Times Square, my route marked by streaming headlights and blaring horns. Outside Lincoln Center, New York’s performing arts mecca, huge crowds of displaced patrons were milling about. Twenty blocks farther, the eerie glow of taxicab lights enveloped Times Square, normally a circus of glaring, moving neon lights. The crowds that had spilled out of the Broadway theaters were enormous, people robbed of their last act and stumbling into the streets to compete with the traffic and jostle with pickpockets.
At the offices of The Times on West 43rd Street, the stairways were already lighted by candles, and in the third-floor newsroom, editors and reporters were clustered and conferring by candlelight at the Metro Desk, poring over notes and assignment lists. Down the blocklong newsroom, candles glowed softly at the reporters’ ranks of steel desks. The wire room the nerve center of teletype and Telex communications where a million words a day clattered into the newsroom from Times correspondents across the nation and around the world was as silent as a tomb.
An army of reporters was being called in for a long night. Many had already been dispatched into the chaotic city, where the looting had begun in earnest and countless fires had been set by arsonists, where motorists had blundered into accidents and people trapped in elevators and subway tunnels were waiting to be rescued by an overwhelmed police force. Lucky, indeed, about those phones still working.
Lucky, too, that reporters were still a couple of years away from turning in trusty Smith-Corona and Royal typewriters for newfangled computers and other electronic marvels useless in a power failure. But how was the paper to be printed? Articles could be written and edited, but there was no power for the Mergenthaler Linotypes where printers set articles into hot type, or for the gargantuan high-speed presses that shook the building foundations when they rolled, printing a half-million newspapers an hour.
But a solution had already been devised. The Jersey Journal would print the edition for us. The newspaper would look a bit odd, with headlines in an unfamiliar type face, but the articles, the thoroughness and ingenuity of the reporting, the quality of the editing, would be thoroughly Timesean.
My assignment was to write the lead of the paper taking notes from reporters in the field and writing a comprehensive account of all major aspects of the blackout: the disruption of nine million lives, the wide looting and vandalism, the arrests and rescues, the stranded trains, wailing sirens in crowded streets, the closed airports, the hospital emergencies, Con Edison’s explanations, and the countless ways New Yorkers coped: civilians with flashlights pitching in to direct traffic, strangers helping strangers.
For me, it was the beginning of a hard but satisfying week that included four follow-up articles on the restoration of power and the examination of what went wrong, the gradual resumption of normal life in the city, the legal processes for thousands arrested on criminal charges, the woes of looted shop owners and the political fallout for city and utility officials. But those stories did not have to be written by candlelight.
Posted at 09:21 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)