When.the Lights Went Out

[Jenifer Griffard]

Wherewere you when the lights went out? At home during a thunderstorm? During the Great Northeastern Blackout of 1965? In California when rolling blackouts hit in 2000? In 2003, when a cascading power failure left fifty million people without electricity? We often remember vividly our time in the dark. In When the Lights Went Out, David Nye views power outages in America from 1935 to the present not simply as technical failures but variously as military tactic, social disruption, crisis in the networked city, outcome of political and economic decisions, sudden encounter with sublimity, and memories enshrined in photographs. Our electrically lit-up life is so natural to us that when the lights go off, the darkness seems abnormal.

David E. Nye is Senior Research Fellow at the University of Minnesota's Charles Babbage Institute and Professor Emeritus of American Studies at the University of Southern Denmark. The author of twelve books with the MIT Press, including American Technological Sublime, he was awarded the Leonardo da Vinci Medal in 2005 and was knighted by the Queen of Denmark in 2013.

About two hours after the game, won by the Ravens in a 34-31 thriller, officials revealed that an "abnormality" in the power system triggered an automatic shutdown, forcing backup systems to kick in. But they weren't sure what caused the initial problem.

Auxiliary power kept the playing field from going totally dark, but escalators stopped working, credit-card machines shut down, and the concourses were only illuminated by small banks of lights tied in to emergency service.

A joint statement from Entergy New Orleans, which provides power to the stadium, and Superdome operator SMG shed some light on the chain of events, which apparently started at the spot where Entergy feeds power into the stadium's lines. The problem occurred shortly after Beyonce put on a halftime show that featured extravagant lighting and video effects.

"A piece of equipment that is designed to monitor electrical load sensed an abnormality in the system," the statement said. "Once the issue was detected, the sensing equipment operated as designed and opened a breaker, causing power to be partially cut to the Superdome in order to isolate the issue. ... Entergy and SMG will continue to investigate the root cause of the abnormality."

Things took an unexpected turn after halftime when stadium lights went out during Super Bowl XLVII. There was a slight delay in game action, but some memorable images were created while the bright lights were off. Take a look at some of the best images here. Things took an unexpected turn after halftime when stadium lights went out during Super Bowl XLVII. There was a slight delay in game action, but some memorable images were created while the bright lights were off. Take a look at some of the best images here.

On the CBS broadcast, play-by-play announcers Jim Nantz and Phil Simms went silent. Sideline reporter Steve Tasker announced to viewers a "click of the lights" as the problem. Later, the halftime crew anchored by host James Brown returned to fill the time with football analysis. Brown said a power surge caused the outage.

Things took an unexpected turn after halftime when stadium lights went out during Super Bowl XLVII. There was a slight delay in game action, but some memorable images were created while the bright lights were off. Take a look at some of the best images here.

The failure occurred shortly after Jacoby Jones returned the opening kickoff of the second half for a 108-yard touchdown, the longest play in Super Bowl history and pushing the Ravens to a commanding lead. But when play resumed, the momentum totally changed.

The Niners scored two straight touchdowns and nearly pulled off a game-winning drive in the closing minutes. They had first down inside the Ravens 10, but Baltimore kept them out of the end zone to preserve the victory.

"It really hurt us. We had lot of momentum," fullback Vonta Leach said. "We were rolling. That 35- or 40-minute wait, whatever it was, hurt our momentum as far as what we were trying to do. But we came out on top and that's all that matters."

"The bad part is we started talking about it," he said. "Some of the guys were saying, 'They're trying to kill our momentum.' I was like, 'There's two teams on the field.' But once we started talking about it, it happened. We talked it up."

The public address announcer said the Superdome was experiencing an interruption of electrical service and encouraged fans to stay in their seats. Players milled around on the sidelines, some took a seat on the bench, others on the field. A few of the Ravens threw footballs around.

"We lost numerous cameras and some audio powered by sources in the Superdome," said Jennifer Sabatelle, vice president of communications for CBS Sports. "We utilized CBS' backup power and at no time did we leave the air."

The outage provided a major glitch to what has largely been viewed as a smooth week for New Orleans, which was hosting its first Super Bowl since 2002 and was eager to show off how the city has rebuilt since Hurricane Katrina.

"My exact words on the way over here were, 'I hope this goes off without a hitch,' because the city just looked so good, they were doing so well, the weather so good everything was kind of falling into place," she said.

New Orleans was once a regular in the Super Bowl rotation and hopes to regain that status. Earlier in the week, the host committee announced it will bid on the 2018 Super Bowl, which would coincide with the 300th anniversary of the city's founding.

The 38-year-old Superdome has undergone $336 million in renovations since Katrina ripped its roof in 2005. Billions have been spent sprucing up downtown, the airport, French Quarter and other areas of the city in the past seven years.

"If we can blame Beyonce for lip syncing, we can blame her for the power outage," said Gary Cimperman of Slidell, La., with a laugh as he watched the second half of the game from a bar. "Or maybe Sean Payton called in the outage, Bountygate part two."

Another week of training camp is kicking off. The 2020 regular season is just around the corner, and NFL Network has you covered with wall-to-wall training camp coverage each day starting at 10 a.m. ET. Follow along here as we keep up with all the news, injuries and transactions of the day.

I also visited Anawan Rock in Rehoboth, where the Indian Chief Anawan was captured on Aug. 28, 1676, ending King Philip's War. The rock has had reports of sightings of ghost lights and phantom campfires as well as full-bodied apparitions, but that night I only saw headlights.

Most interestingly, I ventured out to Assonet Ledge, also known as the Freetown Ledge, which is much deeper into the Freetown-Fall River State Forest. It took about 25 minutes to walk to the ledge, and the dusk surrounding us gave the forest an eerie feel for my photographer, Marc Vasconcellos of The Enterprise. The ledge stands over a small lake which is creepily still and black, and people standing on it are said to get a sudden urge to jump.

hile these occurrences are hardly exciting, people are known to have strange technological malfunctions in the forest. In fact the only unexplained phenomenon that happened to Director Aaron Cadieux while he was filming his 2013 Bridgewater Triangle documentary is that his lighting cut out suddenly and for no reason right when folklorist Chris Balazano was talking about the "curse of the wampum belt." When Balzano made a joke that the light cutting out was the Triangle trying to affirm the curse, the light mysteriously cut out again.

The first was 43-year-old Kristyn O'Dea, of Freetown. She said in 2018, towards the end of the school year, she was dropping off her daughter at Freetown Elementary School around 8 a.m. when she saw a gigantic bird with a strange, raptor-like tail flying around the school.

Despite O'Dea's saying she felt crazy for having experienced such a thing, massive birds are one of the more common sightings in the Bridgewater Triangle. In fact some paranormal investigators believe them to be thunderbirds, per American Indian legends.

Thunderbirds aren't the only flying creature you might see in the Triangle. Camilla Maloney, 25, grew up in Middleboro, and 10 years ago was watching a horror movie at a friend's house with two friends when something flashing out the window caught her eye.

"I just kind of figured in the back of my mind, like, 'Oh, it must be just like the cars driving by,'" she said. "...And for some reason, I just thought 'I just need to look out the window.' And I noticed a flying saucer flying pretty low to the ground like it was above the treeline. It seemed like it would be about the size of a car, maybe two."

So Maloney and her friends went out to look at the saucer, but none of them had smartphones at the time, so they could not take a picture. She said they noticed that it had a red and blue light that they could see as it turned. She said it was the kind you might see in an old movie.

But Maloney isn't the only one to see a UFO in the area. Taunton resident Brittany Mastera was visiting her mother in Lakeville in 2012 when she and her mother, aunt, stepfather and uncle saw something strange. She said it was about 9 p.m., and they were outside enjoying a campfire in the summertime.

The next morning, Mastera's husband, who had come home from work after everyone went to bed, said he had seen a big bright light above the treeline in the middle of the night, much like what they had seen earlier in the night.

"There was not a soul out there or a soul in sight, and as I'm around the pond I hear a woman's voice say 'help me,' but it was like it was on the wind," he said. "It wasn't like somebody standing there saying 'help me.'...I got really scared and I heard it again."

Becker isn't the only person to see a large, hairy creature in the Triangle. Fanny Manzella, 37, who grew up in Rehoboth, was visiting her mother at her childhood home last year when she saw something strange in the early morning when she was out for a run. She said she was running down a hill towards her house when she passed an old graveyard nearby that was a few feet back from the road.

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