(based on the
“Electric Nightmares” series by the same author)
The 1965 West Coast blackout
was one of the most alarming crises
in U.S. history. For several
long hours many of the country’s largest
cities, including San
Francisco and Los Angeles, were plunged into a
total or near-total darkness
and public safety in those cities became
precarious at best; Los
Angeles in particular teetered on the verge of
a full-scale riot that might
have equaled, if not surpassed, the violence
of the Watts riots that
raged just a few months before the blackout. It
was partly in hopes of averting
such chaos that in early 1966 Congress
passed what was formally
known as the American Electrical Transmission
Safety Act but would be
better known by its nickname “the Blackout Act”;
among its other provisions
the law gave the U.S. Justice Department the
power to investigate and try
sabotage of electrical equipment as an act
of terrorism.
But as the Watergate scandal mushroomed and
a growing segment of the
American public became
disenchanted with government in general and the
Blackout Act in particular,
the act’s security provisions would steadily
come under heavier and
heavier criticism. By the time Jimmy Carter threw
his hat into the 1976
Democratic presidential nomination race, there was
massive sentiment in favor
of scaling back most if not all of the powers
granted to the Justice
Department to investigate and prosecute Blackout
Act-related crimes; sure
enough Carter said in his nomination acceptance
speech he would make it a
high priority during his first 100 days in the
White House to overhaul the
Blackout Act’s security clauses.
At the time Carter’s pledge earned him a
standing ovation from the
convention delegates. But
just one year later, his words would come back
to haunt him as another
major power outage struck Los Angeles and laid
bare his administration’s
shortcomings. Some political historians have
suggested it was the Los
Angeles blackout rather than the 1979 Iranian
hostage crisis that truly
doomed Carter’s hopes for a second term in the
White House; his first
response to the blackout certainly didn't do much
to help him in his efforts
to woo undecided potential voters in the 1980
campaign. In fact Carter's
handling(or mishandling) of the blackout gave
his 1980 Republican
challenger, Ronald Reagan, a perfect opening to take
Carter's domestic policies
to task. Noticing that voters were alarmed by
the rising crime rate in
America at that time, Reagan promised to (as he
put it) "take the cuffs
off" the Justice Department in investigating and
prosecuting violators of the
Blackout Act's security articles. Even now,
more than three and a half
decades after it happened, the effects of the
blackout are still being
felt well beyond southern California.
******
July 13, 1977, had been a normal
summer evening in Los Angeles right
up until the moment the
blackout started. It had been searingly hot for
most of the day, and as
night fell the temperature was still registering
in the mid-70s. The main
topics of conversation among people walking the
city's streets were the
fortunes of the Dodgers, the phenomenal success
of Star Wars
at the box office, the not-so-phenomenal performance of the
Carter Administration after
six months in the White House, and of course
the heat.
All conversation screeched to a halt around
8:37 PM Pacific time; a
lightning strike at an
electrical substation north of the city triggered
a cascade effect that within
minutes had plunged all of Los Angeles into
darkness. In sharp contrast
to the 1965 West Coast blackout, when power
outages were being reported
as far south as San Diego, only metropolitan
L.A. experienced any
electrical failures. But those failures made for a
situation every bit as tense
as the conditions that had prevailed twelve
years earlier during the '65
outage. The social, economic, and cultural
tensions which had been
simmering within the City of Angels all through
those twelve years hadn't
diminished much by 1977; if anything, in some
quarters it had actually
intensified...
******
...a development that in the long run would
cost President Carter
dearly when it came time for
him to confront the situation arising from
the blackout. It was just
after 9:45 PM Pacific time (12:45 AM Eastern
time July 14th) when Carter
was first notified of the power failure in
Los Angeles. Because of
incomplete information regarding the nature of
the blackout and its origin,
he misjudged the seriousness of the event,
which in turn delayed the
release of federal resources that might have
otherwise enabled state and
local authorities to get the situation under
control sooner.
By the time Carter finally did get around
to releasing federal funds
and resources to aid L.A.
authorities in dealing with the blackout, more
than half the city was engulfed
in chaos and the rest was bracing itself
for everything short of the
Apocalypse. Even in the most upscale corners
of Los Angeles there were
incidents of looting and violence; two Beverly
Hills jewelry stores were
ransacked around 11:00 PM Pacific time while a
third was forty minutes
later, while in Hollywood an LAPD riot squad had
to be called in to break up
a melee near the Paramount backlot. The less
affluent sections of the
city were in danger of becoming urban war zones
by that point. In the South
Central district homeowners and businesses
were going so far as to set
up improvised barricades against what seemed
like an inevitable assault
by L.A.'s criminal elements. A local arsonist
who had been dodging the
LAPD for weeks prior to the blackout took great
advantage of the chaos the
blackout produced to set fires in a number of
abandoned buildings in the
heart of Los Angeles, prompting a sportscaster
who was covering that
evening's Dodgers game to comment despondently to
his viewers: "Ladies
and gentlemen, the City of Angels is burning." Huge
black columns of smoke rose
from the torched buildings, visible in every
direction for at least ten
miles and bringing back what must have been a
Pandora's box of unpleasant
memories for those who had lived through the
Watts riots a decade
earlier.
The California National Guard was activated
just before midnight
on July 14th to restore
order in metropolitan Los Angeles; to their
considerable credit, the
Guardsmen acted quickly and effectively to
accomplish this mission.
Their first move was to deploy fire control
teams to assist the
beleaguered L.A. Fire Department in putting out the
multiple blazes raging in
the heart of the city; simultaneously, squads
of MPs moved to back up the
LAPD and CHP in arresting looters. Once the
fires were under control and
the looting had been stopped, the National
Guardsmen's next task was to
provide medical assistance for injured L.A.
residents who had been
unable to get to a doctor or hospital. As a Times
editorial columnist said in
the aftermath of the blackout, the Guardsmen
were "the glue that
held Los Angeles together". Many of them would later
return to the city as extras
when a movie based on the Times' reports of
the blackout was filmed in
downtown L.A. in 1991.
L.A. County sheriff's deputies also played
a significant role in
restoring calm to the City
of Angels. Many former deputies actually came
out of retirement to support
their active-duty colleagues in keeping the
peace while utility crews
worked to get the power back on. In some cases
they even had assistance
from Hollywood studio security guards who’d been
released by their employers
from their regular duties to give overtaxed
regular police personnel a
hand with crowd control and guarding life and
property.
******
Electrical power was restored to most
sections of L.A. by 5:30 AM
Pacific time(8:30 AM
Eastern) on the morning of July 14. At that point,
much of the city looked like
Genghis Khan had rampaged through it. Weeks
after the last light had
been turned on in Los Angeles, the city’s public
works department was still
picking up trash and debris left behind by the
orgy of crime and looting
the blackout had generated; in terms of paying
overtime salary to LAPD
personnel and L.A. County sheriff’s deputies, the
blackout was the most
expensive civil emergency to hit the City of Angels
since the 1971 Sylmar
earthquake. And still more financial headaches were
to come as the inevitable
civil damage lawsuits from disgruntled business
owners and ordinary citizens
began making their way through the state and
federal courts.
But as bad as things had been and would get
for the administration of
then-Mayor Tom Bradley,
there were about to get exponentially worse for
the Carter Administration.
At the time of the blackout, Jimmy Carter had
been president less than six
months but was already starting to receive a
torrent of criticism from
conservative opponents of his government; once
the extent of Carter’s
mishandling of the blackout began to sink in those
critics went after him like
hounds after the fox. On July 18th, just four
days after the lights came
back on in Los Angeles, two GOP senators went
before Congress to introduce
a resolution calling for the appointment of
an independent counsel to
look into the Carter administration's response
to the blackout. That same
day the Manchester Union-Leader printed one of
the most blistering
editorials in its history, a vitriolic anti-Carter
rant essentially accusing
the incumbent president of abandoning L.A. in
its hour of need. Even by
the Union-Leader's own notoriously belligerent
standards the editorial was
a shot across the president's bow; no sooner
had the paper hit newsstands
than multitudes of angry Carter supporters
throughout New England
starting bombarding the Union-Leader offices with
a barrage of letters,
telegrams, and phone calls coming to his defense.
Some of those defenders would later
reverse their stances as the
investigation into the
Carter Administration's handling of the blackout
exposed Carter's errors in
judgement as well as those of his advisors.
But at the time the Union-Leader
editorial was published, Democrats all
throughout New England were
unanimous in blasting the paper for what in
their eyes constituted an
intolerable and deliberate slight of the chief
executive. A few of the more
vocal critics of the Union-Leader editorial
even went so far as to
picket the newspaper's printing plant or threaten
lawsuits against the
publishers for allegedly slandering the President.
The suits never went
forward, but just the same they reflect the outrage
the editorial had stirred
among Carter's supporters.
The resolution to appoint an independent
counsel to probe the White
House's handling of the Los
Angeles blackout was debated in Congress for
weeks before finally being
approved on August 2, almost one month after
the blackout. And even after
its approval many of Carter's allies in the
House and Senate continued
to bitterly criticize the decision; one junior
Vermont representative
labeled the inquiry “a politically motivated smear
job.” Nor for that matter
was the GOP unanimous in agreement on the need
for a Congressional probe
into Carter's response to the blackout--one of
the members of Montana's GOP
Congressional contingent labeled it “a waste
of good money” and
questioned the timing of the inquiry at a moment when
there was an economy to be
revived and Soviet expansionism to be opposed.
******
The Congressional inquiry into President
Carter's handling of the
Los Angeles blackout didn't
officially convene until October 10, 1978,
slightly over two months
after the resolution appointing the independent
counsel who would lead the
inquiry had been passed. Right from the start
the independent counsel's
office was dogged by allegations that they were
engaged in a political
witch-hunt; it didn't help matters any when one of
the law clerks assigned to
the office was photographed sporting a 'Reagan
For President 1980' button
on his lapel. Many Carter White House staffers
viewed the inquiry as at
best an intentional slight of the commander-in-
chief and at worst the
beginning of a right-wing attempt to overthrow the
Carter Administration via a
questionable impeachment proceeding.
But in January of 1979, just as the
Pahlavi monarchy in Iran was on
its last legs, a former
White House staffer gave devastating testimony to
the inquiry that would make
many of Carter's defenders start to question
whether he was worthy of
defense. In a two-hour hearing that was the talk
of the Beltway for days
after it ended, the witness painted a devastating
portrait of an Oval Office
whose right hand didn't know what its left one
was doing. He described
people giving President Carter getting a hundred
different reports from a
hundred different sources about what was taking
place in Los Angeles--
reports often blatantly contradicting each other.
He portrayed a cabinet that
was seriously if not totally flustered in the
face of a major urban
crisis. He spoke of a president who had been asleep
at the switch at a time when
alertness was critical. He pointed to scores
of misjudgments by Carter's
senior disaster preparedness officials which
served to make an already
grave situation that much worse. By the time he
finally left the stand, some
members of the inquiry panel members who had
been listening to the
staffer's testimony were ready to at the very least
censure Carter if not
impeach him outright.
And it wasn't just the Republicans who were
incensed about Carter's
mismanagement of the Los
Angeles blackout; many of the President's fellow
Democrats were equally fed
up if not more so. The chairman of California's
state Democratic committee
published a blistering op-ed in the Los Angeles
Times essentially accusing
President Carter of abandoning Los Angelenos to
the whims of fate. A leading
Democratic member of Alabama's Congressional
delegation painted a grim
picture of what would happen to the United States
if terrorists attacked
during an L.A. blackout-type crisis, suggesting such
an event could sow the seeds
of nationwide anarchy. Even in constituencies
where Carter usually enjoyed
heavy support, critics of the incumbent chief
executive were preparing
attack ads on behalf of those who would challenge
him for the Oval Office. In
many southern states a certain conservative PAC
started running a notorious
commercial now known simply as “the 3:00 AM ad”
that implied Carter's
mismanagement of the L.A. blackout had left the door
open for enemies of the
United States to wreak havoc on its citizens while
they were at their most
vulnerable.
The controversy over Carter's handling of
the Los Angeles blackout had
serious consequences for his
1980 re-election bid. Carter's main rival for
the Democratic nomination,
Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy, relentlessly
exploited the incumbent's
vulnerability on this matter; had it not been for
Kennedy's own perceived
transgressions, he might easily have supplanted the
President as his party's nominee.
As it was, Carter just barely managed to
squeak past Kennedy for the
nomination and would find himself operating at
a serious disadvantage when
he faced Republican candidate Ronald Reagan in
the general election.
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