I was supposed to go to New York City today for a meeting at the Social

Science Research Council, but I found when I reached the airport at

6 am that no flights were leaving because of the huge blackout.

According to the New

York Times, the 1965 power failure "was largely characterized

by cooperation and good cheer," whereas the one in 1977 was "defined

by widespread looting and arson."

In 2003, we seem to be back to civility. Jeff

Greenfield of CNN says he "saw tourists pouring off those double-decker

buses looking dazed and confused. People were offering them free glasses

of water and restaurants were putting out food that was spoiled for

free. I saw police officers politely asking New Yorkers, ‘Would you

mind please getting out of the street.’"

When I was deputy director of the National

in the early 1970s and then rebounded in the 1990s. I have to

wonder whether the three great NYC blackouts are evidence of the same

trend. Three scattered events do not really make a trend. Besides, I

have no specific data for New York City, and no INCH data at all for

2000-3. Still, it’s interesting that New York has fared so much better

in emergencies when the national civic health is higher. More than 1,037

fires burned while the lights were out in 1977. In 1965, and again in

2003, people took care of each other instead.

(Incidentally, we couldn’t run INCH back through the 1960s, because

we didn’t have enough data from those early years. But if you make an

index out of the variables that we do have, then INCH declines throughout

the sixties. That means that it was much higher in 1965 than in 1977.)