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Rushed Ice. At many of the city's hospitals, auxiliary generators quickly conked out—or were not available to begin with. At Bellevue, sewage began to back up into the basement when pumps failed, finally reached a level of H in. Police, firemen and volunteers rushed dry ice to hospitals to keep stored blood from spoiling, sent generators to those that needed them, rigged electrical heart-pacer machines to auxiliary power, and hand-pumped iron lungs. A delicate corneal transplant, a five-hour craniotomy, and a caesarean section were performed under light from makeshift sources; five dozen babies were delivered.
The worst potential hazard was in the air, where at peak hours, between 5 and 9 p.m., some 200 planes from all over the world home in on New York's Kennedy International Airport. American Airlines' Flight 6, four hours and 25 minutes out of Los Angeles with 80 passengers aboard, was only two miles from touchdown when the runway lights dimmed and disappeared. Turning toward the ocean, Captain Gus Konz lost radio contact with the tower, which by that time was operating on fast-fading emergency power. Unable to contact Kennedy, Konz pointed the nose of the 248,000-lb. plane westward and minutes later set down at Newark Airport.
Slender Thread. Luckily for Konz and his New York-bound fellow pilots, it was a sparkling night, and they could see one another hovering over the darkened city. "You know, we're living on a very slender thread," he said. "If the weather had been bad instead of extremely good, there could have been a disaster."
Inbound flights were diverted to airports as far away as Cleveland and Bermuda. Philadelphia received 40 New York-bound airliners carrying some 4,500 passengers. Said William T. Burns, Philadelphia's assistant city commerce director for aviation: "It's incredible if they don't have something similar to our emergency lighting system." Incredible as it was, Kennedy Airport did not. It was shut down for eleven hours and 55 minutes.
On the ground, merely getting fed and bedded down were the paramount problems. At B. Altman's department store, 500 late shoppers and employees dined on Russian caviar, specially blended coffee and other exotics from the imported-delicacies department. Few others ate that well. At Bloomingdale's, men and women slept in the home-furnishings and medical departments. Restaurants and bars did a booming business—though many rely on electricity to make their ice, pump their water, cook their food, wash the dishes, count the receipts, and of course light the premises.
Two Secretaries. Within minutes of the blackout, practically every hotel room in town was taken, and hotel lobbies, office couches and National Guard armories quickly filled with refugees. Some 80,000 stranded commuters slept in cavernous railroad stations. At Grand Central, one man was determined to get something more comfortable than a marble bench. "Kind of jokingly, I suggested he take a sleeper to Detroit on our Wolverine Express," said Ticket Seller Fred Hopkins. "So what does he