ISDN to the rescue
My place of employment in the early 2000s was a small IT contractor in Toronto -- and by small, I mean fewer than a dozen employees. Our internet uplink was an ISDN line (BRI, i.e. 2B+D). This was presented as a little box screwed to the wall of the telecom closet, which had, as I recall, two pairs of screw terminals, one (or both?) of which was wired into whatever bit of our networking hardware, and an RJ-11 jack which went unused but was part of the telco's standard ISDN termination unit.
Well, twenty years ago tomorrow -- Thu, Aug. 14, 2003 -- at a little after 4 PM, the power went out in our office -- and, as we didn't yet realize, across much of north-eastern North America.
Once the outage had proved itself not to be transient, people started wanting to contact their spouses etc. Problem: no power = no phones; the PBX was out. (Someone will surely comment about battery backup. I don't remember the details, just the unhappy end result.) Cell phones also weren't happening. (I don't recall those details either. Maybe the cell towers were out too, but more likely they were simply massively overloaded as everyone in range tried to place calls.)
Fortunately, I remembered having seen a POTS phone sitting in a box in a closet -- not one of the fancy units that worked with the dead PBX, but just a standard, residential-grade single-line telephone. I plugged it into the empty RJ-11 jack on our internet uplink and woohoo! Dial tone! So people could take turns going into the wiring closet / makeshift phone booth, to reach whoever they had to reach. Or try to, depending on circumstances at the other end.
(The rest of this has nothing to do with ISDN; it's just about the blackout in general.)
By the time all the calls had been made, I guess we knew it was a major blackout and that no more work would be done that day, for we all decamped to a nearby restaurant. The only food they could serve was prepackaged stuff like potato chips -- no way to cook -- but this basement pub's claim to fame was their extensive beer menu, and that was all we were after. We spent an hour or so drinking by candlelight, then headed off in our various directions.
I had taken the subway (RightPondian: tube) to work, but both that and the (electrically powered) streetcar system were down, and the replacement buses threatened to be madness. So I set off on the looong walk home. (Google Maps tells me it was 10 km.)
I passed through the Bay Street business district (think Wall Street or the City). The traffic lights were all dead, but there were stockbroker/lawyer types at all the major intersections directing traffic. The above-linked Wikipedia article says the police issued some of them with high-vis vests, but I don't recall that; it must have happened after I passed through. I just remember Bay-Street guys in shirts and ties, playing amateur traffic cop.
Later, by which time night had fallen, my route took me along College Street through Little Italy, an area of restaurants and bars, many of which have patios. They were all candle-lit and all packed. None of them serving food either, I presume, but doing a roaring business in drinks.
Then, bonus! A pizza place was actually in full operation. Gas-fired pizza oven, I guess. I bought a slice or two, and that was dinner.
It seems most places got power back later that night, but in (my part of) Toronto, it was out for a couple of days. I don't remember much about the rest of the blackout. The one thing I do remember is the novelty of seeing So Many Stars at night in my urban neighbourhood.
Side note: my parents never lost power. They lived in a suburban neighbourhood in a small city an hour and a half from Toronto. They were in the middle of the blackout area, but near a couple of small local power plants, which I guess managed to isolate themselves the way every power plant should have done, and so avoided the general cascade failure. My folks only learned that there was a blackout when my uncle called from California to ask how they were faring.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
