What Happens When a High-Rise Loses Power?

You live on the 40th floor. One summer evening the lights, the TV and the air conditioner all stop at once. At ground level a blackout is just annoying. Forty floors up, it switches off the whole machine you live in: the elevators stop between floors, the taps run dry above the first handful of floors, the fridge has about four hours, and every bottle of water has to be carried up by hand. We follow one evening in a dark tower and look at the nights that showed what really happens: Elisha Otis and the axe in 1854, the 1965 rush-hour blackout, 800 elevator rescues in 2003, and Hurricane Sandy in 2012, when people climbed twenty flights with buckets and hospitals carried newborns down dark stairwells. 0:00 The night the hum stops 1:34 Trapped between floors: elevators and backup power 4:43 Why the taps run dry 6:11 Hurricane Sandy, 2012 8:53 Heat, food, phones and the 2003 blackout Music: Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com), licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 — "Echoes of Time", "Immersed", "Redletter", "Satiate", "Willow and the Light", "Private Reflection", "Impact Prelude". http://creativecommons.org/licenses/b... #blackout #skyscraper #engineering #newyork #hurricanesandy #howitworks