Scientists cope with historic blackout

When the lights went out across northeastern North America during the continent's biggest blackout in history, scientists in the New York area experienced minor inconveniences rather than major experimental setbacks. And some actually found innovative ways to enjoy a difficult situation that lasted as long as 29 hours in parts of the region.Spokespersons from Columbia and Rockefeller Universities reported no significant problems at their institutions thanks to properly functioning backup systems. Annie Bayne, Columbia's health sciences division director of public relations, told The Scientist that the university learned its lesson after a local blackout a few years ago. "Unfortunately, at that point our generators did not work, and we lost quite a lot of our research," she said.According to a Yale University spokesperson, Yale never lost power. However, Donald Wiggin, Yale's administrator for biology, said that a power surge did cause some temporary compressor problems that affected water temperature regulation.But the Public Health Research Institute (PHRI) in Newark, NJ, did have some anxious moments, according to Scientific Director David Perlin. Housing one of the Northeast's largest biocontainment facilities, which stores, among other agents, tuberculosis, streptococcal microbes, and the fungus Aspergillus fumigatus, the PHRI had to take special measures to safely shut down experiments and secure the facility. "When you have a situation like this," Perlin said, "it puts you in this heightened sense that at any moment you could have generalized system failures." In the end, said Perlin, the PHRI "came through this relatively unscathed," though not without some complications. Backup video surveillance systems didn't work properly, and security personnel were put on a heightened state of alert. Although backup power did come on, the "ultracold" freezers—some of them housing decades-old samples—didn't quite maintain the desired temperatures and had to be watched carefully. Panicked scientists also had to be cautioned not to connect nonessential freezers to the backup power for fear that they'd overload and bring down the entire system. But Perlin said that researchers were most concerned about keeping the animal facilities cool enough to prevent deaths due to overheating; no casualties were reported. According to Perlin, problems were generally minor due, in large part, to the outage's duration in New Jersey, where power was restored more quickly than in New York City. If the less than 12-hour outage had turned into 48 hours, he said, tens of thousands of dollars in reagents might have been lost.Other researchers found the unexpected experience much more pleasant. Having spent the afternoon in Manhattan, University of Toronto biologists Charlie Boone and Brenda Andrews were on their way back to the to the biannual yeast cell biology meeting at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) on Long Island when their train came to a standstill. A good 20 miles from their destination, they decided not to wait around. They found a local bike shop, bought two used bikes, and peddled back to the meeting, stopping along the way for beer and sushi. "Everyone was teasing [Brenda] that that was the punishment for having taken off during the meeting," said David Stewart, CSHL's executive director of meetings and courses.Back at the meeting, 300 participants discussed poster presentations into the night using flashlights and citronella torches that Stewart had retrieved from his garage. However, one major problem remained: no PowerPoint. "We thought we might have to do an oratory style, almost in some Greek tradition, with talks outside and a big giant blackboard," said Stewart. Instead, meeting organizers used a small generator to power a local gas station so they could fill the 45-gallon gasoline drums needed to run their large generator. In the process, they also pumped gas for several nervous motorists seeking fuel. Auditorium lights and PowerPoint were restored, though participants had to make due without air conditioning.Stewart thinks the blackout may have improved the meeting in the end. "Everyone was in an even better mood because there was a sense of camaraderie," he said, adding that the local bar sold much more beer than usual.

Scientists cope with historic blackout

Responses ranged from playfully innovative to panic over frozen samples and lab animals' health

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