When a rally faced at a 230 thousand volt sub-station at the big Fort Randall Dan power plant in South Dakota, everything went dead over a six state area for periods ranging from thirty minutes to two hours. Local power plants such as this one at Sioux City were unable to handle the vastly increased load...and while maintenance men fought to restore service... everything powered by electricity came to standstill. Street lights went out...traffic jams developed ... extra police were despatched to major intersections...schools closed their doors... radio and television stations went off the air...heat and light went out and even the state legislature found itself more in the dark than usual. At Ames, Iowa, as elsewhere...the only power available for getting up and down stairs was foot power...and the afternoon coffee breaks were held in semi darkness. Hospitals in many communities used emergency power to continue operations in progress. It was like something out of science fiction.

At Omaha, Nebraska, hundreds of shoppers in downtown stores were bewildered when the power loss stopped escalators...put the electric out of business...and left only natural out door light to illuminate the bargains In Chicago...a different sort of emergency in the sub-zero cold. a five alarm fire with flames visible for miles that destroyed two abandoned grain elevators on the southwest side. No one was injured, but firemen were nearly frozen as they struggled to keep the towering flames from spreading to 36 adjacent siloes loaded with grain. Jim Hurlbut, NBC News, reporting.