Philadelphia Daily News from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania • Page 3

Friday, July 15, 1977 Philadelphia Daily New 3 3 N.Y. ht off- the Animal Dim fiNog Daily News Wire Services NEW YORK Hundreds of looters, some in gangs of 20 and 30, raced with abandon through the streets yesterday, smashing and plundering stores in four boroughs, setting fires and exchanging fists and shots with police in the city's worst recorded outbreak of looting. More than 3,400 persons were arrested by last night, at least 132 policemen were injured and property damage and loss reached into the millions. Mayor Abraham Beame called it "a night of terror." MORE THAN 10,000 policemen four times the normal night force patrolled the streets last night to head off a recurrence of the looting, sniper fire and arson that had shaken Harlem, the South Bronx, Brooklyn's Bedford-Stuyvesant district and other neighborhoods the night before on a scale not seen since the riots of the youths were seen driving their car up on the sidewalk, right alongside a targeted store. Ropes or chains were tied between the front protective grating of the store and the car's back bumper.

The car then pulled away, the grating tumbled off, and the looters swept into the store. DARKNESS BROUGHT new trouble on the second night of the blackout before the power restoration was complete. Fires raged along a dingy strip of Broadway in Brooklyn. An explosion ripped one store. At least 22 firemen were hurt, none seriously.

Police Sgt. Arthur Burns, on his beat in Brooklyn, said that before this week the neighborhood was about half-abandoned. "Now it's completely abandoned," Burns said. "It's like Berlin, 1945." And as Officer Ryan put it, hundreds of shops "have been wiped out as if a bomb was dropped." Estimates of the losses to small businesses ranged into the billions of dollars. The marauders moved almost as if on signal at the 9:35 p.m.

power blackout and continued into the daylight hours even as New York City police were on a full summer mobilization. At the Ace Pontiac Co. in the South Bronx, SO new automobiles were driven away by thieves, right through the showroom door. "There is not a single television set left in Harlem," said Police Officer John Ryan. YOUTHS IN THE BRONX could be seen trucking off supermarket goods in shopping carts.

In Brooklyn, a storekeeper wielding a broomstick chased away a looter, age 6. In Bushwick, Brooklyn, firemen were spraying hoses on a building burning on Hancock Ave. when looters across the way tried to barge into a store. The firemen turned around and played the hose on the looters until they fled. New York, Groovy Grisly Chuck Stone on 12 As police continued to truck suspected looters in for booking, court authorities declared an emergency and over Legal Aid lawyers' protests ordered suspects held at Rikers Island.

And when Rikers could handle the mass no more, the Beame administration gained court permission to reopen the Men's House of Detention, known as The Tombs, which had been shut down by a federal judge in 1974. The Bronx appeared hardest hit by looters, particularly along the Grand Concourse. "They wiped out the guts of this neighborhood," growled Patrolman Ed Growler. But Yonkers and neighboring communities in Westchester County also reported outbreaks of looting, most of which happened within 15 minutes of the blackout. In the Sunset Park section of Brooklyn, Turns On; us -Amtrak Rolls i ir WASHINGTON (UPI) Amtrak rail service between New York and Washington, disrupted by the New York electrical blackout, resumed yesterday afternoon with trains operating on schedule with minor delays.

The first southbound train from New York left for Philadelphia at 4:32 p.m., and the first northbound train to reach New York from Washington arrived at 5 p.m. Policeman discourages a looting suspect in the Bushwick section of Brooklyn ot Hassles and Holidays By DAVID L. LANGFORD NEW YORK (UPI) If the President, the mayor and the governor were demanding investigations into the blackout that virtually closed America's largest city for about 24 hours, most New Yorkers yesterday were just happy to see their TV sets flicker to life, feel the cool of their air conditioners and listen to the rumble of the subway train. At one sweltering bar they broke into song like Londoners during the blitz as the Consolidated Edison Co. juice surged back into the power lines late yesterday.

"When the lights go on again, all over the world Con Ed at 10:39 p.m. reported electric service had been restored to virtually all 9 million residents of the city and its northern suburbs. GOV. HUGH Carey sent in 250 state troopers to help direct traffic- Politicians were spitting mad, demanding explanations of why the power company allowed an extended replay of the Great Blackout of 1965 that darkened the entire Northeast. Mayor Abraham Beame accused Con Ed of "gross negligence." "Sometimes I think we ought to condemn them to hang," snapped the mayor at one point.

Three bolts of lightning had shot out of a thunderstorm 50 miles north of the city Wednesday night, playing havoc with key lines, transformers and generators. "IT WAS AN ACT of God," said Joyce Tucker, a spokeswoman for the power company. Power Failure Hits Part of Camden Co. About 2,100 residents of Stratford and Laurel Springs in Camden County were without electricity from 7:05 to 9 a.m. today when a fuse blew in the main control at Atlantic City Electric's Stratford substation.

Camden Police said they were flooded with calls, the failure following by only -a- day and a half the massive New York' City blackout. Charles Luce, board chairman of Con Ed, was more specific. "A fail-safe mechanism, installed after the 1965 blackout, which is designed to reduce 50 percent of the system's load during power crises, was inadequate," he said. The Federal Power Commission, under orders from President Carter, began an investigation and said it would have an initial report within two weeks. "Since the Northeast blackout of Nov.

9, 1965," said FPC Chairman Richard Dunham, "many steps have been taken by the electric industry to avoid the serious recurrence of that very unfortunate episode. Recent events indicate those preventative measures have been insufficient in Con Ed's service area." DUNHAM SAID, however, some of those measures worked well and kept the latest failure from spreading to other power companies serving upstate New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia by severing lines feeding power to Con Ed. What did not work, he said, was a system that could have isolated the failure 50 miles north of the city rather than let it ripple into Manhattan and turn out the lights. Officials indicated two major questions would be investigated why the initial failure in the Con Ed system could not he isolated and whether the" lines? leading into New York from other utilities were adequate. New York, New York, It's a helluva town.

When the temperature's up And Con Edison's down. By NELS NELSON NEW YORK It was not an altogether unpleasant day in Receivership City despite the potential for mischief the morning after the night of the Big Lightning Bolt. Let us look at it first through the eyes of Michael Sharf, a cabbie who lives in Brooklyn. Sharf knew instantly that it was going to be an unusual day for a Thursday when he turned on his radio and learned that there was at least a two-hour wait at every golf course within a 25-mile radius. "I thought that was very funny," he said.

Owner-driver Sharf did not laugh, however, because he was soon on his way to New Jersey to fill up his gas tank, there being a serious shortage of New York gas pumps with the electricity to get up the gas. By mid-afternoon, Sharf must have racked up a fantastic day. For when the question was put to him, he moved his two-day growth of beard slowly from side to side and mumbled, "It's always slow in the summertime." THE DRIVING was a piece of cake. The streets of New York looked a little like the beach at Dunkirk the morning after the last rowboat left. Thank God, because there weren't any traffic signals working.

"You gotta really keep your eyes open," said Sharf, cruising confidently up 6th Ave. At 17th St. he nearly totaled a bare-chested man who had assigned himself to be a freelance traffic cop. At 29th St. another cabbie challenged him to a game of chicken and won.

Second to the dearth of traffic, one noticed the universal wrong-ness of public clocks. The clock at St. Paul's, at Broadway and Vesey said that it was 10 minutes to 11 when it was really much closer to 1. God, too, has converted to electricity. THE FINANCIAL district was riveted shut.

Slightly north of it, a jumble of junk reposed on a table outside of Tinker's Paradise, a hard ware store on Park Row. Behind it stood Murray Blank, a self-described master discounter, who was selling flashlights for S3 and up. In front of the table a female haggled over the price of batteries. "What kinda batteries do I need for my portable?" "What kinda radio you got?" "How do 1 know?" Murray was accused of being a ripoff artist. "They're the same price they were yesterday," said Murray, "and the same price they're gonna be tomorrow." A SMALL BUT sullen crowd began to gather.

A young man who said he was a radio reporter for the Associated Press thrust a microphone at Murray. "Why are you selling flashlights and batteries?" "Because," said Murray, rising to this splendid opener, "a power shortage has descended on us today and we are trying to alleviate it." The Village embraced the Continued oa Page 16.