The scary potential of an Eastwood power failure was quickly recognized on the night of Sunday, February 25. In one late-night newscast, for example, TV viewers were told that two buildings on Roosevelt Island were without power, and that the residents were being evacuated.

That sketchy report was no more accurate than the recent blizzard forecast, but it did underscore the seriousness of the situation. Residents who depend on life support systems are scattered throughout Eastwood's 1,003 apartments, and it was the vulnerability of these tenants, in particular, that triggered the massive gathering of emergency workers and their equipment - some two dozen vehicles for the first several hours - that dominated much of Main Street well into the next day.

The problem originated at about 8:35 p.m. in a large electrical control panel in the basement of Eastwood at 540 Main Street, which has 153 duplex apartments. Sixty of the apartments in 540 lost power, all at the front of the building. In addition, all of Eastwood lost water pressure because the apartment complex's water pumps are powered through the 540 panel.

Doryne Isley, General Manager of Roosevelt Island Housing Management, said two apartments with residents who depend on medical equipment were affected by the blackout. All tenants with so-called "special needs" are identified in Eastwood's emergency action plan, she said, and fire-department personnel were sent to those apartments as soon as they arrived.

Life-support systems, such as breathing machines, are designed to keep operating with backup batteries. But Isley said some of the batteries could be depleted in as little as six hours, so it's essential to restore electricity quickly. Emergency workers ran lines from outlets in an area to the rear of the elevators to supply power to the apartments with life-support machines.

Public Safety Director Jim Fry, whose officers stayed on duty all night, said the same approach was used to help residents in other apartments. Coler-Goldwater Hospital was notified to be ready to take people in if it became necessary, Fry said, but the blackout "didn't elevate to that level of a problem."

Which is not to say that Islanders escaped unscathed. The Westview building superintendent, Woodrow "Woody" Morgan, hurrying over to Eastwood to help out, "fell backward and flipped" on the stairway leading to the basement control panel and suffered a concussion, Isley said. He was taken off to a hospital but has recovered and was back on the job this Monday.

Fry said the loss of Morgan's local expertise complicated Consolidated Edison's detective work that night. And Isley said the power company, as of early this week, had yet to say what caused the trouble. "There was never a fire, but some fuses did char," she said. "We're still having people come in to check equipment and assess what possibly had gone wrong."

Power to the pumps was restored at about 2:00 a.m., but it wasn't until about noon on Monday (February 26) that the apartments had electricity. Officers from the Police Department's Emergency Service Unit (ESU) stayed on duty all night, until Eastwood was able to restore permanent power.

Nearly two weeks after the event, Isley has a big thank-you list, plus a message to residents on the value of preparedness.

"The Fire Department, the ESU, and the Office of Emergency Management were superb. They gave us every ounce of assistance that we could possibly want," she said. The Red Cross was on standby, ready to supply water to Eastwood after 3:00 a.m. And, she added, "We could not have gotten through that night without Public Safety." The Island's officers were "extremely helpful" in guiding emergency workers through the building, dealing with returning residents and doing other jobs, she said.

As for the residents, "There isn't enough I can say about them, they took this extremely well, given the circumstances," Isley said.

"Truly, I did think our Y2K preparedness for the possibility of a catastrophe paid off," she said, because the housing company was ready with equipment and an emergency plan. Eastwood used its own backup generators, for example, to light public areas on the lower levels of the building.

The only delay, she said, came in the logistics of placing a generator truck close to the building. "Residents need to know, in the event that a building of this size goes down, ConEd and the Police Department have generators capable of supplying it with electricity and were on standby if needed."

It was a night where a lot of things could have gone wrong, but didn't. As Isley said, "You can say a lot of things about Roosevelt Island, but the one thing Roosevelt Island does best is to come together in an emergency."