It was 20 years ago on Sunday that the Northeast Blackout shut the power off on more than 50 million people in the eastern portion of the U.S. and part of Canada.

Among the hardest hit was the Detroit metro area, and my friend, Julie DePrekel, and I were smack dab in the middle of the chaos — at least temporarily.

We had a full weekend planned. We had tickets to see Kiss, Aerosmith, Ted Nugent, and Saliva at Comerica Park on Aug. 15 and tickets to the NASCAR race in Brooklyn for the balance of the weekend.

We headed south hours before the blackout hit and were nearing Detroit when radio stations began to break the news. Traffic lights were out, businesses were forced to close, and cars were beginning to line the sides of roads out of fuel because gas pumps were not working. We were unable to check into our hotel in Madison Heights because of the outage and there was an exodus of people headed north in an attempt to escape the heat that day.

Once it was announced the concert for the next day was canceled, we turned around and headed north, where there was lodging and gas — hopefully.

It was a tad under two years after the terrorist attack on New York, and people were a little on edge, wondering if the power outage was an intentional act.

The problem was hotels in the Flint, Saginaw, and Bay City areas were filling fast from the migration of people from the Detroit area fleeing. I was beginning to wonder if I could find a room, as each call I made was met with a “we are completely booked” response.

Finally, I was able to secure a room at a Knights Inn in Saginaw and, although the room was a dump, I was able to let out a sigh of relief that we had found refuge.

It wasn’t until I was able to turn on the television in Saginaw that I learned the scope of the blackout and the fallout. Our adventure that day was a little more than a blip for us, but, for the people who lived for two days without power, it was much more than an inconvenience.

Still, it makes a nice story to share today.

Brooklyn was unaffected by the power outage, so the race was a go, and we left Saginaw and went to the track to camp and enjoy the race.

The concert was rescheduled for about a month later, and Julie and I once again made the trek to the Motor City to cash in on our tickets.

The power outage is measured as the second worst ever in the U.S., behind only the Great Northeast Blackout of 1965.

After an investigation, it was determined that the 2003 blackout’s apparent cause was a software bug in the alarm system at the control room of FirstEnergy, an Akron, Ohio-based company, which rendered operators unaware of the need to redistribute load after overloaded transmission lines dropped into foliage. What should have been a manageable local blackout cascaded into the collapse of much of the northeast regional electricity distribution system.

A lot has changed in the world since 2003 and Americans are more dependent on devices and technology than ever before. I can’t help but wonder about the fallout if a blackout of the same size happened today.

Let’s hope we don’t find out.

Steve Schulwitz can be reached at 989-358-5689 at sschulwitz@thealpenanews.com. Follow him on Twitter @ss_alpenanews.com.