> How did people get into hotel rooms that have electronic locks that
> are opened with a card? Did the hotels have backup systems to operate
> during a blackout?
Actually the big problem with the hotels -- which had many of their customers sleeping in Time Square overnight -- was their elevators. High rise buildings all have back up generators that keep the emergency lights going, but not indefinately, so its SOP is to get everyone out of the building and keep them out. And needless to say, they weren't going to let you up there with candles.
The elevator angle actually explains a lot of things that might otherwise seem odd to people who live more horizontal cities. For one thing, it explains a lot of the people who didn't have cars and had to walk over the bridges. A lot of them did commute into the city by car, and would probably have taken many more people home with them carpool fashion if they could have. But the parking garages here all have elevators rather than spirals to save space, so all those cars were unavailable.
It also explains why so many New Yorkers said "My first thought was that it was terrorism." Out of context it makes it sound like we're a bunch of nervous nellies. But it makes more sense if you realize that the first experience of most people was being order to evacuate their offices, and having to walk down 25 floors out of their offices in the dark, which took like half an hour, while all the while they had absolutely no idea what was going on, because no one in an office has a radio with batteries. So of course during that long time on the stairs everyone couldn't help but free associate to those people filing out of the WTC, which everyone has thought about countless times. As soon as they got out on the street, they realized it was just a plain old fashioned blackout. But when they say "first thought" they usually mean the thought that occurred to them on the stairs.
Michael