In the hour before the August 2003 Northeast Power Blackout, frontline control room operators battled an electronic storm of confusion and situational blindness, never seeing the cascading grid failure bearing down on them. Michael Legatt, a graduate student and amateur ham radio operator in White Plains, N.Y., spent the aftermath of the blackout working with emergency responders who grappled with communications breakdowns across the New York area. It changed his life plan. Legatt made it his mission "to prevent this kind of thing from happening again," he said. Go to story #1