Cause Of Massive Manhattan Blackout Under Investigation
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NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) — Cheers erupted on the street when West Side residents finally started to get power back late Saturday night.
More than 73,000 Con Edison customers, from Fifth Avenue to the Hudson River and the West 30s to 72nd Street, were plunged into darkness around 6:47 p.m. as a result of an electrical disturbance, CBS2’s Ali Bauman reports.
“I saw on the corner of 64th and West End Avenue that one of the manhole covers, there was some black smoke coming out of it, then the power went completely out and I ended up calling 911,” one man said.
“When we have an incident like this, we focus first on isolation of the failed equipment or the most likely failed equipment and then restoration of the customers, and then when customers are restored is when we really do the full root cause investigation to identify what may have caused it,” Con Ed CEO John McAvoy said.
Emergency vehicles were navigating through chaotic streets without traffic lights. FDNY had to rescue several people trapped in high-rise elevators.
The New York City skyline went dark during a massive blackout on July 13, 2019. (Credit: CBS2)
As the sun set, the danger became more apparent.
“You just can’t have a power outage of this magnitude in this city. It is too dangerous. The potential for public safety risk and chaos is too high. We just can’t have a system that does this,” Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.
Some delis and restaurants were trying to serve customers with flashlights, and Hell’s Kitchen residents passed the time on their stoops, too hot to be in their apartments without air conditioning. All the while, Con Ed was working to get the power back on one neighborhood at a time.
Power was fully restored throughout Manhattan before midnight. Now, Con Ed and city officials are trying to figure out how this happened and how to prevent a night like this from happening again.
“Is it possible that a transformer quote unquote ‘blew’? Yes. Or a piece of electrical equipment blew and made a noise? That’s possible. But when we go back now and do an analysis of the system and what failed, we’ll have a better answer,” Cuomo said.
Con Ed says customers should expect normal service Sunday, and at this time, there are no reports of any fatalities or significant injuries as a result of the outage.
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July 14, 2019 at 04:05PM
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