Power failure hits New York on anniversary of 1977 outage

Bloomberg

A chunk of New York City plunged into darkness for hours as 72,000 customers on Manhattan’s West Side lost power on the anniversary of the historic 1977 blackout. Energy supply has since been fully restored, Governor Andrew Cuomo said.
The outage affected an area stretching from Fifth Ave to the Hudson River, and from West 42nd through 71st streets, an area that includes Times Square and Central Park. Subway services to as far away as Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx were disrupted as the power failure took a toll on the “entire system.”
“While this situation was luckily contained, the fact that it happened at all is unacceptable,” Cuomo said in a briefing before he headed to a substation that caused the outage.
He’s directed “a full and thorough investigation into the cause of the blackout and we will hold all parties accountable in ensuring this does not happen again,” he added.
When things are at their worst, New Yorkers are at their best, and they were at their best.
A substation explosion and fire that created a surge was the cause of the outage, in turn affecting four other substations, Cuomo said earlier, citing an update he received from Consolidated Edison Inc or ConEd, the city’s utility.
He said no passengers were stranded on trains and there have been no reports of injuries so far.
Singer Jennifer Lopez cancelled her concert at Madison Square Garden and said people were evacuated from the venue. The outage also caused all but three Broadway theaters to close, the New York Police Department’s Times Square Command said.