Blackout plunges Midtown into darkness on a sweltering night
A power failure knocked out electricity across a swath of Manhattan's West Side, darkening Times Square and Broadway marquees for hours.
A major power failure plunged a large swath of Manhattan's West Side into darkness on Saturday evening, knocking out electricity from Times Square to the Upper West Side for several hours and stranding subway riders, halting elevators and silencing Broadway on a warm summer night.
The blackout, which struck just before 7pm, affected an estimated 70,000 customers across roughly 30 city blocks at the height of a busy Saturday. The glittering marquees of Times Square went dark, Broadway shows were cancelled, and performers spilled onto the sidewalks, some entertaining crowds with impromptu street performances.
The timing was eerie: it fell on the anniversary of the catastrophic 1977 blackout that had plunged the entire city into darkness and chaos. This time, officials stressed, there was no widespread disorder, and emergency crews, police and volunteers helped direct traffic and guide people through unlit stations and buildings.
The utility Con Edison traced the outage to a failure in its transmission equipment and worked through the night to restore power, which returned by around midnight. Governor Cuomo, who rushed back to the city, demanded answers and an investigation into why the system had failed.
The episode was a reminder of the vulnerability of the aging infrastructure that keeps the nation's largest city running, and of how quickly the ordinary rhythms of New York can be upended when the lights go out.