July 15, 2019
Andrew Campbell
New York City suffered a massive blackout on July 13, exactly the same date as the infamous Great Blackout of 1977. In 1977, a major power outage hit the city at the beginning of a stifling heatwave with a 25-hour blackout which sent the city into havoc with widespread crime rampage of fire arsons, looting, and vandalism.
Utility company Con Edison said in a statement that the latest electrical shutdown began at 6:47 PM on July 13 and left more than 72,000 customers along 30 blocks from Times Square to the Upper West Side in the dark for 5 hours, but the power was restored before midnight.
The sudden loss of power disrupted service on several subway lines and shut down many of the city’s most popular entertainment business, including Carnegie Hall and 26 Broadway theaters, and even cut off Jennifer Lopez’s sold-out concert at Madison Square Garden. According to the Fire Department, firefighters and paramedics had to deal with about 900 emergency calls due to the blackout. Luckily no one was hurt or injured in the power failure, but according to Daniel A. Nigro, the Fire Commissioner, at least 400 people were stuck on elevators.
Con Edison’s President, Timothy Cawley, said that trouble was first detected on the evening of July 13 when circuit breakers went wrong. Quickly 5 networks were influenced, and Midtown West, Rockefeller Center and Times Square were among the power-lost areas. Later, a 6th network also out of order. He said it could take weeks to find out what “resulted in such a large outage at the West Side station.”
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio praised Con Edison for its speedy restoration of service and reiterated that “this was not a cyberattack and this was not an act of physical terrorism.” But, New York State Governor Andrew M. Cuomo called the blackout unacceptable that he would have state investigators conduct an independent review of the failure. Con Edison released a statement on July 14 saying that "our engineers and planners will carefully examine the data and equipment performance relating to this event, and will share our findings with regulators and the public."
Photo:Webshot.