Officials in New York City still don’t know what caused the massive, hours-long blackout Saturday evening.
For more than five hours, Manhattan’s West Side was completely in the dark. Images of the incident show famous landmark Radio City Music Hall in complete darkness and parts of Times Square without power. Overhead images of the city look like the beginning of a monster movie.
Con Edison, the power company that services the area, doesn’t know what caused the blackout, and said Sunday that it may take weeks to determine the cause.
“Over the next several days and weeks, 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,” the company said in a statement. The company also vowed to conduct a “diligent and vigorous investigation to determine the root cause of the incident.”
Alfonso Quiroz, a Con Ed spokesman, said the blackout was due to a “disruption on the transmission side” of the power grid, according to The New York Post.
Con Ed president Timothy Cawley said that even though it has been hot in New York City, “in terms of the peak demands that Manhattan exhibits on those hottest weekdays, the demand was very low.”
Mike Clendenin, Con Ed’s chief spokesman, warned that more blackouts could occur during the upcoming heat wave, the Post reported.
“We expect that there could be service outages — those things happen during heat waves,” Clendenin said on PIX 11. He said the company was “prepared” for such incidents.
“We know it’s going to be intense,” he said. “This heat wave coming up is something else and we’ve got to get ready for it.”
While initial theories about the cause of the blackout considered a manhole fire, Quiroz said there’s “no evidence of a fire at this point.”
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio assured residents the blackout was not caused by terrorists.
“This was not a cyber attack and this was not an act of physical terrorism,” he said.
Gov. Andrew Cuomo said the blackout was “unacceptable” and that he would hold “all parties accountable.” The governor also told CBS that he spoke with Con Ed and was trying to figure out why the company didn’t have a backup system for customers. In several TV and radio interviews, Cuomo threatened Con Ed by suggesting the company’s state-issued operating license could be revoked.
“Con Ed does not have a franchise granted by God — you can look through the Bible,” Cuomo said on WCBS radio, according to the Post.
“We’re getting to the point where Con Ed is going to have to deliver or we’re going to have to find a different delivery mechanism,” he continued, adding that Con Ed could “be replaced.”
CBS New York reported the power outage affected more than 72,000 Con Edison customers, “from Fifth Avenue to the Hudson River and the West 30s to 72nd Street.” CNBC reported more than 400 elevators stopped working, several subway stations were forced to close, and Broadway shows were cancelled.
At a press conference, New York Police Department Commissioner James O’Neill said 2,800 or so people needed to be rescued from stranded subway trains.
The New York Post also reported that no injuries were reported as a result of the power outage, which started just before 7 p.m. and ended shortly before midnight.