Over 40,000 residents of Manhattan have temporarily experienced power interruption when a power outage has struck the upper portion of Manhattan on Friday morning which was followed by a string of outages in several neighborhoods as stated by the Con Edison, the utility company distributing power in New York City.
The massive power interruption did not only shut down the electrical supply of the area but also cellphone services, and after a while, a large chunk of Queens lost its power supply.
At some time on that day, what people could only see was pitch black as far as perceived by the eye along Broadway north of 73rd Street on both Manhattan's east and west side.
About 20 minutes later, the power came back for some portions of the Upper West Side, however, several spotty power outages have been reported thereafter.
In a statement, Con Ed said they were currently investigating a problem about their transmission system that gave rise for three networks in Manhattan to lose their supply of electricity at around 5:13 in the morning. And added that the electric supply on the Upper West Side, Harlem and Upper East Side networks have been restored, CNBC reported.
About 90 minutes later, though, power interruption was experienced in the Middle Village section of Queens, and the LIRR reportedly claimed that they have been experienced signal-related problems.
People have been posting videos and images of the power outages on social media, but, reportedly in some areas, power has been restored about 20 minutes after the shutdown.
Somewhere in the city, over 32,000 consumers were said to have no electric supply in the Queens' borough, and over 12,000 customers have experienced the same scenario in the Staten Island and Bronx boroughs. The power outages likely rooted in the aftereffects of the Tropical Storm Isaias.
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It was shown on the Con Ed's outage map that around 140,000 customers of Manhattan experienced power interruption as of 6 a.m. but was reduced to around 42,000 by 6:30 a.m. About 1.3 million individuals along the East Coast are still not receiving supplies of electricity which were likely the remains of the damage from Tropical Storm Isaias the struck last Tuesday.
But the same map revealed that as of 7:30 a.m. about 27,000 consumers out in Queens were possibly associated in part to the new power outage.
With the dense population and infrastructures of New York City relying on electricity, the city's transportation has been affected. The Metropolitan Transit Authority of the city that is responsible for the flow of the subway system, said that four of its lines were hampered due to the power interruption and alerted riders for some possible delays.
According to USA Today, blackouts more likely happen during months of summer because of high humidity, temperature, and increased consumption of electricity that could give rise to overheating of cables.
All power outages experienced in the city caused by the Isaias is expected to be restored by 11 pm on Sunday.
Con Edison tweeted, saying that the utility's crews were currently working 24/7 to restore the power supply of all the consumers affected by the storm while using a #StormIsaias.
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