No lights, big city: Blackout darkens parts of Manhattan

NEW YORK — A power outage crippled the touristfilled heart of Manhattan just as Saturday night Broadway shows were set to go on, sending theatergoers spilling into siren-filled streets, knocking out Times Square’s towering electronic screens and bringing subway lines to a near halt.

Electricity was restored to customers and businesses in midtown Manhattan and the Upper West Side by about midnight.

Con Edison CEO John McAvoy said a problem at a substation caused the power failure at 6:47 p.m., affecting 73,000 customers for more than three hours along a 30-block stretch from Times Square to 72nd Street and Broadway, and spreading to Rockefeller Center.

McAvoy said the exact cause of the blackout would not be known until an investigation is completed.

Power went out early Saturday evening at much of Rockefeller Center, reaching the Upper West Side and knocking out traffic lights.

A big cheer went up among Upper West Side residents when power flickered back on at about 10:30 p.m. For hours before that, doormen stood with flashlights in the darkened entrances of upscale apartment buildings along Central Park West, directing residents to walk up flights of stairs to their apartments, with all elevators out.

The outage came on the anniversary of the 1977 New York City outage that left most of the city without power.

Gov. Andrew Cuomo said in a statement that although no injuries were reported “the fact that it happened at all is unacceptable.” He said the state Department of Public Service will investigate

Most Broadway musicals and plays canceled their Saturday evening shows, including “Hadestown,” which last month won the Tony Award for best musical. Several cast members from the musical “Come From Away” held an impromptu performance in the street outside the theater.

The outage also hit Madison Square Garden, where Jennifer Lopez was performing. Attendees said the concert went dark about 9:30 p.m. in the middle of Lopez’s fourth song. The arena was later evacuated. And at Penn Station, officials were using backup generators to keep the lights on.

Both Carnegie Hall and the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts were evacuated.

When the lights went out early Saturday evening, thousands of people streamed out of darkened Manhattan buildings, crowding Broadway next to bumper-to-bumper traffic amid emergency vehicle sirens and honking car horns.

People in the neighborhood commonly known as Hell’s Kitchen began directing traffic themselves as stoplights went dark.

Underground, the entire subway system was affected. Maxwell Young, a spokesman for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, said four Manhattan stations were closed to the public. But he said train operators were able to manually change the signals and bring at least one car into stations so passengers could get off.

Karen Janowsky, a vendor selling ponchos at a street fair in Rockefeller Center, got caught in the blackout just as she was wrapping up for the day and taking some of the goods to her car parked in a garage two blocks away. That kept her from driving her car to get the tables, chairs and racks — all gone before she could rush back to get them

“I was alone and I couldn’t get to everything, so they stole my stuff,” she said.

She lost about $400 worth of setup equipment for her goods.