[AlexanderPalamayr]

Just the second near 90° day so far this year and we've got ourselves another blackout again. Albeit this one was brief in duration and limited in scope, however I have a feeling this won't be the last one this summer.

What's going to happen when we get two or three straight days of 90°+ weather later this summer? Gettin' ridiculous...

Con Ed is quickly displacing the MTA as the city's most inept agency (public or private).

Blackout causes chaos in NYC, but power is restored quickly

By ADAM GOLDMAN
Associated Press Writer

Jun 27, 6:31 PM EDT

NEW YORK (AP) -- A brief power outage darkened a large swath of Manhattan and the Bronx on Wednesday, knocking out traffic lights, snarling subway service and forcing the evacuation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on one of the hottest days of the year.

The blackout affected more than 500,000 people. Power was fully restored within about an hour, but that did not stop the city from experiencing some of the chaos it endured during blackouts last year and in 2003.

"All the traffic lights were out. It was chaos," said motorist Edward Ankudavich, who spent an hour traveling 20 blocks in the Bronx.

Visitors to the Met were forced to sit on the outside steps in the sweltering heat. Traffic lights up and down the east side of Manhattan and the Bronx were out, causing heavy gridlock. The lights went out around Yankee Stadium, and subway and train service was disrupted all around New York, which consumes more power on a hot summer day than the entire nation of Chile.

"People came in off the street and we were selling flashlights, bottled water, candles, ice," said Barry Newman, a pharmacist at a Gristede's Pharmacy on the Upper East Side.

He said "people stood outside their apartment buildings, looking nervous. Everyone was saying, 'What's going on? What's going on?'"

Consolidated Edison spokesman Chris Olert said the outage began at 3:42 p.m. and all power was restored by 4:30 p.m.

The cause was under investigation; lightning was a possibility, Olert said. Con Edison said the blackout affected 136,700 customers, or more than 500,000 people. A customer can consist of a single-family home or an entire apartment building, so one customer often translates into four people.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg lost power at his private home and at the official mayoral residence that he uses for ceremonial events, both of which are on the Upper East Side. He said the outage was a "minor inconvenience."

"I think it's fair to say that resetting your clock was prboably the worst thing that happened," he said.

Nancy Marcus, a manager at an optician's store on 77th Street and Lexington Avenue, had ominous thoughts when the store went dark.

"It doesn't bode well for the rest of the summer, but I'm impressed they got it back on so fast," said Marcus, of Tarrytown, N.Y. "I wouldn't have been happy if I had been stuck on the subway."

The power outage caused suspensions and delays along the city's subways, but the blackout mainly affected track signals and not the movement of trains or air conditioning in the cars, officials said.

The Metro-North commuter railroad, which serves the northern suburbs, had to reduce the number of trains it was using, resulting in delays and crowded trains, said spokeswoman Marjorie Anders. But she said the problems were fixed by the evening rush hour.

At the Met, museum staff started moving people out of galleries shortly after the blackout hit. About 2,500 people had to leave.

It was not clear if there were any injuries related to the blackout. But a man fainted in the Bronx courthouse in a stuck elevator, said Sgt. Glenn Kane, a court officer.

The power outage was reminiscent of previous summer blackouts that struck New York City.

Last summer, about 174,000 people were affected by a blackout in Queens.
Residents sweltered without air conditioners on some of the hottest days of the year, and estimated business losses ran into the tens of millions of dollars as stores were forced to throw out perished goods.

The Public Service Commission issued a blistering report this year, charging Con Ed's performance was "unacceptable and a gross disservice to its customers."

Con Edison acknowledged that its performance last summer "was not up to the standards our customers have come to expect." But the utility said it was learning from that experience and "implementing many infrastructure improvements and new emergency response procedures."

That includes a $1.4 billion investment to meet this year's summer power demand, including upgrades to substations and the distribution system.

"Our 14,000 employees have been hard at work preparing for this summer, and we continue to make substantial investments in our electric delivery system to provide New Yorkers with the high level of service reliability they deserve," CEO Kevin Burke said two weeks ago as Con Ed unveiled a $300 million substation complex in the Bronx.

© 2007 The Associated Press

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Some friends were uptown when the power went out -- without the subways they headed for the bus, which was the same idea that a few hundred other NYers had. Th bus was overpacked and the trip from 125th down to 59th took and hour and a half ...

I woulda walked.

[flowersnewacq]

Some friends were uptown when the power went out -- without the subways they headed for the bus, which was the same idea that a few hundred other NYers had. Th bus was overpacked and the trip from 125th down to 59th took and hour and a half ...

I woulda walked.

Walking 70 blocks would have taken a similar ammount of time.

I guess it just came down to if the bus was adequately AC'd or not and if the people you were crowded in with were, for the most part, "sanitary"....

A 3 mile walk in 90+ degree weather is no fun at all...