44 years after 1977 Blackout, New York City goes dark again
July 14, 2019
Around 7:00 PM Saturday evening New Yorkers in subways, homes, and elevators found themselves in total darkness as the power went out due to a Con Edison equipment failure. The blackout occurred exactly the same day as the 1977 blackout which wiped electricity off the whole city.
More than 73,000 Con Edison customers were affected by this event, and people that were affected are in the hundreds of thousands; one single customer could be an entire apartment building.
Thousands had to be evacuated from stalled and pitch dark subway cars through the rails. The event was not related to excessive load or peaks for the summer.
People remained calm throughout the duration, and no casualties were reported. There was some commotion initially as there was little knowledge of what had occurred, with a large part of the city coming to a standstill.
Power was finally restored around 10:00PM, but this situation represents that there need to be appropriate measures in place for a power outage of this magnitude.
