Buildings in Harlem sit dark during a power outage early, Friday, Aug. 7, 2020, in New York.
Candice Choi | AP
A massive power outage struck Friday morning in the upper part of Manhattan, knocking out not only lights but also cellphone service, and a short time later power went out in a large chunk of Queens as well.
At one point it was pitch black as far as the eye could see along Broadway north of 73rd Street on both the east and west sides of Manhattan.
Power came back on after around 20 minutes for parts of the Upper West Side, though some spotty outage reports lingered thereafter.
“We are investigating a problem on our transmission system that caused three networks in Manhattan to lose their electric supply at about 5:13 this morning. The supply has been restored to those networks on the Upper West Side, Harlem and the Upper East Side,” Con Ed said in a statement.
About 90 minutes later, though, power went out in the Middle Village section of Queens, and the LIRR said it was experiencing signal-related delays.
Con Ed’s outage map showed about 140,000 customers without power in Manhattan as of 6 a.m., but that was down to 42,000 by 6:30 a.m. — likely remnants of the damage from Tropical Storm Isaias last Tuesday.
But the same map then showed about 27,000 customers out in Queens as of 7:30 a.m., potentially linked in part to the new outage.
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