New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio is directing unidentified city agencies to investigate what caused the widespread blackout in Manhattan Saturday night, according to his verified twitter account.
Power was restored to thousands of customers just after midnight.
Power has been restored to all customers, Con Edison CEO John McAvoy said, after a power outage in Manhattan left as many as 72,000 customers in the dark Saturday night.
This is not an infrastructure issue, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo said.
“We were lucky tonight,” Cuomo said.
The governor is urging drivers to stay off the road because many traffic lights are still out.
The thousands of customers without power in Manhattan Saturday included Carnegie Hall. Performers who were evacuated put on an impromptu show for passersby outside.
Con Ed says it has restored power to 62,000 customers on the West Side of Manhattan. About 10,000 customers remain without power, the company said.
Con Ed is working to restore power to those customers by midnight, it said.
The power outage affected about 72,000 customers at its height, the company’s CEO said. The outage area stretched from West 72nd Street on the north, West 30th Street on the south, the Hudson River on the west and 5th Avenue on the east, Con Ed said.
People started cheering Saturday night when power was restored in some buildings in the city.
Authorities have said they don’t have a good estimate as to how long it should take to restore power but John McAvoy, CEO of Con Edison, told reporters he doesn’t expect additional outages this evening.
At The Knickerbocker Hotel in Manhattan, firefighters were working to help guests out of stuck elevators.
There have been no injuries or fatalities during the power outage, said New York City Emergency Management Commissioner Deanne Criswell during a news conference Saturday night.
Criswell says there is a task force comprised of members of the NYPD and FDNY that are going building-to-building to make sure nobody is trapped in an elevator.
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo is calling up the national guard to help with traffic control in Manhattan, he told CNN’s Ana Cabrera.
State Police will also be assisting.
Cuomo said traffic lights are out in “very busy intersections, and it can get chaotic very quickly.”
New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo says he’s directed law enforcement, city and transportation officials to respond to the power outage in the city.
No injuries have occurred as a result of the outage, Cuomo said, but called the incident “unacceptable.”
The number of people without power in Manhattan tonight has increased, according to ConEdison.
About 61,591 customers are in the dark and are largely concentrated in Midtown Manhattan and the Upper West Side, the utility agency said.
The power failure on Saturday comes on the anniversary of an extensive blackout in 1977 that affected much of the city.
The previous blackout left some 9 million people without power for up to 25 hours starting on July 13.
In the Great Northeast Blackout of 1965, at least 25 million people in New York, New England and portions of Pennsylvania and New Jersey lost electricity for a day starting late in the afternoon of November 9.
Jennifer Lopez posted a video on Twitter apologizing to fans for the cancellation of Saturday show at Madison Square Garden.
Lopez said the show would be rescheduled.
Mayor Bill de Blasio is traveling back to New York due to the outage, his press secretary Freddie Goldstein said.
He decided to return from Iowa on Saturday where he’s been campaigning for president.
Singer Jennifer Lopez was performing at the Madison Square Garden on Saturday when the power went out.
Thousands of concertgoers were evacuated shortly after. Lopez only sang about 3 songs before the show was cancelled.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority said its “entire” system has been affected by the power outage.
Four subway stops, Columbus Circle, 47-50 Streets-Rockefeller Center, 34 Street-Hudson Yards, and 5th Avenue/53 Street remain without power and are closed to the public.
There is also limited service on major subway lines on both the east and west sides of Manhattan.
The streets of Manhattan were all music during the outage.
After dozens of performers with the Millennial Choirs & Orchestras were evacuated from Carneige Hall, and with many still wearing their gowns, they began singing for the crowd gathered outside.
Lake Escobosa spent nearly an hour directing traffic Saturday night near Lincoln Center on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.
The 23-year-old dancer from Brooklyn said her knowledge of traffic guidance came from her father, a former police officer who walked the beat in Coney Island.
She wasn’t the first to jump in and help. Another bystander was directing traffic on Columbus and 65th Street and she “decided to help him.”
The cast of Come From Away started singing the opening song to their show outside the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater when the show had to be cancelled due to the outage.
The outage is having a widespread effect on the New York subway system. Some people have been forced to walk through train cars to evacuate.
The trains have been stopped for more than 45 minutes and they can’t move back to stations.
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio says it appears the outage was caused by a mechanical problem. He told CNN’s Ana Cabrera that he didn’t think outside interests played a hand in the outage.
