Power Failure Blacks Out Section of Manhattan

An electrical power outage hit the heart of Manhattan’s East Side early Monday afternoon, briefly blacking out hundreds of officer towers, department stores, banks, residential buildings and subway stations during New York’s worst heat wave in decades.

The power failure affected about 10,000 customers--including entire offices and skyscrapers as well as individual consumers--in a section stretching from 52nd Street south to 44th Street and from the East River to 5th Avenue, according to Consolidated Edison.

The breakdown, which occurred just before 2 p.m., was caused by a faulty electrical line at a substation where workers had been attempting to restore some equipment to service, Con Ed spokesman Larry Kleinman said.

The outage knocked out power at the soaring Pan Am Building, Saks Fifth Avenue’s elegant department store and the bustling Grand Central terminal, among other places.

Many New Yorkers in the stricken East Side district had feared at the outset of the power failure a repeat of the epic blackouts in 1965 and 1977 that crippled virtually the entire city and lasted for hours. The 1977 incident was accompanied by widespread looting and vandalism.

“Barring unforeseen circumstances, as we always like to say, we won’t have a repeat of those years,” Con Ed spokesman Kleinman said. “We certainly have sufficient capacity,” despite the intense heat that has gripped New York for more than a week.

New Yorkers seemed to take Monday’s brief calamity in stride.

At one 3rd Avenue office tower, where two people had been trapped for more than 20 minutes in elevators, security director Frank Foy said: “When we got them out, they were smiling and said, ‘Thanks a lot,’ and left. I think they appreciated getting the rest.”

Civilians pitched in to direct traffic at some intersections without traffic lights.