Power Restored On Staten Island After Outage Leaves Thousands In The Dark
Updated 7/17 at 5 a.m. -- Con Edison says power has been restored to all customers.
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Just three days after the Manhattan blackout, thousands of Con Edison customers lost power on Staten Island on Tuesday evening.
Shortly before 7 p.m., Mayor Bill de Blasio tweeted that 2,000 customers were affected by the outage. Initially, de Blasio said service was expected to be restored by 7:30 p.m., but the power company later said the outage could last through the night.
Con Edison is reporting those remaining could be without power into overnight hours.
— Mayor Eric Adams (@NYCMayor) July 16, 2019
City agencies are in close contact with the utility to make sure restoration happens as quickly as possible.
Keep an eye on @NotifyNYC for further updates throughout the evening. https://t.co/3BBoZ2TwgI
"It went out around five o'clock but then came back on. Went off and on a couple more times and it went completely out," resident Frank O'Connor said.
Councilman Steven Matteo said a smoking circuit breaker caused the outage.
Midland Beach Area Power Outage Update:
— Steven Matteo (@StevenMatteo) July 16, 2019
Con Edison is on scene conducting repairs. The cause of the outage is due to a circuit breaker smoking.
The substation has a redundancy alternate substation which kicks in once the host substation goes down.
As of 7:54 p.m., Con Ed's website said about 2,100 customers were without power with an estimated restoration time of 2 a.m. Wednesday.
Workers appeared to focus their efforts on a nearby substation along South Railroad Avenue.
Some residents said their power didn't stay out for long, but with more extreme heat expected they wondered if they're prepared.
"Now that you mention it, maybe I should but to be honest I don't know what to do," Maria Gorkhoeer told CBS2's Valerie Castro.
Con Ed officials said one thing you can do to prepare for an outage is make sure you have flashlights on hand so you can avoid using candles.