Power Outage Leaves Newark Airport In The Dark
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) - PSE&G said a power outage impacted 20,000 customers - including three terminals at Newark Liberty International Airport - Monday afternoon.
A Port Authority of New York and New Jersey spokesman told 1010 WINS power went down at around 2:30 pm Monday afternoon. Power was restored about 90 minutes later.
The impacted areas included Newark, Elizabeth, Hillside, Union, Roselle, Linden, Kenilworth and Irvington. The outage had earlier forced the airport to run on backup systems.
PHOTO GALLERY: Power Outage Leaves Newark Airport In The Dark
During the outage, escalators at the airport were standing still and Airtrains were not working. Despite that, planes were still coming and going.
CBS 2's Sean Hennessey reported that passengers aboard the Airtrains had to walk on the tracks as they were led back to the airport.
People inside Newark Liberty were also unable to check-in, pick up their bags or even park their cars.
"They had a guy manually writing the ticket instead of you taking it out of the machine...that was like again like the 1950's or something," one man told 1010 WINS' Steve Sandberg.
In addition, the outage impacted airport security procedures, WCBS 880 reported. Security screeners resorted to pat-downs, since their controversial body scanners were down.
PSE&G says the outage occurred following an incident at the Bayway Switching Station in Elizabeth in the middle of planned upgrades.
While life at the airport started getting back to normal Monday evening, the timing came too late for vendors.
"I can't sell anything. I can't open my register -- just lost two hours worth of business," Jennifer Devia said.
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