Brooklyn Con Edison substation explosion temporarily disrupts power in NYC

BROOKLYN - Crews in Brooklyn worked overnight to restore power to parts of New York City following an explosion at a Con Edison substation in the Dumbo section.

Lights flickered, a subway line was disrupted and some elevators and escalators briefly stopped running after the momentary power outage that happened just before midnight Thursday and impacted most of the city, officials said.

"Essentially people saw a flicker in their lights for about a second a little bit before midnight and then voltage recovered or kind of went back to normal," Matthew Ketschke, the president of the power utility Con Edison.

Ketschke told reporters early Friday that a piece of equipment at the substation short-circuited. He said a protective system akin to a circuit breaker isolated the failed equipment, leading to a brief voltage dip.

The FDNY said there were reports of power issues across the city. At one point, over 1,000 customers had reported they lost power. Some witnesses described it as an explosion. They also saw black smoke coming from the station.

Ketschke said about 10 people had to be rescued from stalled elevators across the city. At the Wegmans in downtown Brooklyn, there were reports of a person stuck in the elevator after the power went out. 

The Wegmans in downtown Brooklyn. (FNTV)

Fire crews were seen entering the store with equipment to make the rescue. 

Fire crews making the rescue. (FNTV)

The outage also halted subway service between Grand Central Terminal and Wall Street, New York City Transit officials said in a statement on X.

The Long Island Rail Road officials said in a separate statement that all of Grand Central's elevators and escalators went out of service as well.

Though inconvenient for scattered transit and elevator passengers, the episode rates as barely a flicker in the history of New York City outages.

Widespread vandalism followed a July 13, 1977 blackout that was confined to the city and its immediate surrounding area.

Twenty-six years later, New Yorkers were among the 50 million people across the Northeast who lost power on Aug. 14, 2003.

Much of the city was dark for days when Superstorm Sandy ravaged the East Coast on Oct. 29, 2012.

The Associated Press wire services helped contribute to this report.