A major power outage in New York City caused chaos late Thursday night, with a "flicker in their lights for about a second" reported by city residents. The outage, which was caused by a short-circuit at a Brooklyn substation, resulted in a momentary blackout affecting most of the city and stopping subway services between Grand Central Terminal and Wall Street. Matthew Ketschke, president of the power utility Con Edison, advised that the outage also led to elevators and escalators stalling, with approximately 10 people requiring rescuing across the city.

Looks like something small exploded at the ConEd plant in Brooklyn, sending a small fireball and smoke into the air, and causing a momentary NYC power outage. My video pic.twitter.com/Y66GfnwLc7

— Sean Scott (@sts423) December 15, 2023

The Long Island Rail Road also experienced issues, with all of Grand Central’s elevators and escalators going out of service. While the outage was brief, it caused significant disruptions, highlighting the vulnerability of a major metropolitan area such as New York City to infrastructure issues. Both city officials and Con Edison are working to address the cause of the outage and ensure that measures are in place to prevent similar incidents in the future.