NYC Power Outage Snarls Traffic, Trains

A brief power outage darkened a large swath of Manhattan and the Bronx on Wednesday, knocking out traffic lights, cutting subway service and forcing the evacuation of the Metropolitan Museum of Art on one of the hottest days of the year.

Power was restored in about an hour, but that did not stop the city from experiencing some of the chaos it endured during blackouts last year and in 2003.

Museum visitors were forced to sit on the outside steps in the sweltering heat. Traffic lights up and down the east side of Manhattan and the Bronx, including the area around Yankee Stadium, went dark.

There were reports of people trapped in elevators in Harlem, reports CBS 2 in New York.

The city was in the second day of temperatures well over 90 degrees.

"People came in off the street and we were selling flashlights, bottled water, candles, ice," said Barry Newman, a pharmacist at a Gristede's Pharmacy on the Upper East Side.

In the street, "people stood outside their apartment buildings, looking nervous. Everyone was saying, 'What's going on? What's going on?"'

Consolidated Edison said the blackout affected 136,700 customers in all, or more than 500,000 people.

The cause was under investigation, but utility spokesman Chris Olert said it was some sort of transmission disturbance. He didn't know whether the heat was a factor. "We won't even speculate on the cause yet," Olert said.

Nancy Marcus, a manager at a Manhattan optician's store, had ominous thoughts when the store went dark.

"It doesn't bode well for the rest of the summer, but I'm impressed they got it back on so fast," said Marcus, of Tarrytown, N.Y. "I wouldn't have been happy if I had been stuck on the subway."

Suspensions and delays were reported along the city's subways because of the power failure. The Metro-North commuter railroad, which serves the northern suburbs, had to reduce the number of trains it was using, resulting in delays and crowded trains as the evening rush hour approached, said spokeswoman Marjorie Anders.

Last summer, about 174,000 people were affected by a blackout in Queens. Residents sweltered without air conditioners on some of the hottest days of the year, and estimated business losses ran into the tens of millions of dollars as stores were forced to throw out perished goods.

The Public Service Commission issued a blistering report this year, and said the company needed to make "critical and substantial" improvements.

New York was also hard hit by a 2003 blackout that cut power to a large chunk of the Northeast.