‘Nothing was working.’ Thousands lose power in Brooklyn
Con Edison said at 11:40 a.m. that it had restored service to affected customers in the Flatbush area.
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About 4,500 Con Edison customers lost power in central Brooklyn on Friday morning, Mayor Zohran Mamdani said. Power started coming back around 11:30 a.m., but some East Flatbush neighbors were still waiting after noon.
Con Edison said at 11:40 a.m. that it had restored service to affected customers in the Flatbush area. On East 38th Street in East Flatbush, News 12 saw crews working in a manhole just after 1 p.m. Arsene Macajoux, 50, said only parts of his home had power.
For neighbor Allie Best, the outage interrupted her workday.
“I checked the lights. I checked my phone. Nothing was working,” Best said. “I work from home, so I can’t really work.”
Mamdani said the city was helping affected schools with generators. New York City Emergency Management also reported problems with traffic lights and asked people to report malfunctioning signals to 311.
The Fire Department said it received a report at 8:20 a.m. of smoke coming from a grate. Firefighters put out a small transformer fire and notified Con Edison. It was unclear whether the fire was connected to the outage.
Mamdani attributed the outage to a lightning strike. Con Edison said lightning may have caused the outage and that it was still being investigated.
