ConEd explosion in Manhattan

Con Ed: Lower Manhattan Outage Could Last a Week

A top official from Consolidated Edison Inc. said it could take up to a week to restore power to the bulk of Manhattan neighborhoods plunged into darkness Monday evening.

WSJ,

30 October, 2012

John Miksad, senior vice president of electric operations, said he couldn’t give a clear timetable and still needed to investigate the scope of damage left by the explosion in substation at East 14th Street and F.D.R Drive. That explosion knocked out power to about a quarter-million customers below 39th Street in Manhattan.

Con Ed was expecting major flooding, he said, but the utility was caught off guard by a tidal surge that topped pre-storm estimates. “Nobody was forecasting that,” he said. “We are in a bit of uncharted territory.”

Miksad said the utility is still trying to figure out the cause of the substation explosion, which might have been due to flying debris or flooding.

Con Ed expects to restore power to Lower Manhattan neighborhoods below the Brooklyn Bridge — areas shutdown preemptively Monday evening and not connected to the substation explosion — in three to four days.