Brooklyn Short-Circuit Behind Westchester Flickering Lights: Reports

WESTCHESTER COUNTY, NY — If you have Con Edison service, you may have noticed the ghosts in the machine over late last night.

According to media reports, the intermittent flickering of lights around midnight had its origins in Brooklyn.

Con Edison, which serves 10 million customers in New York City and Westchester, told The New York Times that high-voltage electric equipment short-circuited, causing an explosion accompanied by a large flash at a substation near the Manhattan Bridge just before midnight.

Con Edison customers from Hastings to Rye took to social media to compare notes about the sudden power interruption.

"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," Con Edison President Matthew Ketschke told the AP.

Ketschke told the wire service that the effects were noticeable across the utilities service area.

All and all, Westchester customers got off easy. Ketschke said about 10 people had to be rescued from stalled elevators across NYC.

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

The AP contributed to this report.