BY LINCOLN ANDERSON | East Village residents reported hearing a loud bang from the E. 14th St. Con Ed plant on Saturday evening, seeing a flash of light in the sky and then experiencing a brief moment when electrical power dimmed.
The power plant is famous for its mysterious, booming nocturnal noises. During Superstorm Sandy, the substation was flooded, forcing the utility to shut off electrical power to Manhattan south of the 30s to protect the plant from sustaining further damage. Right before the shutdown, there was a huge boom and burst of light.
Speaking Monday, Sidney Alvarez, a Con Ed spokesperson, said what happened Saturday night was due to the weather’s effect on a breaker.
“Basically, in a nutshell, we had some equipment malfunction within our facility,” he said. “In a nutshell, a breaker popped — and the cause was freezing rain.”
The Fire Department responded, but there was no fire and no injuries, Alvarez reported.
The spokesperson didn’t disagree that East Villagers had likely heard a thunderous bang.
“I’m sure they would have heard something,” he said.
As for a flash in the sky, he said, there was no information on that in an internal report, but he didn’t deny it could have happened.
“But there was no fire, no spark,” he noted.
Where exactly within the plant the breaker broke was unclear. The E. 14th St. Con Ed complex includes a steam-generating operation and two electrical substations.
Saturday’s East Village breaker pop was not connected to a power outage in Chelsea on Friday, according to Con Ed. In that earlier incident, 730 customers on two blocks at W. 30th St. between Eighth and Ninth Aves. lost power starting at 7 a.m. Six hundred of them had power restored by 3 p.m., the rest by 5 p.m.
“They’re still investigating,” Alvarez said. “Basically, it was a feeder [cable] that went out in the Chelsea area. But it could have been weather related as well.”
