More Than 400 Elevators Got Stuck During Blackout, FDNY Says

More than 400 elevators got stuck when a massive blackout wiped out power in parts of Manhattan on Saturday, the city’s fire commissioner said.

The blackout left 73,000 customers without electricity for several hours on Saturday evening, Con Edison said.

At a press conference on Sunday, FDNY Commissioner Daniel Nigro said more than 400 elevators got stuck during the outage.

Some of the rescue efforts ended up being “quite difficult,” but “everyone was removed safely,” Nigro said. It wasn’t immediately clear exactly how many people got stuck.

“I think our members reacted quite quickly — they reacted quite well — and they took care of people in this area of the city,” he said. “Thankfully it was all over by midnight.”

Mayor Bill de Blasio, who joined Nigro at the press conference, praised first responders and New Yorkers for their responses to the power outage.

“New Yorkers are absolutely the strongest, the toughest, the most resilient of any people anywhere,” he said. “And when adversity shows up, New Yorkers deal with it in amazing ways.”

“Our first responders did an absolutely exemplary job,” he added.

No blackout-related injuries were reported as of Sunday afternoon, de Blasio noted.

The outage was not caused by a "cyber attack" or an "act of physical terrorism," he said. 

In a statement Sunday morning, Con Edison said it “sincerely regrets the power disruption to our customers on the west side of Manhattan last night,” adding that it would be “conducting a diligent and vigorous investigation to determine the root cause of the incident.”

Photo Credit: Johannes Eisele/AFP/Getty Images

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