Williamsburg, Brooklyn Is In The Top Three With Power Failures In NYC

New York, NY - The 19-hour power failure in 1999, was the last major neighborhood blackout in New York City. Con Ed’s annual reports for the five years before that blackout showed that the feeder cables in some NYC areas shut down more often than others in NYC.

The 57 electrical networks that Con Ed operates in the city supply a vast majority of the electricity used in Queens, Brooklyn, Manhattan and the Bronx. Staten Island and Westchester County, the other jurisdictions in Con Ed’s service area, do not have underground networks.

Reports filed with the Public Service Commission list the number of failures and hours of lost power for each cable. In 2005, the networks with the highest number of failures were Flushing, Queens (66 failures); Harlem (46); Williamsburg, Brooklyn (44); and Yorkville, Manhattan (40).