NEW YORK — Electric utility Con Edison was working Friday to figure out what caused a high-voltage equipment failure that unleashed an otherworldly flash of bright blue light in the night sky over New York City.
The event Thursday caused power outages, briefly grounded flights at LaGuardia Airport and filled social media feeds with eerie photos, questions and jokes, to the point that the New York Police Department tweeted there was “no evidence of extraterrestrial activity.”
And a jocular Gov. Andrew Cuomo pulled out a space-alien mask at a news conference Friday, while assuring the public that the incident “was what it was represented to be: an electrical malfunction.”
It involved 20-foot-high equipment with cables carrying 138,000 volts, Con Ed officials said Friday. By comparison, a standard U.S. household gets 120-volt service.
“It was like a lightning bolt, essentially,” spokesman Bob McGee said.
Substations transform electricity that comes in from power plants at high voltage down to lower voltage levels, and send it on for use.
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