ConEd Releases Report on Queens Blackout

WNYC News | Jul 12, 2010

New York, NY —

Con Edison has released its first report explaining the sequence of events that led to the July blackout in its Long Island City network.

The power company blames the blackout on an "unprecedented series of events" starting with a fire in a low voltage cable that caused two feeders to collapse on July 17th. A separate event then caused 3 more feeders to go down and when workers tried to repair them, a surge caused a total of 10 out of the network's 22 feeders to shut down, straining the system.

Con Ed chairman Kevin Burke says the company made the right call by trying to fix things without shutting down the entire network, and taking out mass transit in Astoria. The report was given to the state's public service commission, which is planning an independent audit of how Con Ed handled the blackouts in Queens and Westchester this past summer.

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