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NEW YORK (AP) – A power outage paralyzed the Manhattan tourist center as the Saturday night shows were scheduled for Saturday night, sending spectators back to the streets, knocking out giant electronic screens and bringing subway lines close stop.
New York City Fire Services announced that a transformer fire at West 64th Street and West End Avenue had affected hundreds of thousands of customers over a distance of 30 blocks ranging from Times Square at about 72nd Street and Broadway.
The fire is declared just before 19 hours. Saturday, the authorities said.
Con Edison officials restored electricity to customers and businesses, primarily in the Upper West Side of Manhattan, just before midnight.
At sunset, the temperature was low in the 80s, but not as much as Manhattan can do in July, undermining the city's electricity grid.
The current fell early Saturday night in much of the Rockefeller Center, reaching the Upper West Side and turning off the traffic lights.
The outage occurred on the anniversary of the 1977 New York City blackout, which left most of the city without electricity.
Governor Andrew Cuomo said in a statement that although no injuries have been reported, "the fact that this has happened is unacceptable". He said that the state's civil service department will conduct an investigation.
Most of Broadway's musicals and plays canceled their Saturday night shows, including "Hadestown", which won last month's Tony Award for Best Musical. Several cast members of the comedy "Come From Away" staged an impromptu show on the street in front of the theater for a disappointed audience.
Emily Totero, 30, had planned to bring guests from outside to see the "Moulin Rouge". But once they arrived in the theater district, they saw the power go out.
"We could see all the lights in the theater on the other side of the street, all the capitals had gone out, which is what we noticed first," she said. .
The blackout also touched Madison Square Garden, where Jennifer Lopez performed Saturday night. The participants stated that the concert was darkened around 9:30 pm. in the middle of Lopez's fourth song of the night. The arena was then evacuated. And at Penn Station, officials used emergency generators to keep the lights on.
When the lights went out early Saturday night, thousands of people came out of the dark buildings of Manhattan, invading Broadway close to end-to-end traffic.
The neighborhood residents, commonly known as Hell's Kitchen, began directing the traffic themselves in the light of traffic lights and the road signs darkened.
Ginger Tidwell, a dance teacher and resident of the Upper West Side, was about to order at a West Side restaurant on Broadway and west of 69th Street shortly before 7 pm.
"When the lights started to twinkle and then went out, we got up and left, going up Broadway with all the traffic lights and dark shops," she said.
But when they arrived at West 72nd Street, they found another restaurant open and equipped with electricity.
"It was still nice and everyone went out on the street because he had lost electricity and air conditioning, there were a lot of people," she said. "Everybody was hanging out on the street for a good night, all you could hear was fire trucks coming and going on Broadway, all Broadway was without a fire."
Karen Janowsky, a saleswoman who was selling ponchos at a street fair on Sixth Avenue at Rockefeller Center, was surprised by the blackout as she was getting ready for the day and took some of the goods to his car parked in a garage located two blocks west of 49th Street. This prevented her from driving her car to get the tables, chairs and luggage racks – everything had disappeared before she could rush to pick them up.
"I was alone and I could not do everything, so they stole my stuff," she said, adding that she absolutely did not know who the people were who had taken her belongings. "It was chaos, with fire trucks and people walking the streets, and when the lights went out I was one minute away from my car in the garage."
She lost about $ 400 worth of equipment to set up her property.
"It's been three hours since I got stuck," Janowsky said. "I have another fair tomorrow, and I do not know what I'm going to do."
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Associated Press reporters Michael Sisak and Leezel Tanglao contributed to this report.
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This story has been corrected to show that the impromptu performance was done by members of the cast of "Come From Away" and not by "Hadestown".
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