Power goes out briefly in New York City after smoke seen coming from plant

A brief power outage caused lights to flicker and some people to get stuck in elevators across New York City Thursday night.

Con Edison, the electric, gas and steam provider of New York City and Westchester, said in a statement on X the outage was caused by "a fault on a high-tension transmission line" at one of their Brooklyn substations.

The outage occurred around 11:55 p.m. and Con Edison's crews are "investigating and making necessary repairs," the company said in the statement, which was posted at around 1:30 a.m.

A 'very brief' outage, but widespread

Con Edison president Matt Ketschke told CBS News Friday morning that "a piece of high-volt electrical equipment failed in the substation, basically it short-circuited. That caused a large flash."

"These are pretty infrequent events. We have multiple redundant sets of transformers so that the lights stay on if you have one of these," Ketschke told CBS News.

While Con Edison described the outage as "very brief," Ketschke said he suspects nearly every single home across New York City's five boroughs, as well as Long Island and Westchester County, were impacted.

People stuck in elevators for hours

While the outage was brief, it caused people across the city to be stuck in elevators. According to Ketschke, about 10 rescues had to be completed, and people at Grand Central and Penn Station were trapped in elevators for about three hours, according to CBS News.

According to the Long Island Rail Road, all elevators and escalators at Grand Central Station were out of service.

ABC 7 is reporting a security guard at a Wegman's grocery store in Brooklyn was stuck in an elevator for an hour before the New York City Fire Department was able to get the guard out.