More than 60,000 people were affected by a massive power outage in New York City Saturday evening, according to U.S. media reports.

Midtown Manhattan and the Upper West Side were affected.

“We are responding to extensive outages on the Westside of Manhattan. We will share more information as it comes in. Thank you,” a spokesman for energy supplied Con Edison tweeted.

Elevators were stuck and traffic lights were out while some subway stations were closed, local media reported.

Rockefeller Center was also affected, with cinema-goers suddenly plunged into total darkness.

Several Broadway shows were cancelled at short notice. Some artists gave impromptu performances on the pavement outside theatres.

A concert at Carnegie Hall resumed in front of the building once the audience had reassembled outside.

While many stores closed early, lots of bars and restaurants stayed open. Some of the electronic billboards on Times Square went dark.

There were no reports of people injured and no reported arrests.

New York Mayor Bill de Blasio said the power outage appeared to be the result of a mechanical problem in the electrical grid, CNN reported.

“This appears to be something that just went wrong in the way that they transmit power from one part of the city to another,” the mayor told CNN. “It sounds like it is addressable in a reasonable amount of time.”

The mayor was campaigning in Iowa and was due to return to New York late Saturday, his campaign press secretary told the U.S. broadcaster.

Firefighters were responding to numerous transformer fires as well as people trapped in elevators and subway cars, a Fire Department spokesman told CNN.

The power failure occurred 42 years to the day of an extensive blackout that affected much of New York City in July 1977. (dpa/NAN)

– July 14, 2019 @ 14:07 GMT |