The lights are back on in San Francisco.
About 90,000 people were without power there for much of Friday after a circuit breaker failed at a substation, igniting insulation and causing a fire, investigators said.
The outage affected mostly the northern and central neighborhoods, including Pacific Heights, the Presidio, the Financial District and Fisherman’s Wharf.
Service was restored to all but 3,000 by 8 p.m. ET, said Pacific Gas & Electric spokeswoman Nicole Liebelt.
PG&E said power should be fully restored later Friday evening.
“We are closely coordinating with all critical facilities, including hospitals, schools and public transportation agencies,” the city’s Department of Emergency Management said in a statement.
California Pacific Hospital and Saint Francis Hospital remained open during the outage and were using backup generators to operate, it said. New patients were being rerouted to other fully operational hospitals in the city.
Public schools were open and operating under standard blackout operating procedures.
TV affiliate KPIX reported a downtown BART station was closed during rush hour; people were stranded in elevators; operating rooms were shut down; and the city’s famed cable cars were halted. The power outage also caused traffic chaos.
Subway service disrupted in NYC
In New York, a power outage at a subway station halted service on several lines Friday morning and led to lengthy commutes.
The outage occurred around 7:30 a.m. at the station at Seventh Avenue and West 53rd Street, CNN affiliate WABC reported.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority had generators in place there by 11:30 a.m., letting them restore power.