More than 52,000 residences and businesses in counties just north of New York City lost electrical power Saturday night because of a transmission problem, utility officials said.
The outage struck customers of the Orange & Rockland Utilities in seven counties in three states, including New York, Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
An equipment malfunction at a transmission substation in Middletown caused the outage, said company spokesman Mike Donovan. The substation was unmanned and no one was injured, he added. The equipment shut down because an overhead power line failed, the utility said. State investigators are trying to determine what caused the problem.
Most of the customers who lost power live in Orange County, Sullivan County and Pike County, Pennsylvania.
Outages were also reported in pockets of Rockland County and Sussex, Passaic and Bergen counties in New Jersey.
Power was restored to nearly all customers by 3 a.m. Sunday morning, according to the utility. The rest of those impacted had power again by 5:30 a.m.
