Power Outage Reported at Starrett City for 4th Time in 6 Months

At least part of a sprawling Brooklyn housing complex lost power Monday in the fourth such incident in less than six months, fire officials say.

The FDNY says a power outage was reported Tuesday afternoon at Spring Creek Towers in East New York, a complex of nearly 50 buildings that is the largest federally subsidized rental development in the country and is often referred to by its former name, Starrett City.

The spokeswoman for the complex said the entire site lost power. It wasn't immediately clear what caused the outage.

The power started returning slowly and was fully restored by 4 p.m., said the spokeswoman, Devorah Fong.

Emergency responders from the FDNY and NYPD first focused on checking whether anyone was stuck in the elevators, and attending to residents who were dependent on electricity for medical equipment.  

It wasn't clear if anyone got trapped in the elevators. The elevators were being reset Tuesday evening. 

The complex, which has 5,800 apartment units and operates on its own power generating system, officially adopted the name Spring Creek Towers more than a decade ago, but is often still called Starrett City.

Tuesday's outage marks the fourth time in six months that at least part of the complex has lost power.

On Halloween, the complex lost power to all 46 buildings for about two hours. There had been reports of people trapped in elevators but fire officials said no one had to be rescued.

Two months later, the complex lost power for a few hours overnight. Several people trapped in the complex's 11- to 20-story buildings' elevators had to be rescued by firefighters during that outage, though no injuries were reported.

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