A hospital, parts of two colleges and other buildings all lost power Thursday after an underground cable failure sparked a fire in Newark, authorities said.
Saint Michael’s Medical Center was running on back-up generators because of the outage, authorities said. The Prudential New Building and Macy's department store also lost power, according to PSE&G.
Additionally, buildings on the Rutgers-Newark campus have gone dark. The school canceled classes in the affected buildings and asked non-essential staff in those buildings to not come to work.
Classes in the Aidekman, Boyden, Conklin, Life Sciences 1 and Olson buildings were canceled, the school announced.
Power was also out in the Woodward and Tablott residence halls, school officials said.
The New Jersey Institute of Technology, which sits adjacent to Rutgers-Newark, was also affected. It's not clear if classes were canceled there.
According to a PSE&G outage map, about 355 customers lost power at about 11 a.m. The utility said Thursday evening crews are continuing to make repairs, and full power was expected to be restored at around midnight.
Local
The Newark police department dispatched officers to traffic control posts to help with the flow of vehicles after stoplights went dark.
Roads around Rutgers, NJIT and Essex County colleges were closed because of outages. University Street between Bleeker and Warren has also been temporarily closed.
