VIDEO. A festival of blue lights above the city has raised fears of “the worst” to some residents, who have engaged in speculation on Twitter.
Source AFP
Published on 12/28/2018 at 7:55 am
– Modified 12/28/2018 at 10:14 am
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Wind of madness Thursday night on social networks with a multitude of messages referring to aliens over New York. In question ? Particularly impressive blue lights that were actually caused by … a transformer explosion. The incident took place at a power plant operated by the ConEdison power company in the Astoria neighborhood of Queens, just across from Manhattan, shortly after 9 p.m. local (2 a.m. GMT).
A series of blue lightning then illuminated the sky of the American financial capital, very quickly triggering tweets announcing the arrival of extraterrestrials or superheroes. “The aliens are there, I know it’s true, because they stopped in Astoria as soon as they landed,” musician Joe Budden tweeted humorously. “The New York skies look exactly like the moment Thanos descended on Earth,” tweeted another, Jeff Lowe, referring to the film.Infinity War, from the Avengers saga.
“Something insane is happening in the sky of Manhattan,” tweeted Eric Klinenberg, a sociologist at New York University.
In the end, New Yorkers had to come to terms with a more prosaic reality. “No extraterrestrials”, reacted Eric Phillips, spokesman for the mayor of New York, also on Twitter, simply “a transformer exploded in the central ConEd, in Queens”.
*Not* aliens. Blown transformer at Queens Con-Ed facility. Scattered power outages, including LGA. Con-Ed, FDNY, PD, OEM all working on it. https://t.co/xX60Ph8SWw
— Eric Phillips (@EricFPhillips) December 28, 2018
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Traffic at La Guardia airport, located nearby and used mainly for domestic US flights, was still briefly interrupted, as was traffic on metro line 7, which crosses this area. But shortly after 10:15 p.m., the police confirmed that there were “no injuries”, and that the situation was “under control”, even if the police officer who provided the hotline also considered that “it was crazy. “. “There was a brief electrical fire in our Astoria substation this evening, which caused a drop in voltage in the sector”, summed up shortly before 11 pm the company Con Edison. “All the power lines in the area are working and the system is stable. “
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