NEW YORK, July 22 (Xinhua) -- Thousands of people in New York City are still waiting for power to be restored after over 50,000 customers were affected by outages Sunday night amid a dangerous heat wave.
The outages mainly hit southern Brooklyn and a small area of Queens when temperatures as high as 110 degrees Fahrenheit (43 degrees Celsius) put strains on the local power grid.
People living in those areas shared pictures and videos on Twitter, which showed cars driving in total darkness as traffic lights were off.
Mayor Bill de Blasio said late Sunday that some 30,000 customers in Brooklyn were disconnected by the utility company Con Edison to prevent a bigger blackout.
As of early Monday morning, over 10,000 customers were still without power after rush repairs overnight.
It happened just around one week after a massive blackout hit Manhattan due to a cable fault and a malfunctioning relay protection system.
New York State Governor Andrew Cuomo said Sunday night that he would deploy 200 state police officers, 100 generators and 50 light towers to assist with the power outages in Brooklyn.
"We've been through this situation with ConEd time and again, and they should have been better prepared -- period," the governor tweeted.
Con Edison had been under scrutiny after the Manhattan blackout. Before the heat wave hit the region, the utility company's President Tim Cawley said on Friday that it was "ready for what the heat will bring."
"By any measure, we are the most reliable electric delivery system in the United States," said Cawley, adding that the utility company was "poised to respond to any outages that come in" as soon as possible.
