The Buchanan South substation converted the 345,000 volts of electricity originating from the 900 MW Indian Point nuclear generating station to lower voltage for commercial use.
[6] A loose locking nut combined with a slow-acting upgrade cycle prevented the breaker from reclosing and allowing power to flow again.
[citation needed] Other, manned plants successfully started, but several had removed some of their turbines from service for routine maintenance and could not provide their rated load.
[7] At 8:55 p.m., a third lightning strike[citation needed] hit Sprain Brook substation in Yonkers, which took out two additional critical transmission lines.
Because the system design had prioritized protecting the already-isolated Indian Point plant, only the north-south line automatically returned to service.
[7] The second opening of a transmission line left Con Edison system disconnected from key generating stations across the Hudson river.
Implicitly, the Con Edison operator meant that they should use the cross-river lines near Indian Point, because he did not realize that all of those circuits remained open following the 8:55 lightning strike.
[7] Meanwhile, problems at a local generator in the Con Edison East River facility required the power provider to reduce the plant's loading.
Five minutes later, at 9:29 p.m., the 230 kV Goethals-Linden interconnection with New Jersey finally tripped, leaving the Con Edison system isolated from the outside world.
[7] Con Ed could not generate enough power within the city, and its system for automatically shedding load interacted poorly with the unusually high inductance of its buried transmission cables.
Dropping large blocks of customers produced electric effects indistinguishable from a transient short inside the generation equipment.
[citation needed] The blackout occurred when the city was facing a severe financial crisis and its residents were terrified by the Son of Sam murders.
The nation as a whole, especially New York City, was suffering from a protracted economic downturn, and commentators have contrasted the event with the good-natured "Where Were You When the Lights Went Out?"
Some pointed to the financial crisis as a root cause of the disorder; others noted the hot July weather, as the East Coast was in the middle of a brutal heat wave.
Possibly the hardest hit were Crown Heights, where 75 stores on a five-block stretch were looted and damaged, and Bushwick, where arson was rampant, with some 25 fires still burning the next morning.
ConEd called the shutdown an "act of God," enraging Mayor Beame, who charged that the utility was guilty of "gross negligence.
A congressional study estimated that the cost of damages amounted to a little over $300 million (roughly equivalent to $1.5 billion in December 2023[update]).
Three people died in the over a thousand fires set during the blackout, and in Brooklyn, a drugstore owner gunned down a man who was brandishing a crowbar at him while leading 30 youths past the store's security fence.
"[16] There is a popular story that during the blackout numerous looters stole DJ equipment from electronics stores, and this helped spark the hip hop genre—but the only evidence is some speculation by two early DJs, DJ Disco Wiz and Curtis Fisher, who made the suggestion in an interview for Jim Fricke and filmmaker Charlie Ahearn, who printed it in their book Yes Yes Y'all.
Caz later expanded from speculation to mythology, saying in a Slate article and podcast that, when the power went out, he and Wiz were playing records, running their equipment from an outlet in a park.
On July 13, 2019, on the 42nd anniversary of the event, a Con Edison blackout occurred, affecting 73,000 people on Manhattan's West Side.
Lee Child's short story High Heat (2013) is about seventeen year old Jack Reacher first time visiting New York during this blackout.