New York Daily News: “Officials on Friday said that an outage last month that crippled the subways and left passengers stranded was caused by a worker who accidentally pressed a power switch. Riders of the city’s numbered and lettered trains were stuck throughout the city Aug. 29 when a power outage left them stranded on trains in underground tunnels for more than an hour. Rescue crews had to be dispatched to guide the frightened and frustrated passengers to safety.”
“Gov. Hochul, in one of her first official acts, vowed to get to the bottom of the failure. ‘New Yorkers deserve absolute confidence in a fully functioning subway system, and it is our job to restore that confidence,’ Hochul said in a statement. Engineers examined the breakdown, and in the end, blamed it on human error that appeared to have been easily preventable. ‘The reports revealed that the precipitating cause of the loss of power at the New York City Transit Rail Control Center was the byproduct of a manually-activated power-off switch on one of the building’s power distribution units. Preliminary indications suggest that the emergency push button might have been accidentally pressed since a plastic guard that would prevent accidental activation was missing.'”