Residents of New York City got quite the scare yesterday after a mysterious blue light appeared in the sky.
I’ll be honest here: When my east coast friends started posting all these pictures of the startling event on Instagram, I was convinced it was aliens. Hey, it’s not every day the ground starts to violently shake and neon blue lights appear in the sky, you know?
Turns out, it wasn’t aliens. Womp womp. The mysterious light in the sky was caused by a transformer fire at a Con Edison power plant in Queens, NY. The fire caused power outages, train delays, and forced a ground-stop at LaGuardia airport nearby.
Witness Ayman Iham told reporters of the terrifying experience, “All I see is like, the blue flame. And then from there, the ground started shaking. I felt the ground shake for like fifteen seconds.” Sounds scary!
Con Edison tweeted, “There was a brief electrical fire at our substation on 20th Avenue & 32nd Street in Astoria this evening, which caused a transmission dip in the area. All power lines serving the area are in service and the system is stable,” then followed with another, which read, “Last night’s electrical fault caused a sustained electrical arc flash & transmission disturbance. There were no injuries and all the power lines serving the area are stable. We apologize for the disruption to customers.”
Well, at least it wasn’t aliens, right?