I must admit I thought something weird or terrible happened as I looked across the night sky tonight…
I knew it was some sort of explosion , but there was no should where I was…
It lasted for about a minute….
A pale blue sky , with billowing clouds rising….
I turned on the news radio channel ….
Nothing….
But an hour later the local news channel’s had the story….
A Co Ed generator power dip resulting in an explosion and fire that interpreted power in Astoria Queens and at LaGuardia Airport and the Rikers Island Corrections facility ….
The night sky turned blue across the city on Thursday when a transformer exploded at a Con Ed facility in Queens.
An FDNY spokesman said firefighters responded to the blast on 20th Ave. in Steinway at about 9:20 p.m. The transformer exploded on a site Con Ed shares with power generating companies and other industrial facilities.
“I thought it was a terrorist attack. Everything was flooded with smoke. It looked like blue fire. It was so big it was like the whole sky turned blue,” said Astoria resident Ziad Elnokrashy.
“I thought it was the end of the world,” Elnokrashy said.
“I saw the light come and then everything looked blue,” said Catalina Romero, another Astoria resident.
“All my neighbors went out. I knew something was wrong. A lot of people panicked,” Romero said. “It was like daylight. The lights went out for ten minutes.”
“I heard a boom and my lights blinked for a moment,” said David Schwartz, who lives near the scene. “Then I saw a blue glow outside and the whole sky was lit up like it was twilight.”
The burning transformer “was sparking and glowing white,” said Schwartz. “I’ve been here since 2005 and this is first time anything like this has happened.”…