Outage put Rose of Tralee in twilight zone

By Harry Keaney

“The pale moon was rising above the green mountain,” goes the start of the song “The Rose of Tralee,” but for a while on Saturday evening last in the Marriott Marquis Hotel in Manhattan, it looked as if the New York Rose of Tralee competition was going to take place in the twilight zone.

At about 5:50 p.m., before the 40th annual Rose of Tralee ball got under way, there was a sudden blackout in the Marriott Marquis. A street contractor preparing for the laying of phone lines to a new pay phone on Broadway cut through two main power feeder lines to the hotel.

Lucy Bossert, of the Marriott Marquis public relations department, said some power was restored in about an hour. “The rest was back within two hours,” she said. In the meantime, emergency lighting was provided by the hotel’s own generators.

“It was beyond our control, it had nothing to do with our operations,” Bossert said. She added that there was no need to evacuate the hotel but fire department personnel came in and helped clear the elevators.