Lights on the Statue of Liberty unexpectedly turned off Tuesday night, and some quickly assumed a political statement was being made.
The lights, except for the ones in the torch and crown, shut off shortly before 11 p.m. and came back on at about 11:45 p.m. The National Park Service said in a statement that the outage was not planned.
“Power and a lighting system controller had been switched off in order to change out faulty lighting equipment,” spokesman Jerry Willis said. “Upon completion of that project, power was restored, but the outage was a result of a failure to properly reset the lighting system controller.”
Some on Twitter, however, had other theories, suggesting the outage was a statement about International Women’s Day or a response to the current political climate.
“Looks like someone is getting an early start to #ADayWithoutAWoman,” one user wrote.
Willis added that there may be future planned outages of the statue’s lights due to the installation of an emergency backup generator, which is part of a superstorm Sandy recovery project.
“We anticipate those outages will take place over the next few weeks,” he said. “We will alert media and the public to these outages through statements to the media and on our social media platforms.”
