The brackets on this relative new Com Ed power line broke Sunday night about 8:30 causing about a six-hour power outage.
Com Ed had a power failure last night right in front of our Lakewood home.
My son was looking out the front window and saw two explosions.
He said looked like fireworks and startled him.
Here’s a Com Ed crew fixing the same pole in August, 2006..
After each one, the power went out, then came back on.
There was no wind and no rain.
No car hit a pole.
Simple failure of a couple of brackets, it appears.
I immediately call Commonwealth Edison and informed them.
It took about a half an hour for a truck to show up.
Even with the so-called Smart Grid Com Ed has succeeded in getting most local legislators to pass rate hikes to finance, the notice of the outage would not have brought the repair truck appreciably faster.
Although the cause of the damage was obvious–two brackets had collapsed from the pole, which is about fifty feet high–onto the wires causing them to short out, the truck went up and down the street looking at the rest of the line along Lake Avenue.
As I was beginning this story shortly after nine last night, the lights and the computer went dark again.
Over five hours later, our bedroom lights went on waking us about 2:15 AM.
And here’s what the repair to the electric system looked like this morning:
Here’s the same pole after the five and a half hour repair job.
This section of Com Ed’s grid was installed about ten years ago. The part of Broadway cost a man his life.
Awaiting a call from Com Ed to answer my questions as to how many were affected and what the cause of the problem was.