Equipment Failure—

About 1,700 CL&P Customers

Affected By Power Outage

By Andrew Gorosko

An electrical outage caused by equipment failure hit the central part of town on Wednesday afternoon, cutting power to approximately 1,700 residential, commercial, and institutional customers of the Connecticut Light & Power Company (CL&P).

CL&P spokesman Mitch Gross said Thursday morning that after the outage occurred about 1:30 pm, power was quickly restored to about 200 of the 1,700 affected customers. The remaining 1,500 customers, however, spent the next 60 minutes without electricity.

Central Newtown and Sandy Hook Center were affected by the outage. Newtown High School briefly lost power. Newtown Middle School and Hawley School also lost their electric service.

CL&P has about 10,300 electric customers in Newtown.

On Wednesday and Thursday, CL&P work crews repaired the damaged electric cable that is strung below the Church Hill Road bridge that passes above Interstate 84 at Exit 10. Those lines, which typically are positioned underground, are strung on the underside of the bridge above the interstate highway.

Mr Gross said it is unclear why the electric cable failed, but listed several possible reasons for the problem. They include the age of the cable, a heat build-up, or corrosion resulting from the use of road salt.

Replacing the damaged cable is a relatively simple repair project, he said.

After CL&P was able to isolate the damaged equipment, it was possible to restore electric service to customers by rerouting local electric flow, he said.