Rocky Mountain Power spokesman Dave Eskelsen said some connections failed on power lines in the vicinity of 700 S. and Coleman Street last night. A wire, called a phase, fell onto wires below and caused quite a bit of damage.
He said wires come in various lengths and when putting them on power lines, sometimes splices come together and sometimes those splices fail.
About five spans of wire had to be replaced, which was the reason for the lengthy outage. For most of the customers, the outage lasted from 9:17 p.m. to 10:15 this morning. Power was restored to about 200 of those customers at about 9 a.m. today.
Eskelson said while he can't confirm exactly what the loud, explosive noise some residents heard as the power went out last night was, he suspects it was when the connection failed.
"We don't really know what that was, but there were probably some line-protecting fuses there and those are pretty big fuses and when they blow sometimes they sound like a gunshot," he said. "When you have a number of wires or phases affected, that will activate one or more of those protective devices, and fuses when they blow sometimes can be pretty loud."
Sarah Miley: swest@tooeletranscript.com
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