EASTON, Pa. – One week after damage to underground cables caused widespread power outages on the South Side, parts of the city were in the dark once again.
Early Monday, Easton officials reported an underground utility fire Downtown in the area of Second Street to Fourth Street, between Spring Garden and Snyder streets.
“Expect heavy traffic in that area due to road closures by the Easton Fire Department as Met-Ed addresses the situation," a city advisory said.
The outage initially affected nearly 1,000 Met-Ed customers, according to the FirstEnergy website.
Just before 10 a.m., a spokesman said power had been restored to most customers.
"Met-Ed experienced a cable failure in its underground network this morning at 7 a.m., disrupting power to several hundred customers in the area around Second and Fourth streets," said Todd Meyers, spokesman for FirstEnergy.
Meyers said it was difficult to say how many actually lost power, because some customers were receiving power from an adjacent underground line after the primary supply line was damaged.
"By 8:15 a.m., crews had isolated the problem and restored power to nearly all customers.
"Repairs to the impacted cable could take several days during which time customers are being supplied by other wires," Meyers said.
"The outage was wholly unrelated to last week’s equipment failure at our South Easton substation, which feeds overhead power lines that provide electricity to the southern end of Easton," he said.
A week earlier, thousands of customers were in the dark — some more than 24 hours— after an explosion at a substation.
