Surprise power outage leaves more than 5,000 without power

Without warning, more than 5,000 people from Plantagenet to Chute-à-Blondeau were plunged into darkness just after 7 p.m. on Friday, August 12.

According to Nancy Shaddick, a spokesperson with Hydro One, the first report came in to Hydro One's outage report line at about 7:36 p.m.

"We have a number people can call to report an outage and it's very helpful when people use it," she told The Review during a phone interview Monday morning. "People are able to call us and let us know what's going on in their area."

She said a total of 5,115 people were affected by the outage, which occurred following a mechanical failure at Hydro One's Longueuil transformer station.

"There was a mechanical failure with a reactor and arrestor at that location and that's what caused the outage," Shaddick explained. "We were able to restore power to approximately 4,000 residences at around 11 p.m. and the remaining people were restored at around 12:45 a.m. Saturday morning."

Shaddick said she understands that people tend to wonder why an outage has occurred if there is no obvious reason. In this case, there was no severe weather or storms in the area.

"It's normal and people want to know what's going on," she commented. "That's what we're here for."

Many in the area were wondering what happened to their electricity on Friday evening and took to The Review's Facebook page to talk about it. Here are some of the comments:

EM: Called Hydro One and they said it affected over 5,000 people and that power should be back at 10:45 p.m.

AV: I'm on Greenlane Road and we have had no power since 7:30 p.m. and it's not supposed to be back on until 10:45 p.m.

KD: I'm in St-Eugene, and we have power.

RH: In Hawkesbury, we had two quick flashes of power outage but everything's fine.

DM: We were in darkness until 11:08 p.m. all the way to L'Orignal.

JL: Chute-à-Blondeau had no power from 7:30 p.m. to 11 p.m.