A storm-torn flag knocked out power to thousands in Connecticut, officials say
STAMFORD — An American flag torn down by Saturday’s storm flew onto power lines in Stamford, causing thousands of outages in the area, officials said Sunday.
As of 6 p.m. Sunday, Eversource’s outage map reported 4,222 outages in Greenwich and 2,717 in Stamford.
The flag blew loose in the area of the World Wrestling Entertainment building on Washington Boulevard and became tangled in the lines, utility spokesperson Kaitlyn Woods said. About 5,000 customers in Stamford lost power immediately, but Eversource was able to restore power to about 3,000 of those customers within 20 minutes, Woods said.
While crews were working to repair the affected transmission structure in Stamford on Sunday at about 1 p.m., there was a trip on the line that knocked out power to thousands of customers in Greenwich, Woods said.
“There are two separate transmission circuits on the structure,” she said at about 2:15 p.m. Sunday. “While our crews were working to remove the flag, it shifted and made contact with the energized line that was keeping power flowing to our customers. The outage impacted more than 20,000 of our customers in Greenwich. Our crews just safely restored one of the lines in the past few minutes, and we’ll start getting the power back on soon for our customers impacted.”
Woods said the company has strict protocols about what is permitted on its infrastructure.
“Our crews were coordinating to remove the flag when it shifted on its own and made contact with the line that caused the outage,” she said. “Approximately 40,000 of our customers were impacted this afternoon, and we isolated the outage, and restored power as quickly and safely as possible.”
In a post on Facebook, the Stamford Police Department said multiple intersections on West Main Street were closed due to the power outages, including where it intersects with Stillwater Avenue, Richmond Hill Avenue and Alvord Lane. Police said West Main Street also was closed at the Home Depot entrance.
Police said the intersections of Cold Spring Road and Stillwater Road, Washington Boulevard and Cold Spring Road, and Harvard Avenue and Grenhart Road also were closed as of about 5 p.m.