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Restoring Power . . . Again

By Staff | Jun 12, 2013

Photo by Amy Witschey

A nest of birds was the cause of Tuesday’s electricity outages in the downtown area of New Martinsville. The animals actually caused two outages totalling about five hours.

The first problem occurred at Mon Power’s feed into the New Martinsville Electric Department’s system in the area behind Mensore Distributing.

NM Electric Department Head David White explained that evidently a bird shorted the circuit at the Locust Street switch station. The power reverberated down the line, actually making the lines swing. White said he and his department saw the lines moving and thought a vehicle must have hit a pole. The energy continued down the line until it could be expended, which evidently happened at the city’s power entry point.

A couple hours after that situation was repaired, a transformer was blown at the Locust Street station. This was also attributed to the bird’s nest. Mon Power restored the power approximately two hours later.