Broken Pole Linked to Outage Affecting 5200 NYSEG Customers

Strong winds may have caused an interruption in electrical service to several thousand New York State Electric and Gas customers in Broome County.

Utility spokesman Joseph Rusin said the outage started at 12:51 p.m. Thursday. He said the problem was traced to a broken pole near the Morningside Heights substation.

Rusin said 5,246 NYSEG customers initially were affected by the interruption. Repair workers were able to sectionalize the outage to restore power to a few thousand customers after about 50 minutes.

NYSEG customers in the towns of Chenango, Dickinson, Maine, Barker and Fenton were affected by the problem.

Rusin said the outage likely was weather-related, probably due to the windy conditions as rain fell across the region.

National Weather Service forecasters predicted wind gusts of 30 to 40 miles per hour. They said some isolated gusts in excess of 40 miles per hour were possible.

Contact WNBF News reporter Bob Joseph: bob@wnbf.com

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