Local News in Brief : Santa Ana : Metallic Balloons Hit Lines; Area Blacked Out

Almost 2,000 homes and businesses in Santa Ana, including radio station KWIZ, temporarily lost electrical power Monday when a cluster of metallic balloons floated into a transformer and shorted it out, officials said.

Southern California Edison spokesman Gene Carter said the balloons became ensnarled in some lines in the 1200 block of Deming Street about 9:51 a.m., triggering a short circuit that blacked out the immediate area.

Carter said that 1,950 customers lost power, including the radio station. Electricity to all but 200 customers was restored within minutes. Regular service to the remaining customers was expected to be restored Monday night.

Carter said KWIZ was off the air for 12 minutes.

“We have had a lot of problems with these balloons,” Carter said. “In this case, what happened was it shorted out the transformer and the wires burned. The balloon and the string are metallic. They get wrapped around the wires and cause awful problems.”

Carter said there had been 37 such incidents since January and more than 200 last year.

“These things are really getting to be a problem,” he said. “We don’t know where they come from. Someone could have had a birthday party and they just flew away. Who knows?”