Blackouts Hit Cape Cod Area
About 300,000 customers lost electric service Monday night in blackouts that knocked out power on Cape Cod and affected wide areas of southeastern Massachusetts.
The combination of a fire at a power plant here and an out-of-service transmission line between Walpole and Carver could have caused the power outages, according to authorities.
The blackouts, which began about 6:15 p.m., affected residential and commercial customers.
Lights also were out on the Bourne and Sagamore bridges, the two passenger bridges across the Cape Cod Canal. Power was restored about 90 minutes later.
Officials were looking into a fire at the Canal Electric Plant, which is owned by the Atlanta-based Mirant Corp.
“It’s not clear at this point whether something triggered the plant to go offline and caused the fire,” or whether the fire caused the plant to go offline, said Mirant spokesman David Payne.
The disruption of the transmission line, owned by NStar and National Grid, was blamed on a separate fire in Walpole. National Grid spokeswoman Amy Atwood said the line was taken out of service at 12:45 p.m. and restored about 8 p.m.
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