Power outage in Toronto, Barrie and Vaughan; flickering lights reported across GTA
Posted March 17, 2015 12:12 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
Thousands of homes in Toronto, Vaughan and Barrie were without power on Tuesday morning a day after lights flickered across much of the GTA.
Toronto Hydro said 650 customers are affected in the Yonge Street and Finch Avenue area due to weather-related issues.
The lights were also out in Barrie after a suspected pole fire knocked out power to the area. Power was restored just before 10 a.m., but at one point, 8,400 customers were affected.
The power company said 938 customers don’t have power in a section of Vaughan, and power was not expected to be restored until around 9 a.m.
On Monday, flickering power across the GTA, as well as parts of southern and northern Ontario, is being blamed on a brief drop in voltage.
Hydro One said it is investigating after sort of “event” caused a momentary drop in voltage just before 9:30 p.m.
In a release issued on Tuesday, Hydro One said while the cause of the event is still under investigation, early reports indicate this was a unique occurrence.
“Reports also suggest this event was the result of an insulator, the piece of equipment that holds a power line off of a transmission tower, which broke and released a transmission line causing it to fall to the ground. This line also made contact with another transmission line as it fell.”
PowerStream said their system control centre reported a voltage disturbance on the Hydro One system.
Overnight, around 5,000 Toronto Hydro customers in the Dufferin Street and St. Clair Avenue area were without power. As of 8 a.m. on Tuesday, 25 customers were still affected.
Power was also out for about 200 customers in the Dufferin Street and Finch Avenue West area for about two hours on Monday. Toronto Hydro said power was restored to the area around 11 p.m.
At the time, Toronto Hydro said they were also looking into several other outages.
As of Tuesday morning, power was also restored to Halton Hills.
With files from Christine Chubb
