Body Found At Pickering Power Substation Blamed For Widespread Outage
Posted January 19, 2008 12:00 pm.
This article is more than 5 years old.
A fatal electrocution at a Pickering substation Saturday caused a power outage in Durham Region while the GTA was under an extreme cold weather alert.
More than 600 Veridian customers in and around the community of Greenwood were without power from 3:30pm until Saturday evening following the discovery of a body at a utility substation.
Veridian emergency staff was dispatched to investigate a power outage in the area and what they found was that an individual had entered the fenced and locked substation compound, and then made contact with the high voltage electrical equipment.
“We dispatched our emergency response crews and they found that the cause of the power outage was an individual had made contact with what we think was a 44,000 volt line atop one of our distribution transformers,” said Veridian spokesperson George Armstrong.
“The substation compound is surrounded by a fence, it’s very secure ad locked so this individual was unauthorized and made his way into the compound and for some reason climbed the top of the transformer.”
The body was actually found suspended about 15 feet in the air. There’s no word on the victim’s identity but Durham Regional Police are investigating.
“We suspect that he was attempting to steal copper or aluminum wire,” Armstrong added. “We’ve had a number of situations where this has occurred in the past several months with the high value of those commodities right now and there was evidence on site that was what this individual was up to.”
