Problems cut power to 1,400
About 1,400 area residents were without electricity for most of the day Wednesday after two separate problems kept Allegheny Power employees scrambling. And as the temperatures climbed into the lower 90s, the outage became a health concern due to the stifling heat.
According to Allegheny Energy spokeswoman Janice Lantz, the outage began around 8 a.m. when a piece of underground conductor failed in the Hopwood area.
After power crews repaired the underground line they rebooted power to area, bringing electricity back to about 1,200 customers.
But Lantz said the increased load due to the hot weather caused a fuse to melt during the reboot, leaving about 200 homes without electricity until 5:40 p.m.
The outage comes on the heels of a major shutdown after a re-closer on Fayette Street exploded closing down the west end of Uniontown and leaving about 2,000 residents without power for much of the afternoon on May 11.
That outage occurred just three days after a crane struck an electrical wire on Church Street Monday afternoon blacking out several blocks including about a dozen area businesses.
In that case, electrical crews were able to quickly change a blown fuse and power was restored in about two hours.
Lantz said she does not believe that the lines in Fayette County are overloaded or in disrepair and said that increased power usage due to air conditioning in the hotter months can necessitate repairs.
Today it was overloaded because of the hot weather with all the air conditioning running,” Lantz said. “But the reliability of our system is in tact.”