Lynners not left in dark for long

LYNN – Residents of the Diamond District awoke to a pleasant surprise Wednesday morning when they learned their power had been restored earlier than expected by National Grid after a scheduled blackout.Originally projected to last 12 hours, the outage began at 11 p.m. Tuesday and came back on around 3:30 a.m. Wednesday.National Grid spokesman David Graves said the remaining customers had their power restored by 7:30 a.m.”We were three and a half hours ahead of time and finished faster than expected,” he said. “It went very well and was a success with the community.”Numerous power outages and electrical failures in recent years resulted in the need for National Grid to fix the problems.Residents were advised to make necessary arrangements for the blackout, such as unplugging anything that runs off of electricity, and to remove perishable food and place them in containers to avoid spoiling.The arrangements, however, proved to be unnecessary since the outage was rather short lived, according to Graves.”If people just kept their refrigerators closed during the blackout, the food wouldn’t have spoiled,” he said. “If something is being done that is beneficial to the service to the area, and we fulfill our promise, the community is generally open to the work so that it can ease their minds.”Graves said upgrades to the older system included new cabling, new wires, conduits, fuses, and two underground transformers.”There was quite a bit of underground work to do in a confined space, so that’s why we originally planned for the outage to be 12 hours,” he said.Regardless of the time it took to resolve the outstanding issues, Graves said the new service would have a greater reliability, and would eliminate the frequent outages of the past.”I can’t guarantee that there won’t be anymore outages in the future, but the upgrade will certainly enhance the system, because as equipment ages, it is prone to failure,” he said. “But we’re delighted with the work that was done, and the police and fire in the city did a great job.”