Faulty cable cited for power loss in Lynn’s Diamond District

LYNN – A faulty underground cable caused a power failure in the city’s Diamond District late Thursday that left approximately 470 customers in the dark.Deborah Drew, a spokeswoman for National Grid, said the outage was centered near Burrill Avenue and Ocean Street. It was first reported at 8:30 p.m.”The majority of customers had service restored within an hour and 15 minutes and the remainder were back on in about three hours,” she said.According to Drew, an underground cable failed. “We don’t believe there is a flaw in the system. Underground cables sometimes fail,” she said. “When something like this occurs, we respond immediately by switching those customers over to another power line.”Drew said cables can fail when trees topple onto overhead wires. “Despite our best efforts, outages do occur,” she said.The Diamond District was plagued by power failures over the past two years until last May when National Grid upgraded the area’s antiquated system with new cabling, wires, conduits, fuses and two underground transformers.In order to complete the work, the power company forced a 12-hour blackout, which closed the Brickett School for a day and required residents to make alternate arrangements for food storage and medical needs. It also required the installation of temporary stop signs to accommodate extinguished stop lights.