Equipment failure blamed for day-long blackout

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A few thousand residents in the Bathurst Street and St. Clair Avenue area were without power on Tuesday when equipment failure caused a day-long blackout in the area.

Toronto Hydro personnel were performing maintenance on an underground cable in the basement of a Tichester Road building when the incident occurred, according to Toronto Hydro spokesperson Karen Evans.

"There was what's called a flashover, when electrical current jumped from one piece of equipment to a piece of (the underground) cable," she said.

The flashover caused some smoldering and Toronto Hydro left the work area to make way for Toronto Fire Services, but Evans said that was strictly a precaution and that the flashover was extremely unlikely to cause danger to workers or residents in the area.

The power outage affected 10 buildings, including high- and low-rise condos and apartments on Tichester Road, Heath Street West, Walmer Road and Tweedsmuir Avenue.

Evans estimated that 3,000 to 5,000 were affected by the power outage.

"It's a relatively serious inconvenience, since the power's been out since about 5 o'clock this morning," she said. "We're aiming to get it cleared up quickly, and we'll think it will likely be back anywhere from 6 to 8 p.m."

The situation marked the second Hydro incident in three days, though Tuesday's incident was nowhere near as dangerous as the hydro vault explosion that caused the evacuation of hundreds of East York residents from their Danforth Avenue and Main Street area building on Sunday.