A power outage in Scarborough just after noon Wednesday, which left half the town without power, was the result of a mishap with a landscaping truck in South Portland.

The outage shut down electricity to a large swath of the town including traffic lights and the Route 1 and Payne Road corridors between 12:04 p.m. and 12:30 p.m.

The outage hit when power substations near the Maine Turnpike and on Route 1 near Pine Point Road each lost two circuits, said Gail Rice, spokeswoman for Central Maine Power. Workers in the energy control center were able to restart the circuits remotely and the power returned within half an hour, she said.

The outage was traced to a landscaping boom truck hitting a transmission structure on Running Hill Road in South Portland, she said. There was no significant damage but the impact caused the power to shut down on certain lines, and it did not automatically reset, she said.

According to CMP, 4,490 of the town’s 9,800 customers were without power.

David Hench can be contacted at 791-6327 or at:

dhench@mainetoday.com

Twitter: @Mainehenchman


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