BRUNSWICK
Thousands were left without power for hours this morning when lightning struck a power line above River Road in Brunswick.
Central Maine Power Co. said 7,400 customers in Brunswick, Freeport, Topsham and Harpswell lost power this morning in a widespread outage reported shortly after 8:30 a.m.
“It looks like it’s affecting multiple circuits” out of the westside substation on Barrows Drive in Brunswick, said CMP spokeswoman Gail Rice at around 9:30 a.m.
Later in the morning, she said lightning damage was found on equipment on a couple of transmission poles along River Road in Brunswick.
At that time, crews were expecting to have power restored by around 11 a.m.
Rice said crews would try to get power flowing in the transmission line running across River Road to restore power as soon as possible, and then repair the damaged equipment.
At around 11:30 a.m., Rice said a couple of structures along the River Road transmission line were equipped with insulators that were shattered by lightning, delaying the repair. As many as 6,200 customers remained in the dark until 1:15 p.m.
The lightning accompanied rain and wind during a heavy downpour. The outage affected editorial, production and circulation functions at The Times Record, delaying distribution of today’s editions.
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