LEWISTON – Burned electrical lines on Lisbon Street disrupted local businesses Wednesday and sent emergency crews scrambling as power was lost in the downtown area.
The 5 p.m. outage mostly affected homes and businesses along lower Lisbon Street and surrounding neighborhoods. For nearly two hours, the Police Department was among those without electricity.
Further down Park Street, the Sun Journal and several office buildings were without power for the same period.
Meanwhile, late afternoon commuter traffic backed up downtown as traffic lights stopped working and police went out to direct traffic around problem spots.
Central Maine Power Co. crews were called to Lisbon Street when power lines burned near Grimmel’s Service Station. It was not immediately known what caused the lines to burn out.
The burned lines caused outages in some areas and resulted in a power surge in others. For a half hour after the problem was reported, the Fire Department was sent to several locations as alarms were activated by an electrical surge.
Fire crews also went to a building at 140 Ash St. where a person was briefly stuck in an elevator after the power went out.
Lewiston police Lt. Don Mailhot said there were few serious problems as a result of the outage other than jammed traffic at intersections where lights had stopped working. The Police Department relied on backup power while the situation on Lisbon Street was being fixed.
A CMP spokeswoman did not know how many customers were affected by the outage, which was limited to downtown Lewiston. Power was restored by 7 p.m.
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