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In the dark

Widespread outage caused by equipment failure

MICHAEL KELLY The Marietta Times Traffic backs up the hill on Colegate Drive north of the Acme Street intersection just after noon on Monday after traffic signals were disabled by a widespread power outage.

Equipment failure was blamed by AEP Ohio for a two-hour electric failure Monday that shut down businesses, snarled traffic and left Marietta in the dark at midday on a cloudy, rainy fall day.

Some traffic signals with independent backup power continued working, but many turned into four-way stops, with long lines of vehicles waiting to get through.

Jessica Wright, a media spokeswoman for AEP, said a piece of equipment failed in a power station inside Marietta, leaving 8,000 customers without electricity for about an hour and a half, from approximately noon to 1:20 p.m.

The outage encompassed most of Marietta, but the southern Norwood neighborhood and businesses at the east end of Pike Street were not affected. Portions of the county from Devola to Macksburg were also affected by the outage, she said.

Essential services such as police, fire, Marietta Memorial Hospital and the county complexes had backup generators and continued to operate. Peggy Byers at the Washington County Board of Elections office on Davis Avenue said early voting continued through the outage, running on the county’s emergency generators.

On Front Street, Phi Chen, owner of Austyn’s Restaurant, said the power went out just as customers were arriving for lunch. AEP estimated the power would be restored at 4:30 p.m., so he sent his staff home and began planning to reopen at 5 p.m. for dinner.

“I told the employees to come back at 4 p.m., and I’m not sure how much effect this is going to have on dinner,” he said. “I went out to make a bank deposit, and obviously the bank downtown was closed, but even at Frontier shopping center, it was dark.”

Jim Caporale at American Flags & Poles said he offered the staff a choice of staying or going home.

“One stayed, and one went home,” he said. “We stayed open, there just weren’t any customers.”

Marietta Police Chief Rodney Hupp said his staff was prepared to deploy portable generators to some of the busier intersections. He said he was relieved when the power came back sooner than AEP had estimated.

“This is a good time to remind people that when intersection signals go dead for any reason, you treat it as a four-way stop,” he said. Putting police at intersections to direct traffic usually just frustrates drivers, he said.

Hupp noted that the outage, thankfully, triggered few false alarms, and there were no emergencies that occurred as a result of the power loss.

Marietta City Schools remained in session while the power was out, superintendent Will Hampton said.

“You’d be sending a lot of kids home to empty houses, some without power, and sending buses out with uncontrolled intersections,” he said. “It’s just a safety issue.”

None of the schools have backup generators, he said, but most classrooms have windows.

“Some rooms were darker than others,” he said.

AEP power outage Monday

•Time: Approximately noon to 1:20 p.m.

•Number of customers affected: About 8,000

•Approximate area: North and western parts of Marietta, portions of Devola to Macksburg.

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