Thousands in Dartmouth lose power after pole issue

Thousands of customers in Dartmouth, N.S., lost electricity for more than hour Tuesday morning after a power pole issue.

Halifax Regional Police said they were called to help control traffic on Maple Street in downtown Dartmouth around 8:15 a.m.

Photos of the scene on social media showed clouds of smoke and flames around the top of the pole. The power line is also near a transformer station.

Police spokesperson Const. John MacLeod said the call came in as a power pole fire, but the Nova Scotia Power website said the outage was caused by a "vehicle accident."

Powerrestored within two hours

According to the Nova Scotia Power outage map, there were roughly 10,000 customers without power around 9 a.m., dropping to about 5,500 around 9:30 a.m.

By 10 a.m., the outage map said all affected customers had their power restored.

Nova Scotia Power spokespersonJackie Fostersaid in an email that crews had responded to anoutage "caused by a motor vehicle accident" affecting customers in parts of Dartmouth.

However, there was no sign of acar when crews arrived to restore the power. Based on the damage to equipment on the pole, Foster said theybelievea passing vehicle may have struck the equipment, leading to the outage.

MacLeod said policetook a section of Maple Street to one lane for about a half-hour, then left the scene around8:45 a.m. asNova Scotia Power crews and Halifax Fire remained on site.