Boy injured after entering substation, knocks out power to 7,000

Image taken from the GMP website showing the outages in Springfield, Chester, Baltimore and Mount Holly.

By Cynthia Prairie

A power outage yesterday afternoon that affected almost 7,000 Green Mountain Power customers — 2,773 in Chester alone — occurred when  a youth entered a “locked and secure” Springfield substation and “came in contact with energized electrical equipment,” GMP spokeswoman Dotty Schnure said last night.

Schnure added, “Our hearts go out to the family” of the boy. The boy’s condition could not be determined late last night.

Springfield police, Schnure said, arrived at the substation quickly and found the youth conscious and moving. He was taken to Springfield Hospital.

Attempts to reach Springfield police were unsuccessful. But according to an Associated Press report, the youth, a 12-year-old Springfield boy, has been airlifted to a hospital in Boston. The AP writes that the Springfield police chief had said that “the boy climbed over the substation’s fence on Tuesday, got onto some equipment and grabbed an electrical line.”

That occurred around 4 p.m., the time that power in Chester went out. GMP restored power to the town within 48 minutes, Schnure said. As of 6:45 last night, about 2,000 customers remained without power, most in Springfield. By 7:05 p.m., only two customers remained without power. You can keep track of the real time power outages and repairs at GMP here.

At one point, customers without power reached south to Rockingham and Grafton and north to Mount Holly. A customer at Lisai’s Chester Market said when the power went out, the cash registers, credit card machines and scales were rendered useless and the place went dark, but “the staff did everything they could to accommodate the people in the store, then closed the doors and waited for the power to return.”

This chart shows the location and number of customers affected by the power outage.