Transformer fire caused power outage in Chelsea

Electricity has been restored in Chelsea after a transformer fire Tuesday evening knocked out power for thousands of customers in the city, as well as the police station, fire department, and 911 call center, authorities said.

“There was a large section of the city that lost power,” Deputy Fire Chief John Quatieri said.

Quatieri said the call came at 5:20 p.m. for a transformer fire in front of 86 Chestnut St., and when companies first arrived, they found primary wires down on the street and a utility pole on fire.

Quatieri said firefighters stood by until Eversource arrived, and then they extinguished the fire.

“As a result, we did have power outages throughout most of that area,” he said.

The police station, central fire headquarters, and the 911 call center had to use backup generator power during the outage, he said.

Michael Durand, a spokesman for Eversource, said that fire was sparked by equipment failure that was heat-related, and power was restored at varying intervals.

“The outage initially affected about 3,000 customers, though we were able to restore power to roughly half of the customers [in] less than 10 minutes using the capability we have on our system to reroute power around the damaged equipment,” Durand said in an e-mail. “We restored power to the remaining customers at varying intervals using that same capability for as many customers as possible, from about one hour in duration through about four hours.”