Power Line Failure Blamed in Early-Morning Outage

The failure of a power line connecting two Salem substations is being blamed for an early-morning flicker of power in Beverly that also caused thousands of others on the North Shore to lose power, according to National Grid.

The outage occurred at about 1:25 a.m. on Thursday, according to National Grid spokesman David Graves, when a power line connecting National Grid’s Salem Harbor substation to a transmission line that feeds one of the other Salem substations failed, knocking out power.

About 11,600 customers were affected across the North Shore, but just one customers in Beverly lost power. Residents in the downtown and Cove neighborhoods reported a flicker of power at about the time of the outage.

Customers in Lynn, Salem, Saugus and Swampscott were also affected.

Graves said National Grid restored power in stages by switching the supply from the West Salem substation to the customers without power.

All of the customers that lost power had it back at 2:20 a.m.