Power outage sends Woonsocket 'back to the stone age' Russ Olivo August 29, 2001 WOONSOCKET -- They sipped cold coffee by candlelight at the Heritage Coffee Shoppe. Postal workers sorted mail by hand.

Last-minute filers for political office found the Board of Canvassers doing business on the sidewalk.

And everywhere you looked, knots of people gathered on Main Street as if they had nothing to do.

The sign on the locked door of the Registry of Motor Vehicles, 162 Main St., summed it all up: "No Power," it said.

Some 3,500 customers of Narragansett Electric, from the central downtown district to Diamond Hill Road near the Cumberland line, lost electricity Monday night after an underground utility cable on Clinton Street exploded, blowing the lid off a manhole cover outside the police station.

"They said it sounded like two or three hand grenades," said Police Chief Herve B. Landreville.

Robert Seega, spokesman for Narragansett Electric, said power was restored to almost everybody after an hour. The exceptions were 78 customers in the central downtown district on Main and Social streets, including the offices of The Call of Woonsocket -- sister paper to The Times -- the police station, City Hall, radio station WOON, the main post office and a bevy of small businesses.

The outage dimmed lights just after a violent, electrical storm passed over the city.

But utility workers fixing the problem yesterday said the outage wasn't caused by the storm.

Wear and tear on the underground feeder cables that run from the Truman Drive substation, opposite police headquarters, is the more likely culprit, said Narragansett Electric Cable Splicer Paul Kennelly.

The lines, he said, expand and contract as the load they carry shifts according to demand. Over time they wear out, becoming prone to explosive, fiery short-circuiting. A fire in one of the lines Monday night spread to a nearby cable as well, knocking out two feeders.

"There was a weak spot in the cable," said Kennelly. "It was just time for it to go. It happens all the time."

Usually, the electrical load can be shifted to a nearby cable quickly, but for the Main Street customers, the damaged cable had to be replaced, Seega said. "It just takes time," he said.

For some businesses, the outage was a Mount Rushmore-sized headache.

The Call and The Times -- which prints in Woonsocket -- were forced to print in Fall River at the offices of The Herald, causing a delay in the printing of both papers.

Stories for The Call written by reporters earlier in the day got stuck in the limbo of cyberspace when the juice suddenly ebbed from computers. Editors stayed up all night Monday and into Tuesday morning hoping the power would come back, and scrambling at the last minute to publish at the alternative location.

At the Post Office, on Social Street, postal workers sorted mail by hand in the half-light provided by the emergency power generators.

"It's back to the Stone Age," said letter carrier Dan Spas.

At City Hall -- the only piece of government real estate that isn't equipped with an emergency power generator -- Mayor Susan D. Menard, in a radio address, told most employees not to report to work. Department heads were told to report two hours later than usual.

At the police station, telecommunications equipment was powered by an emergency generator, but most of the lighting in the building was dim and the office equipment was idle. Many Main Street businesses stayed closed.

The outage could not have come at a worse time for Stella G. Brien, a lawyer trying to file papers to run for the District 62 state representative seat. The rest of City Hall was closed, but she found officials from the Board of Canvassers waiting on the sidewalk. It was the last day of a special, two-day declaration period to fill the vacancy left by State Rep. Barbara C. Burlingame, who died of cancer Aug. 14.

Amin Malik, the proprietor of Liberty Market, waited on customers in the semi-dark, tallying up bills with a pocket calculator, his register lifeless. It reminded the Pakistani native of the late 1950s, when he ran a grocery store outside Islamabad, the capital of Pakistan. They added up the bills by hand, waiting on dozens of customers at a time.

"You could say it was the third world," he says.

OK, it was a little backwards, but the outage seemed to unite people with that neighborly feeling that comes from a shared burden, like a blizzard.

"Cold coffee only," Jamie Berthelette, a waitress at Heritage Coffee Shoppe yelled to a customer, explaining the power-outage menu options. But there they were, a handful of customers at the counter, sipping iced coffees and nibbling doughnuts by the light of an oil lamp that proprietor Kathleen Poirier brought from home. A candle flickered in the corner, giving the place, well, dining room atmosphere.

"You have to use the flashlight if you want to use the bathroom," she said.

http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=2282361&BRD=1713&PAG=461&dept_id=24491&rfi=6

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), August 29, 2001

Answers

"There was a weak spot in the cable," said Kennelly. "It was just time for it to go. It happens all the time."

Yeah, all the time ::::-§

-- spider (spider@web.com), August 29, 2001.

Lost my geography on this one.

-- Tomcat (tomcat@myhome.com), August 30, 2001.

Rhode Island. My pet peeve. Many web sites never say what state they are in. I guess they expect everyone to know where these towns are.

-- Martin Thompson (mthom1927@aol.com), August 30, 2001.