Hey, there! Log in / Register
Back Bay blinks out: Lights fail across the neighborhood in outage that stretches to the South End, Fenway
By adamg on Thu, 10/22/2020 - 10:17pm
Dark Pru. Photo by Martin Lim.
Update: Lights started coming back on around 10:48 p.m.
Back Bay residents started reporting a power outage around 10:10 p.m., from Mass. Ave. all the way to Arlington Street, and down to Columbus Avenue in the South End. Traffic lights are out - and even the Citgo Sign fell dark.
Unlike the Pru, the Hancock appeared to still have power, as Ronan noticed at Beacon Street and Mass. Ave.:
Sangwiche noticed people weren't going to let a blackout stop their dinner on Newbury Street:
Joe Pesaturo captured a darkened Westin, currently home to 800 or so Northeastern students:
Ryan reports the outage affected East Fenway:
Free tagging:
Ad:
Support Universal Hub
Help keep Universal Hub going. If you like what we're up to and want to help out, please consider a (completely non-deductible) contribution.
Comments
Symphony too
Lights out in my building across Huntington Ave from Northeastern, and on St Stephen Street.
And we're back
Outage lasted maybe 35 minutes.
was this the same generator from 2012?
Remember than nightmare?
Shower refugees
A couple of days into that mess we had a group from the adjacent offices turn up at our reception area because they heard that our office suite had a shower in it. All lived in Back Bay and their gyms were also shut.
They actually cleaned our shower and brought us flowers.
I was wondering what that
I was wondering what that switch was for.
Most cities have battery
Most cities have battery backups for their traffic lights. What’s Boston’s excuse?
My guess
Boston is older than most cities, and definitely has an older infrastructure.
Is this a prelude to
Is this a prelude to declaring us an anarchy district?
I wonder if that moment
made the stars more visible in the Back Bay. Been living in the city for 30 years, but I still miss the less light-polluted skies of my amateur star-gazing youth further out.
My best recent astronomy-nerd high was a couple years ago, lying flat on my back on a dock on the shore of Lake Winnipesaukee far into the wee hours, counting scores of multi-colored streaks of the Perseid meteor shower, hearing the softly explosive pop of three or four that made it into the lower atmosphere.
Had another good stargazer moment this summer, a close conjunction of the moon and Mars during a delirious but covid-respectful outdoor party in rural Rhode Island. Pretty!
Not particularly uncommon sights in the scheme of things, but somehow more profound after six or eight months indoors. Them stars: they always hit me.
It was cloudy
No stars, unfortunately, and the lights of surrounding areas still brightened the sky. And the street lights on Marlborough are gas and stayed on.
According to Boston.com Via NECN it was the substation again
https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2020/10/22/mema-reports-over-900-...
"A company spokesperson told NECN the issue was at Eversource’s substation in the Back Bay, adding that power crews are still on the scene looking into the exact cause."
South End residents have been
South End residents have been dealing with many planned and unplanned outages recently. The communication from Eversource has been horrible. There's going to be a neighborhood meeting planned with our elected officials and Eversource to talk about what's happening and how we can improve the situation.
On my street, the past week has been a nightmare. Our lights started flickering last Saturday. Then there was an unplanned outage on Sunday night for about 4 hours. Monday night there was a transformer explosion underground that killed power for 9 hours. They brought in a generator and worked all week until last night to fix it. During that span, we had at least 3 more outages that we received no notice about. What a mess.
Long unplanned power outages.
We used to have these once-a-month power outages in our area that were anywhere from 12-14 hours long, at times, especially when it rained or whatever. It wasn't until we got a petition going around that was signed by everybody in our community/complex, and that our now-ex manager threatened then-Boston Edison with legal action, that the situation was changed.
Sudden blackness