'Loose Wire' Cited in Tuesday Power Outage

A spokesman for Connecticut Light & Power Co. said Wednesday that the power outage in Gales Ferry Tuesday night occurred when a utility wire on Whalehead Road came loose.

"Could be age, expanding, contracting -- sometimes they just come loose," CL&P spokesman Mitch Gross said when asked why the wire came loose.

The outage, first reported at 8:48 p.m., affected more than 1,900 customers in Gales Ferry, including the business district, which was dark for about 90 minutes.

"Power to most customers was back within two hours," Gross said. "Everyone should have had power restored by midnight."

Peter Bargmann, owner of Cows and Cones, was among the affected business. Bargmann told another business owner Tuesday night that he was concerned about the 800 gallons of ice cream in his freezer.

On Wednesday, Cows and Cones was open for business and an employee said the ice cream was fine.

Gross said the loud explosion heard near the post office in Gales Ferry Tuesday night was not a transformer blowing up. "That was just the equipment doing its job," he said. "When the system senses something is wrong, it acts like a huge circuit breaker. There is a loud bang and a big flash."