Thursday night’s power outages in Morristown were caused by a broken wire, not an underground fire as initially suspected by authorities, a spokesman for Jersey Central Power & Light said on Friday.
“A piece of wire broke on Ridgedale Avenue, south of Abbett…there was no fire,” said Ron Morano of JCP&L.
The 9:20 pm incident knocked out power for 660 customers in Morristown. Electricity was restored by 10:26 pm when the utility switched them to another circuit, Ron said.
The spokesman said that sometimes “vapor or smoke” can emanate from a manhole without being caused by fire.
He added that the affected underground equipment, which has been repaired, was not part of the same underground system that serves most of downtown Morristown.
That network, which experienced many problems over the years, was upgraded after exploding manholes injured motorists.
