Fourth power outage hits Spruce Street

Parts of Spruce Street lost electricity for the fourth time in the past two weeks late Monday afternoon as a result of what PECO Energy calls an “ongoing” issue with an underground cable.

Approximately 367 customers were without power beginning at about 4:45 p.m.

PECO spokesperson Fred Maher said that this outage is “most likely” related to the prior three outages in the area in the past several weeks.

Many businesses on the 3700 block of Spruce Street — including Wawa, Green Street Consignment Shop and Saladworks — closed temporarily following the power outage. The same businesses lost power two weeks ago on March 12 following a similar outage.

Division of Public Safety officers were directing traffic at the intersection of 38th and Spruce streets, where all traffic lights lost electricity. Cars were not permitted to make left turns.

“All we want to do is avoid chaos out here,” a DPS officer directing traffic said. “You just hope they get this fixed before it gets dark.”

Maher said that PECO field forces were working throughout the outage to figure out the issue with the underground cable. He added that the crews are only able to isolate the problem while the electricity is out.

“Once the power comes back on, it’s a waiting game,” Maher said.

For the businesses that were compelled to close from the loss of power and possibly lost money, Maher said that PECO has a “claims process” available if anyone was “harmed financially by the outage.”

After the second and third outages, which occurred on March 18 and 19, respectively, PECO speculated that heavy rain could have been part of the cause. On Monday, the area around Penn also saw heavy precipitation.

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