A helium balloon knocked out power to a large portion of Edmonton’s core for a few hours Wednesday morning.
At 11:15 a.m., Edmonton police said power was out from 103 Street to 119 Street between 105 and 111 avenues. Officers were on scene directing traffic at a number of intersections.
Tim LeRiche from EPCOR said the power initially went out at 10:25 a.m. in the area of 106 Avenue, just west of the LRT tracks when a helium balloon hit a power line.
“I’ve been here 10 years and I’ve heard of something like that happening once before.
“Sometimes when you get things like that interfering with electrical equipment, you’re going to get a power outage,” he said.
About 4,000 EPCOR customers were affected by the outage. Power was restored over the noon hour.
“The No. 1 thing for our crews is the safety of the public and themselves,” LeRiche said. “I wasn’t there, but I’m sure it was a bit messy and they would have been very careful about cleaning that out and making sure everything is safe before reattaching it all and getting the power back on.”
LeRiche said the balloon’s string got wrapped around the power line, causing the outage.