A malfunction with a major power line Wednesday night caused a
brief interruption in electricity service to some 10,000 customers
across the area, a Penelec official said Thursday.

Russell Van Horn, a public relations representative for Penelec,
said a 230,000-volt, 57-mile line went out near the Kinzua plant,
or “generating facility,” which provides service to Lewis Run and
then cuts off and goes down to Ridgway in Elk County.

Service in the City of Bradford was out for about a half-hour,
Van Horn said, starting at 10:22 p.m.

Service was switched and the malfunction was bypassed so that
service could be restored quickly, Van Horn said, adding the
original cause of the malfunction was still under
investigation.

“We’ve been patrolling that line all day with helicopters and
foot patrol,” he said, “and we will continue to try to locate the
problem.”

In addition to the city and Lewis Run, residents in Custer City,
Derrick City, Duke Center, Eldred, Rew, Rixford, Smethport and
Westline all experienced outages of varying degrees.

Most of the Tuna Valley was blacked out on Wednesday night due
to a heavy rain and lightning storm moving through the region. The
storm caused widespread flooding across the area and was
responsible for a few traffic accidents.