Thousands in Dartmouth lose power after pole issue

Thousands of customers in Dartmouth, N.S., lost electricity for more than hour Tuesday morning after a power pole issue.

Halifax Regional Police said they were called to help control traffic on Maple Street in downtown Dartmouth around 8:15 a.m.

Photos of the scene on social media showed clouds of smoke and flames around the top of the pole. The power line is also near a transformer station.

Police spokesperson Const. John MacLeod said the call came in as a power pole fire, but the Nova Scotia Power website said the outage was caused by a "vehicle accident."

Power restored within two hours

According to the Nova Scotia Power outage map, there were roughly 10,000 customers without power around 9 a.m., dropping to about 5,500 around 9:30 a.m.

By 10 a.m., the outage map said all affected customers had their power restored.

Nova Scotia Power spokesperson Jackie Foster said in an email that crews had responded to an outage "caused by a motor vehicle accident" affecting customers in parts of Dartmouth.

However, there was no sign of a car when crews arrived to restore the power. Based on the damage to equipment on the pole, Foster said they believe a passing vehicle may have struck the equipment, leading to the outage.

MacLeod said police took a section of Maple Street to one lane for about a half-hour, then left the scene around 8:45 a.m. as Nova Scotia Power crews and Halifax Fire remained on site.