Backhoe Accident Leaves 754 Customers Without Power

More than 750 commercial businesses and residents along the Route 114 corridor were without power this morning after a back hoe accidentally took down some utility wires and a pole at the former Ventron property.

Hamid Jaffari, director of engineering and operations at Danvers Electric, said 754 of the town-operated utility's customers were without power for about 30 minutes before three of the utility's crews repaired the damaged caused to a transformer station at 150 Andover St.

The outage also occurred as today's winter snowstorm was beginning to drop more precipitation on the Danvers area, which made the outage even more troublesome for those customers.

Jaffari said a back hoe operator working for Connolly Brothers caused the damage, but he was pleased with how fast Danvers Electric crews restored power.

"They did it very quickly and I'm proud of them," Jaffari said. "That's one of the benefits of having a municipal utility."