Power outage wreaks havoc for some
The Daily Mail

Sixteen-hundred Central Hudson customers lost power briefly Thursday morning, causing lights to go out as well as computer and phone systems to crash.

The outage occurred at 6:30 a.m. and power to just about everyone had been restored about 90 minutes later, according to Central Hudson spokesman John Maserjian.

Initial reports said that the outage was caused by a transformer explosion near the Greene County Courthouse on Main Street, but, according to Maserjian, the mechanism fastening a power line to a pole malfunctioned.

“The problem did damage to the transformer. The transformer was not the cause of the problem,” he said.

The initial outage only affected about 300 customers, Maserjian said, but power to lines around the damaged fastener had to be cut, which extended the outage to 1,600 customers.

Greene County employees said they heard that computers in the building malfunctioned as a result of the loss of power.

Although many Main Street businesses said they were unaffected by the power failure, the Bank of Greene County was not so lucky.

Bank of Greene County President Don Gibson, who works in the administration center at 302 Main St., said the outage turned out to be a major inconvenience.

“It played havoc with our computer system and our phone system,” he said.

Gibson said that power fluctuations continued through the afternoon, causing issues for employees until around 4 p.m.

Bank staff in the building service 11 branches.

Phone service at the bank branch at 425 Main St. was also “screwy,” Gibson said.