Balloons Take Out Electric Service in Queens

A bouquet of 30 multi-color helium balloons floated up, up, and away got tangled in wires above Francis Lewis Boulevard and Murdock Street in St. Albans, Queens Monday afternoon and knocked out electric service for 1,500 Con Ed customers. 

A Con Ed spokesperson told authorities that the large bunch of balloons was still tied together when it floated away from someone's backyard birthday celebration.

A bucket truck was sent to the location and two workers spent nearly an hour attempting to untangle the balloons from several overhead wires. Transformers and safety checkpoints in the grid stopped the outage from spreading to other neighboring communities.

According to Con Ed records, people's mishaps are the second highest cause of power outages behind bad weather.  "Someone will lean a ladder against a wire or fly a drone into the grid and out goes the lights." said the spokesperson.

According to the New York Post the power in the neighborhood was out from 4:30 pm until 6:40 pm.

Photo Credit: Getty Images


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