Most of downtown Trail was left without power for a couple of hours on Wednesday night.
FortisBC says the outage occurred when a piece of recently-installed equipment failed around 7:40 p.m..
Terry Vanderschaaf was walking along the waterfront downtown and witnessed the event.
“We thought we had heard what sounded like a large music amplifier exploding,” said Vanderschaaf. “There was one loud pop, then another loud pop, then a large ‘boom’.”
He says a passerby told them there had been an explosion behind the Bailey Theatre.
“We looked down into the alley,” he told the Times. “I guess there are underground transformers there, there was smoke coming out of the grates, electrical smoke.”
Firefighters attended the scene soon after, he said.
The power failure affected about 970 customers, most for about two hours. A handful of customers were without power overnight, though service was completely restored by 6:30 Thursday morning.
“Crews attended the scene and were able to restore service as quickly as possible,” says FortisBC spokesperson Nicole Bogdanovic. “We recognize it is inconvenient for people, and we appreciate their patience and understanding.”
The cause of the failure is under investigation.