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Power surge in Boston, Cambridge causes probems with computers, routers and T stations
By adamg on Wed, 03/14/2018 - 10:27am
Shortly before 9 a.m., people across the city had their lights flicker and their Internet service go down.
The MBTA reports an Eversource power surge in Boston messed with "Countdown clocks, station lighting, and elevators/escalators."
Downtown, Merit Mack reported:
Downtown folks check in. Who lost electrics for a second, around 0840(??) maybe still doesn't have internet?
Carina Flynn checked in:
All the PCs on my office floor shut down. Before I left for work from SB our cable shut down and lights flickered.
In Roxbury, Bumpasaurus reported:
I lost power briefly in Roxbury, but only on one side of the house. Lights dimmed and my router reset
Andrew Abbott checked in from the South End:
Happened in South End. Internet was down maybe 10-15 mins but came back
Ryan Seay noticed it in Cambridge:
Cambridge here - brown out around that time at our place.
Ashley Keenan writes the lights flickered in Dorchester. Kate Griffin writes her Internet went away in Jamaica Plain.
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Comments
Brighton checking in
Same issue. Fortunately, I didn't have any unsaved content running on the computer.
Yup. Our whole floor blinked
Yup. Our whole floor blinked out. Thanks for the update!
Lights dimmed at home in
Lights dimmed at home in Dorchester around that time. Security system beeped once as it went to battery and back.
Amazingly, Verizon internet didn't go into a catatonic state.
Even more amazingly, our service had stayed on throughout the storm. We didn't pay extra for the "waterproof data" plan, so every time it rains we have to reset the router a few times.
Friggin gondola
caused it.
Fort Point too
Same here too. My asistant and I were just sitting here and everything flickered.
Not enough to make my PoE phone go out but made everything turn off.
Elevators went off line
One was back in service quickly but all the others were down when I came in. Quite the line forming. Were I wearing normal shoes I would have hoofed it up nine flights.
Ours too, went out for a walk
Ours too, went out for a walk when the network borked and found all but one elevator out of service when I got back.
Power
The copier / lights lost power for a second, thank god our server/system is on battery backup.
Allston
Same thing in Allston.
Brookline, too
Less than 3 seconds, but long enough to shut the computer I was working on and reboot the wifi.
South End too
I shut off my closet light just as it happened. My printer beeped, the morning radio that I was streaming cut out, and my bathroom light stayed on, albeit dimmed. I thought I did it.
When was the last time that
When was the last time that Boston had a huge blackout?
Last blackout
The last major blackout affecting Boston happened in 1965. The Globe commemorated it in 2015.
Can't post the link -
Back Bay Cable
Lost our cable for about half an hour around that time and our alarm/radio bleeped and shut down.
Scared the cats who were in the middle of a boxing match and stopped to look at the radio!
Brighton Again
It caused my router and cable box to fail and spend the next 30-odd minutes rebooting, but that's about it. I was asleep and *something* made a noise which woke me up, but no clocks were blinking so it didn't seem to take power out. Interestingly enough Alexa continued to play the whitenoise/thunderstorm I like for another 20 minutes before she gave up.
I suspect this had something
I suspect this had something to do with it:
Surge, or outage?
Sounds like a power dip, not a surge. (The difference being that a surge could burn things out permanently that weren't on protected outlets...)
Definitely a surge
A couple of my UPSen have panels that showed the error condition was "input voltage: high," so we hit at least 127v for however many milliseconds.
Yikes!
I knew that lightning could cause surges, but I didn't know that power surges were a think that could happen as a grid-wide event. I guess there's no reason it couldn't happen, though...
Somerville
The lights seemed to get brighter for a moment, and our router reset itself. The various electric clocks weren't affected, though.
eek
Hopefully my UPS kept my computer safe...
Belmont Here
.
I was at work...
At work in Brookline not far from Coolidge Corner, and didn't notice any change in the lights, but three computers went down and got stuck partway through a reboot and went to something that looked like a "blue screen of death."...but had different coding on it. We called in a technician.
Meanwhile, I live in Allston and the home computer was in "sleep" mode all day, so it was ok when I got home.
Power surge the morning of the storm killed my microwave though....