Explosion and Fire At Substation

Failure in a transformer at a Westerville Electric substation early Tuesday morning caused an explosion and fire that appears to have destroyed the transformer and damaged an adjacent one.

About one thousand homes lost power about 3 a.m. with most restored by early afternoon according to the city accounts on Twitter and Facebook. The city uses a loop feed distribution system, meaning homes losing power can be switched to a power feed from the other end of the loop.

The explosion could be seen and heard in nearby neighborhoods. Some homes affected by the surge and outage reported burned-out circuit breakers, GFI plugs, and surge protectors.

Westerville Fire Department responded to the fire.

Traffic was interrupted at Maxtown and McCorkle until mid-afternoon when city crews replaced LED lights in the intersection that were damaged by the power surge from the fire.

Requests for more information about the fire, equipment, and service restoration from the city, the electric division, and the fire department have gone unanswered at the time of publication.

Westerville Community Affairs Director Christa Dickie responded to an earlier request for a news release with an email stating “We're keeping updates on the @tellwesterville page. The cause and inspections are going to be under investigation for days, if not weeks. We'll be unable to tell you much more about specifics until that is complete.”

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